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Federal Bill Could Override State-Level Encryption Bans (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new bill has been proposed in Congress today by Representatives Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) which looks to put a stop to any pending state-level legislation that could result in misguided encryption measures. The Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act of 2016 comes as a response to state-level encryption bills which have already been proposed in New York state and California. These near-identical proposals argued in favour of banning the sale of smartphones sold in the U.S. that feature strong encryption and cannot be accessed by the manufacturer. If these bills are passed, current smartphones, including iPhone and Android models, would need to be significantly redesigned for sale in these two states. Now Lieu and Farenthold are making moves to prevent the passing of the bills because of their potential impact on trade [PDF] and the competitiveness of American firms.
To the punch of stripping Americans of their right to encrypt their data.
I just love the idea that we are going to create a whole new "War on encryption" that might be even less winnable than the War on Drugs.
Instead of people running guns from less restrictive jurisdictions, we will now all be criminals importing phones because we want to buy phones win normal industry standard encryption.
So, when will a California resident be able to purchase a non CARB compliant motor vehicle?
Have gnu, will travel.
But States' Rights!
Screamed the Libertarians. Oh wait, they like this, never mind.
New York state and California, conservative bastions leading the way to ever greater compromises of civil liberties.
They want to make it easy to hide evidence. Same reason they support the 5th so hard. So hard.
But really, the smartphone is just a device and current models do not enforce proper end to end encryption of any kind . Few people make use of a smartphone without hosting their e-mail, address book etc using an online service like G-mail. You can bet that regardless of any encryption on your device, Google can and does read your e-mail and contact info regularly. In fact it's a major pillar of their business model. So don't fall into a false sense of security if you use an encrypted phone, your communication is likely still a free for all for your service providers unless you've taken additional measures. Of course any such law forbidding "the selling of smartphones that are encrypted" actually does nothing to stop determined folks from properly encrypting their communication, and only acts as motivation for people to protect their data more comprehensively.
They don't commit crimes for fun. They do it for profit.
Given the naming trend for Congressional bills I'd have much more confidence if it was called the "Protect NSA Digital Rights & FBI Access Requirements" or something similar.
Ensuring
National
Constitutional
Rights of
Your
Private
Telecommunications
Do they have staffers who work on this sort of naming stuff?
Encryption source code is First-Amendment-protected speech.
(See the Criminal Investigation section)
Don't these legislators (or anyone on their staffs) know anything about what they're attempting to restrict?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Moderators, please note that many of the comments in this thread are a troll replying to himself to make it appear like a conversation. It's one jackass who posts this type of spam on a regular basis, replying to himself as AC. And, of course, he never says anything of substance, just one line nonsense.
Here's one example: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8657315&cid=51359929 (posting about how Republicans want people to die)
Another example: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8685139&cid=51400945 (making BS claims about Facebook tolerating and promoting gun violence)
Yet another: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8700601&cid=51428235 (Claiming that Republicans are always tracking and spying on everyone)
There are others. It's almost certainly one assclown who ought to be banned or at least modded into oblivion. I'm hoping the new owners get rid of some of the shit like this. I don't really mind real trolls that post on-topic stuff. Some of it's actually pretty damn funny. Even some of the old -1 logged-in posters like cyborg_monkey were entertaining. Besides, they didn't waste mod points because they were already at -1 and you could easily avoid reading them. But I'd like to see really stupid nonsense like this go away. As one user said, real trolls would either make us laugh or piss us off; this guy does neither and is just a waste. I'm hoping whipslash will get rid of this fool when he stops apk's spamming.
Maybe the tech companies are even more central to this than it looks. Obviously, they would be behind a federal bill to protect themselves from having to fork products, even if it wasn't the right thing to do.
But there's just TONS of stories about how poor law enforcement is constantly unable to break into phones. There's no stories about this on PCs, even though that's where huge amount of the data are, and have been for many years.
The difference? PC and its competitors have always been open platforms. The government has known that there's no effective way to keep cryptography out of the hands of the bad guys- maybe with extraordinary pressure they could keep it out of the hands of the good guys, but that's it.
Phones aren't. Phones are becoming slightly more open in pieces, and there's plans for some really open phones, but there's not a huge amount of movement there. These aren't attacks as much on us as they are on the mobile software guys, because once they beat them down the push for an open phone will become substantially magnified in volume- enough to make a product that, no surprise, all the bad guys will use, indistinguishable among the medium sized wave of privacy advocates and techies. When faced with an open platform, the government could still try to ban it, but they would have no success among their target pool- and they would just succeed in griefing people.
