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US Government Will Not Force Companies To Decode Encrypted Data... For Now (washingtonpost.com)
Mark Wilson writes: The Obama administration has announced it will not require companies to decrypt encrypted messages for law enforcement agencies. This is being hailed as a "partial victory" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation; partial because, as reported by the Washington Post, the government "will not — for now — call for [such] legislation." This means companies will not be forced to build backdoors into their products, but there is no guarantee it won't happen further down the line. The government wants to continue talks with the technology industry to find a solution, but leaving things in limbo for the time being will create a sense of unease on both sides of the debate.
The EFF has also compiled a report showing where the major tech companies stand on encryption.
Yeah, and guess what?
Smith v Maryland (1979) says that phone call records, as "business records" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy, and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. And the only data within that haystack that we care about are the foreign intelligence needles. I know that's difficult to comprehend, but it's the law of the land, unless and until SCOTUS reverses that ruling. And they very well may.
Until that happens, "We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, Iâ(TM)m troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law." -- General Michael Hayden
And when the full authority of the law is insufficient to do whatever they want, they will search until they find a creative lawyer to offer a legal opinion to redefine what the law really means and justify whatever they want to do. http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
You might also want to update your sources, Mr. apologist. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law overseeing data collection could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a "staggering" amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations. Lucky for them, Congress amended the law, moving the goalposts in mid game.
https://www.aclu.org/legal-doc...
Hopefully, you will find this as easy to comprehend as the Smith v Maryland case. And before you start wiping the brown off your nose and begin frothing at the mouth with another justification, I know it hasn't made it to the Supreme Court yet. Hopefully, you noticed Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act law yesterday. That should give you a clue that you are on the wrong side of this issue.