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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Senate’s Draft Encryption Bill Is ‘Ludicrous, Dangerous, Technically Illiterate’
AS APPLE BATTLED the FBI for the last two months over the agencys demands that Apple help crack its own encryption, both the tech community and law enforcement hoped that Congress would weigh in with some sort of compromise solution. Now Congress has spoken on crypto, and privacy advocates say its solution is the most extreme stance on encryption yet.
On Thursday evening, the draft text of a bill called the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, authored by offices of Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr, was published online by the Hill.1 Its a nine-page piece of legislation that would require people to comply with any authorized court order for dataand if that data is unintelligible, the legislation would demand that it be rendered intelligible. In other words, the bill would make illegal the sort of user-controlled encryption thats in every modern iPhone, in all billion devices that run Whatsapps messaging service, and in dozens of other tech products. This basically outlaws end-to-end encryption, says Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Its effectively the most anti-crypto bill of all anti-crypto bills.
Kevin Bankston, the director of the New America Foundations Open Technology Institute, goes even further: I gotta say in my nearly 20 years of work in tech policy this is easily the most ludicrous, dangerous, technically illiterate proposal Ive ever seen, he says.
The bill, Hall and Bankston point out, doesnt specifically suggest any sort of backdoored encryption or other means to even attempt to balance privacy and encryption, and actually claims to not require any particular design limitations on products. Instead, it states only that communications firms must provide unencrypted data to law enforcement or the means for law enforcement to grab that data themselves. To uphold the rule of law and protect the security and interests of the United States, all persons receiving an authorized judicial order for information or data must provide, in a timely manner, responsive and intelligible information or data, or appropriate technical assistance to obtain such information or data.
more: http://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy-nightmare/
DemocracyDirect
(708 posts)I can write a program to encrypt data and send it to the other side of the planet, where my program could decrypt it ... both using a key set that only the sender and receiver have any knowledge of ..
in about 8 minutes!
If they seriously think they are going to stop would be terrorists or hackers communicating using impenetrable encryption with legislation they are wrong.
It makes you wonder what the real agenda is.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)May put a slight kink in the passage of this law.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)awake
(3,226 posts)Is this what our Democratic Senators do these day, right laws that one would expect in the old USSR. No wonder our party is going to hell in a hand basket.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)So ashamed of her! WTF? Wish we could ditch her for a real democrat here in CA.
awake
(3,226 posts)Since all they care about is money then maybe big tech money may change their mind.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)a system that assured that the government would hold a copy of the keys to everyone's encryption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)California needs to get out the vaudeville hook and find someone better for that seat.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)Privacy? Fuck that. Technically impossible? When has that stopped her before?
KelleyKramer
(8,981 posts)And then she has a BIG problem with it
Her hypocrisy knows no bounds
longship
(40,416 posts)She should listen to her Silicon Valley constituents, for a change. But, NO!!!! That won't do!
What is the next GOP bill that she's going to sign onto? No doubt creationism or some other evil thing.
That Senator has to fucking go.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)The Senate being all busy and stuff with bills like this.