So is this just a giant drum to scare the tech companies into paying more? It won't save any lives, obviously, and it's not otherwise that rational a play for the government. Maybe it's a bit of a threat for some cash.
Just a thought.
PCs are typically not currently used to coordinate criminal activity in large numbers, particularly active and ongoing criminal activity.
Phones are, there are a lot more phones, they are used to share information a lot more frequently and are heavily used during criminal activity.
Plus they often find phones at crime scenes. They don't find people lugging PCs around a drug buys.
Hence the emphasis on phones. The law still has all sorts of other problems but there is a legitimate reason they are focusing on phones.
Yes, I know, PCs are used in crime, but not nearly to active level that phones are.
Why is it that the most Democrat run states practice this the most? It's generally easy to check too -- when freedoms are being restricted/regulated, you find progressives/liberals/democrats/lefties.
Shoes are used a lot in crimes, too. Perhaps these states would feel it necessary to put radio transmitters in all shoes sold within their jurisdiction, you know, because TERRORISTS and PEDOPHILES!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wouldn't any actual criminals just add 3rd party software to do strong encryption? These bills just create a market for one-time pad encryption support.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Penises are the tools of choice for rapists... we need to regulate penises!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just ship the China version of cellphones to the US. Problem solved.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Way to be sexist toward female rapists. Good job!
This is proposed alongside the "Allowing Americans to Bear Arms Act" and the "No More Quartering Soldiers Without Permission Act".
Encryption source code is First-Amendment-protected speech.
There are all kinds of holes in your argument, unfortunately. The Supreme Court could hear a new case testing this and completely invalidate the previous ruling or issue a new ruling that partially invalidates it under certain circumstances. It could be legally ruled that while the source code itself has 1st amendment protection, the actual using of the code does not. And if you don't think that's possible, you definitely don't pay a lot of attention to the US legal system where literally anything can happen depending the judge you get, whether you get a jury or have a judge decide the case, and so on.
Assuming you have Android, all you would have to do is root your own device and put the strong encryption packages on it. Or build them from source. Politicians are notoriously moronic.
My guess is in the days before the WW2, they would have had difficulty in breaking ciphers too. So it's more a case of the last 50 years or so. That is not "always", but it is a long time.
Sorry, miss-read your comment. The car is not exempt. The exemption clause was removed by Schwarzenegger within months of becoming Governor.
I have to point out the obvious, which is that there has been nearly 2 centuries of people pumping money into propaganda to convince people that the Constitution and Bill of Rights means what they want to mean, not what was intended originally. That people continue believing increasing levels of bullshit is not a surprise, incremental change is how things always happen. Propaganda and Sociology are not "new" sciences by any stretch of the imagination, but also not something normal people get taught about.
So read some history and figure out what was intended by the 5th, and you will find that it does not match the currently used "spun" definition. I'll give you an easy one, which history will verify repeatedly. If you need citation start at the Federalist papers, Biographies, and court documents from the US and England.
At the time of the Revolution, British soldiers were searching people's houses for things like diaries. If you had the wrong shit written in yours, you were executed and sometimes sent to a nice London jail. Vague writings were the best, because a person disliked could easily be charged with a crime based on their own words with invented outcomes. Speculative thought crimes like "he was thinking treason" were as common as false allegations, "see he was mad at the Smithers so killed that guy everyone thought was mauled by the bear". It was all about who disliked you and what dirt they could find on you (nothing new there). The limitations in the Constitution were intended to prevent the Government or an agent from searching your crap and using it to possibly invent a crime based on their findings. The part about "speech" is a newly formed pile of shit which people are gullible and ignorant enough to believe.
History will show you the "meaning" of all of the wording in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Contrary to bullshitter and con-artists statements, there is no ambiguity or accidental language in the documents. None, zero, zip, nada, nill, null, etc.. etc...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This bill is written like a state bill - you can read it. It's only a few sentences. This isn't 1,000+ pages "we have to read it to find out what's in it" Obamacare.
Obviously I meant to write "have to PASS it to find out what's in it". Apparently I have trouble saying something so Pelostupid even when I'm trying to.
Womyn rapists, shitlord.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
There are still a lot of crimes where a laptop or PC workstation is seized as evidence and the person used encryption. It's just that smart phones have a lot more uses such as they can gather information on who you call, recover text messages you made to other suspects, and a lot of people compose emails and take photos that may be used as evidence with their smart phone. This is why they are emphasizing smart phones when writing laws. Law enforcement would like to ban all encryption but the emphasis is on smart phones since they contain more valuable data and are easier to access. For example a police officer can go through the smart phone of someone they arrest or ask the person who thinks they have nothing to hide if they can take a look at their smart phone during a routine traffic stop.