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EFF Opposes McCaul-Warner Encryption Commission
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is not impressed with a new U.S. legislative commission [eff.org] that would examine encryption issues:
Senator Mark Warner and Representative Mike McCaul are calling on Congress to create an "Encryption Commission [house.gov]" composed of business, tech, and law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders that will investigate and report on encryption issues. The commission is set to ask questions already answered in the 1990s like whether or not the government should mandate backdoors or otherwise change current law. The answer is no. At the end of the day, the commission shows Congress still hasn't learned that math is not something you can convince to compromise.
The Warner-McCaul Commission tasks Senate and House leaders with appointing 16 representatives from private industry, law enforcement, academia, the privacy and civil liberties community, and the intelligence community to publish two reports within a year. Each report will investigate (among other topics) how encryption is used, if current law or warrant procedures should change, the value of encryption, the effects of encryption on law enforcement, and the costs of weakening encryption standards.
Many of these questions have been repeatedly asked—and answered—since the Crypto Wars [eff.org] of the 1990s. During that period, the Clinton administration tried to keep strong crypto out of consumer devices and services by proposing things like the now-infamous "Clipper Chip," which sought to compel companies to insert backdoors into commercial encryption technologies, and by enforcing export regulations that effectively prevented the development and distribution of strong encryption.
[...] The makeup of the commission is also an issue. The law enforcement and intelligence community is overrepresented with 6 out of 16 seats. Because 12 of the 16 commission's members are required to issue subpoenas or approve any conclusions, those 6 members have tremendous influence over the commission's investigations and the content of any report.
In other Crypto War news, Craig Federighi, a senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, has published an op-ed [washingtonpost.com] in the Washington Post about the FBI iPhone unlock battle.
