What is a significant risk of sending Interpol responses unencrypted?

Sending Interpol responses unencrypted poses a significant risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data. When information is transmitted without encryption, it is vulnerable to interception during transmission. This means that malicious actors can potentially access the details of the communication, which may contain confidential or sensitive information about investigations, individuals, or operational strategies.

Encryption serves as a protective layer that safeguards data by converting it into a format that is unreadable without the proper decryption key. This ensures that even if data packets are intercepted, they cannot be read or exploited by unauthorized parties. Therefore, using unencrypted communication is a major breach of security protocols and can lead to serious implications for law enforcement agencies, including compromising ongoing investigations or exposing personal information.

The other options—information getting lost, delayed responses, and increased workload for agencies—while they can be issues in communication processes, do not directly address the critical security vulnerabilities associated with transmitting sensitive data without encryption. The main concern in this context is the risk posed to the confidentiality and integrity of the information shared among international law enforcement.