Legislating Insecure Encryption

firewort writes: "Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), who called for global backdoors in encryption products in a floor speech last week, is readying legislation. This is another push for backdoors - but it seems that Gregg wants them to be used cautiously, only with permission from a US Supreme court appointed commission, subject to normal search and seizure rules." Representative Goodlatte, who has supported strong encryption before, is one of the few people speaking out against this.

Comments

As I've said before...

[Zwack]

And I will keep on saying it.

Now is the time to contact your representative, your senators and probably even your local media and tell them exactly how much damage this legislation could do.

Tell them about encryption used to protect your online banking transactions. Tell them about encryption used to protect company secrets. Tell them that this is bad for trade. Tell them that this is bad for innovation (unless you're Microsoft I guess)... Tell them how you feel about it.

Don't just sit back and let this go through. If nobody says "this is bad" then it will be passed...

While telling your congress critters, be polite, spell check before sending. Fax and/or write rather than e-mail. Call them and talk to them. But however you do it, make sure that your voice is heard.

Zwack.

p.s. Yes, I've already written to my congress critters.