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Senate Bill Draft Would Prohibit Unbreakable Encryption (ap.org)
buck-yar quotes a report from the Associated Press: "A draft version of a Senate bill would effectively prohibit unbreakable encryption and require companies to help the government access data on a computer or mobile device with a warrant."
The two Senators finalizing the bill announced "No individual or company is above the law," saying their goal is to ensure compliance with court orders to help law enforcement or to provide decrypted information. The ACLU's legislative counsel argued the drafted legislation represents a "clear threat to everyone's privacy and security," and the bill is opposed by another member of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden, who says it would require "American companies to build a backdoor... They would be required by federal law per this statute to decide how to weaken their products to make Americans less safe."
The two Senators finalizing the bill announced "No individual or company is above the law," saying their goal is to ensure compliance with court orders to help law enforcement or to provide decrypted information. The ACLU's legislative counsel argued the drafted legislation represents a "clear threat to everyone's privacy and security," and the bill is opposed by another member of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden, who says it would require "American companies to build a backdoor... They would be required by federal law per this statute to decide how to weaken their products to make Americans less safe."
This is a good time to drop them a letter AND an email AND a phone call AND a fax while at it. Go on, do what's expected of you but too few of you actually do.
This is good. Not the bill, but this is the correct place for this debate, in the legislature, not the courts. Now we just need to make sure it loses, and for the right reasons.
Such a parallel argument would be equally missing-the-point. Just because a thing is possible to do doesn't preclude laws making that thing illegal to do, or to own. And while those laws may not make owning or doing that thing impossible, they can make it rare or difficult for Joe Average to do or own.
Except that in this case, the thing being made illegal is a piece of software whose source code has already been declared protected free speech.
Even if Joe Average doesn't touch it, Joe McTerrorist sure will---thus defeating the entire purpose of this bill.
No this bill was introduced so when it fails and they introduce a slightly les offensive bill it will pass.
Its like how people will vote for someone based on them being "not as bad as some previous guy"
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
The NSA and FBI brought this on themselves. Before all the spying on everyone, parallel construction, and warrant less use of stingray plus secret courts, nobody was all that much interested in consumer products with unbreakable encryption.
If they want to blame someone for this, they need to look in a mirror and understand that their operations are just plain creepy and incompatible with a free country. They are starting to smell like the Stasi and a significant portion of the citizens of this country don't care to give them any more of a foothold.
It will work *very* well, just not at the ends that these Senators want.
Do you know how painful it is to work with European companies thanks to how shitty Facebook and company were with cooperating?
Now a law that ends all unbreakable encryption will make it impossible for me to convince anyone in Europe that they won't be owned the second they send some data over. Even though our app doesn't require any sort of private information, or take any credit cards.
Yes, the Europeans in that case will be technically wrong, but who can really blame them for not being at least a little gunshy in that regard? They not going to want to have to closely inspect every single purchase they make of a product where they can't make an assumption that we are making a good faith attempt to protect them because our fucking government won't let us.
These Senators are idiots and appear to want us to lose all our international business for some stupid terrorist fearmongering bullshit.
Unenforceable; impractical; in the final analysis, stupid.
You folks still aren't getting it. The law provides probable cause against anyone using unbreakable encryption (like such a thing exists). If the cops can't decipher your communications, they can bust the door down, take everything and arrest you on mere suspicion.
The sad thing is that these laws are such an easy sell to the panicky and actually very authoritarian public.
And there's that name, Feinstein, again. Fascism in a dress.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Yes, the Europeans in that case will be technically wrong, but who can really blame them for not being at least a little gunshy in that regard?
We would be technically wrong, but procedurally correct, because if you have laws like that, plus secret courts and gag orders, staying as far away as possible is the only way to keep data safe.
The secret courts are the worst. You know when we over here had them the last time? It was in Nazi Germany.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
While I agree with you in general, you are too strict and don't understand the concept of democracy. Look:
There are exactly two groups of people whose opinions matter in this case: law enforcement and the technology industry.
That is a technocracy, not a democracy. Rulership by the people means exactly that. If people are uninformed, make them informed. That is the actual reason why we have representative democracy (i.e. parliaments and such), because a small group of people whose sole job it is actually has the opportunity to become informed and then decide.
Of course, the current political system doesn't work that way because they don't (any of that), but at least that is the idea.
People should decide, otherwise we end up in what we have in Brussels: A technocratic government completely detached from the people it governs making decisions purely on administrative merit.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org