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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.
How exactly would the US force terrorists and criminals to use this state sanctioned pre-owned encryption? It's almost like they want to spy on everyone that passively reaps the benefits of encryption.
Calling lawmakers "woefully ignorant" of technology is a tired ad hominem argument, always thrown out by the techno-elites. It may have been true back in the 90s and early oughts, bu these senators entirely understand the implications of what they're doing. Calling a senator, especially Feinstein, "woefully ignorant" sounds naive ... as if they aren't even listening to what the senators are saying.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Ironically, all legislature is encrypted in obfuscated legalize and other deceitful special interest pork pretending to be honest language.
After this much time, and considering the actual experts that they have access to, I can't help but feel that the esteemed Congresscritters Feinstein and Burr are not at ALL "ignorant" of the particulars of this issue.
When a politician says that tech companies have to do something, and the heads of every major high-tech company all say that it is impossible to do so in a way that doesn't fundamentally compromise the security of every man, woman, and child—including those working for our own government—and the politician basically says, "I don't believe you", then either the politician is woefully ignorant about technology or he/she is deliberately trying to destroy all modern technology. There's really no middle ground possible here.
I choose to believe the best in people, so I assume that she is simply borderline computer-illiterate like most of the rest of Congress, and that she's too clueless to recognize that when the heads of Google, Apple, and Microsoft all tell you that you're full of it, that's a good time to hire better tech experts to advise you. Because the only plausible alternative is that she is corrupt, and that somebody who will benefit from the destruction of all modern technology is pulling her strings like a puppet.
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"Techno-elites"? By that you mean "experts in their given field", like people who have written papers, books, actual security algorithms, etc? Those "techno-elites"? You'll forgive me, but are we seriously expected to dismiss their evaluation of a given piece of legislation, when this is what they do? That's a nice little ad hominem yourself, in case you weren't aware.
Feinstein et al have proposed a new federal law. So you'll forgive me when I don't really care about listening to them try to spin it or talk about their intentions, because what matters is what is actually written in the bill.
Being "ignorant" regarding a particularly complex topic like encryption and security isn't a personal insult. It means you're not fully versed on that particular topic, and it can be easily fixed by *learning*. You're reacting as though someone someone called Feinstein (whom it sounds like you admire and/or support and seem to be instinctively defending) "stupid", which is not the same thing. Now, if a lawmaker find herself ignorant regarding a certain topic, and tries to create and pass a law without seeking and applying the best advice from experts in that field, then... well...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.