Top Security Experts Say Anti-Encryption Bill Authors Are 'Woefully Ignorant' (dailydot.com)

blottsie writes from a report on the Daily Dot: In a Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Encryption Without Tears," Sens. Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein pushed back on widespread condemnation of their Compliance with Court Orders Act, which would require tech companies to provide authorities with user data in an "intelligible" format if served with a warrant. But security experts Bruce Schneir, Matthew Green, and others say the lawmakers entirely misunderstand the issue. "On a weekly basis we see gigabytes of that information dumped to the Internet," Green told the Daily Dot. "This is the whole problem that encryption is intended to solve." He added: "You can't hold out the current flaws in the Internet as a justification for why the Internet shouldn't be made secure." "These criticisms of Burr and Feinstein's analogy emphasize an important point about digital security: The differences between the levels of encryption protecting certain types of data -- purchase records on Amazon's servers versus photos on an iPhone, for example -- lead to different levels of risk," writes Eric Geller of the Daily Dot.

Comments

Re:Unconstitutional

[Fnord666]

A person accused is not required to say one word in writing or with speech to cops or judges or to testify in any way in their own defense. So just how is it that any court dare to demand a password which may well further a conviction whether just or not?

The same way that they can use a warrant to compel you to give them access to a safe that you own or possess which may contain evidence that implicates you. Neither that safe, your hard drive or your phone are protected by the 5th amendment. They are protected by the 4th amendment to the extent that officials must obtain a warrant from a judge by demonstrating probable cause that evidence will be found in the place to be searched. Once they have a warrant officials (or the courts) can compel you to give them access and they can hold you in contempt of court for failing to do so.