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El Reg :
Analysis In the wake of the FBI's failed fight against Apple, Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced a draft bill that would effectively ban strong crypto.
The bill would require tech and communications companies to allow law enforcement with a court order to decrypt their customers' data. Last week a draft copy of the bill, dubbed the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, was leaked, but the new version is even worse than the discussion draft.
In the draft version, court orders could only be issued for a crime resulting in death or serious bodily harm, terrorism and espionage, crimes against minors, serious violent felonies or Federal drug crimes. In the final version, those caveats are gone, so any court order will allow the police to access the data they want.
The bill would apply to "device manufacturers, software manufacturers, electronic communication services, remote communication services, providers of wire or electronic communication services, providers of remote communication services, or any person who provides a product or method to facilitate a communication or to process or store data." That's a pretty wide net.
"No entity or individual is above the law," said Feinstein. "The bill we have drafted would simply provide that, if a court of law issues an order to render technical assistance or provide decrypted data, the company or individual would be required to do so.
"Today, terrorists and criminals are increasingly using encryption to foil law enforcement efforts, even in the face of a court order. We need strong encryption to protect personal data, but we also need to know when terrorists are plotting to kill Americans."
Idiots, I tell you, they're a pair of idiots.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday April 15 2016, @05:23AM
The original purpose of writing laws down, back in Hammurabi's day, was to eliminate discretion and make it perfectly clear what was permissible and what would be punished and how. The modern practice of leaving everything up to discretion, interpretation, and "reasonableness" I find abhorrent.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday April 15 2016, @12:27PM
The legal systems of the Five Eyes (FVEY) countries have a concept called "case law", in which a lower court is bound by decisions made by a higher court. Case law restores some of the rule of law that "reasonable" removes, as courts of appeals will slowly build up what constitutes "reasonable" in common situations. But the practical problem with this is twofold. First, information technology has tended to outpace case law. Second, creating case law costs more money for attorney's fees and court costs than startups are likely to have, especially when one party in a case has the nigh-unlimited resources of the federal government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:01PM
Another problem with it is that judges tend to be authoritarians, so leaving them to make subjective decisions about what "reasonable" means is a recipe for disaster.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 15 2016, @04:43PM
Do mean you'd prefer something like "that which is not expressively permitted, is prohibited"?
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 15 2016, @10:07PM
More like "that which is not expressly prohibited is permitted", unlike what we have where anything an officer doesn't like can fall under "disorderly conduct" or another vague catchall.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek