Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/senate-gop-introduce-bill-to-e.html
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Post-expertise society, where mathematics has a well-known liberal bias.
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Simple.
Ship the strongest encryption available, along with instructions on how to build a quantum computer that can crack it. Just include the disclaimer that the runtime is estimated to be the remaining time of this universe (at least 15 billion years, and possibly longer.)
Note: They said crack-able, but didn’t say it had to be “practicable and useful.”
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Yep!
It’s called VOTE THESE JACKHEELED MORONS THE FUCK OUT.
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Plenty of Democrats want encryption backdoors too.
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Just enough Democrats will vote for this to make it the law. The Clintons wanted it. Pelosi wants it. Biden co-authored two bills that would have outlawed strong encryption.
Privacy is doomed.
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Yep; it’s been a neoliberal staple for decades. Remember the “Clipper Chip”?
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Here we go again.
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The clipper chip was never implemented, encryption export bans were repealed, we must never lose out vigilance but this can be done.
You cannot outlaw math, and in lerss than a second a raspberry pi with open source software can encrypt a message that cannot be cracked in the lifetime of our universe. These are irrefutable truths.
The only thing that encryption backdoors will ever do is to break secure shipping and banking. Citi, BofA, Amazon and google will work to keep that from happening, but we must voice our support as well.
Let your senator know: https://www.senate.gov/senators/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
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Politicians who want to ban end-to-end encryption can solve that problem by granting exemptions for specific applications like banking and online shopping, where (a) the purpose is preventing fraud rather than protecting privacy, and (b) only the transaction itself is encrypted.
Whenever this sort of thing comes up all I can think is that anyone savvy enough will simply “opt out”.
You can legislate all you want to force companies to provide backdoor access to encrypted communications. However, given the amount of open-source crypto tools out there anyone who would rather not have the government listen in to their communications will simply switch to one of those solutions.
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We really have nobody on our side with this one. Our elected officials on both sides:
- Don’t value privacy and see nothing wrong with demolishing it
- Are too old-fashioned or ignorant to understand how encryption, the internet or even computers function
I’m hoping the second point will make your prediction true. There are lots of people who aren’t savvy enough for even simple solutions, but they’re already throwing away their privacy and security voluntarily right now, so they probably won’t notice the difference.
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The target is some normally-used software that have built in crypto, that are used by a lot of people unaware of crypto. Mathematically unbreakable ciphers were used in the '60 and nothing more than a HF receiver and a a password sheet were necessary.
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A modest proposal: Someone should add an amendment to the bill requiring citizens who are indoors where law enforcement cannot reasonably capture their speech via microphones on public property to open the window and speak in a loud voice.
Then let the entire bill be invalidated by the courts because obviously that violates the 4th amendment.
It is not my responsibility to make it easier for the government to surveil me. If they want to try, ok fine. If I want to encrypt, or talk quietly indoors, ok fine. Live and let live.
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When you talk to a bank or vendor, they are one of the “ends” we’re talking about, and can be subpoenaed or hacked directly, so that’s not really within the scope of “end-to-end” encryption anyway.
Conventionally, the term refers to systems like iMessage or Signal where the “ends” are private parties, and the system delivering the messages can’t see the content of the messages itself. As distinct from, say, email, where your email provider stores your mail in plaintext format on its servers, where it can be read by anyone.
What people like Lindsey Graham are really saying is, if a technology company creates a way that it could spy on you, that company shouldn’t be permitted to not spy on you. It is literally that blatant of an authoritarian power grab.
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Where “plenty” = “too many”
The difference is that Democrats haven’t made “my opinion trumps your science (or math, or logic, or facts)” Party dogma.
Senate GOP: “Gee, this seems like a great time to introduce a bill giving more powers to law enforcement.”
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For a political party that talks about hating China so much, they sure do imitate China a lot. Jealous much?
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From what people in these comments are saying, the government wants to be able to spy on everyone who is not sophisticated enough or motivated enough to encrypt their data transmissions.
In other words, if you care about your privacy, you can easily bypass this law.
At first blush, it seems like a dumb law that can’t be enforced…except when you ARE caught doing something illegal with your encrypted stuff, it’s far worse than if you were just doing the same thing without the encryption. Like just another one of those “drugs in a school zone” laws that makes an entire city a school zone and thus anyone selling drugs there is a SUPER criminal who preys on children.
It must also make the use of “unauthorized encryption” illegal - regardless of the underlying reason. Gee, I can’t see any reason why large tech companies would like this - as they will be the ones selling the “authorized encryption.”
Seems to me the only defense is to make this kind of encryption widely available as freeware and then encourage EVERYONE to use it.
Anyone have a link?
Two of the three named are up for re-election in 2020, but unfortunately Cotton’s seat is probably safe. Getting rid of Graham would be a win, though.
