New US Bill would require makers of encrypted devices to leave a backdoor

US Senators have introduced a new anti-encryption bill called the “Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act,” which would require makers of encrypted devices and operating systems to leave a backdoor that could allow law enforcement to access encrypted information when requested. Basically, this means that all manufacturers would need to leave a backdoor in their encryption, which defeats the entire point of encryption in the first place.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said, “Terrorists and criminals routinely use technology, whether smartphones, apps, or other means, to coordinate and communicate their daily activities.”

source

Honestly, I've been waiting for the fear driven laws that would infringe on rights while there are tons of distractions about.

So, here we have it... They want to make encryption illegal unless it has a backdoor for the US government. This goes a step further than the patriot act by making anything that could keep privacy illegal. I wonder if they'll even require warrants, though that is probably a stupid question on my part.

On the plus side, through my reading many are saying it's unlikely to pass. Further more, if it did, it's unlikely companies would adhere to it given the implied risks it would bake into the platforms.

That said, this makes it very clear what our employees want. Absolute control, the likes of which China has.

So will this be enforced worldwide?

Pretty sure I've been hearing about this for nearly a year.

Also pretty sure this is essentially asking for forgiveness instead of permission.
The CIA has been doing this for years, if they can't get in at the software level they'll just hijack shipments and do what they will at the hardware level.

originally posted by: musicismagic
So will this be enforced worldwide?

Most likely directly or indirectly.

If directly, it would probably look like or fall under the Five Eyes template.

If indirectly, it would be economic should companies choose to comply. Given the US has one of the biggest markets for tech, why would they make one product for us and another for the rest of the world? It would use unneeded resources. The same happens here because of California. They have very strict laws, and rather than making separate products for Cali and the rest of the country, companies will often make products that fit Cali guidelines. See the furniture industry and fire retardants.

Time to make actual private prisons and bring back a citizen grand jury.
Mop the floor with these little rat sh!ts.

originally posted by: Mandroid7
Time to make actual private prisons and bring back a citizen grand jury.
Mop the floor with these little rat sh!ts.

We already have private prisons. The companies profit off of our country imprisoning more citizens per capita than any other nation

Land of the free baby.

originally posted by: a325nt
Pretty sure I've been hearing about this for nearly a year.

Also pretty sure this is essentially asking for forgiveness instead of permission.
The CIA has been doing this for years, if they can't get in at the software level they'll just hijack shipments and do what they will at the hardware level.

Yea, rumor has it they let contractors use the software they had, and it leaked out onto the black market.

The WikiLeaks documents also include detailed charts concerning specific attacks the CIA can apparently perform on different types of cellphones and operating systems, including recent versions of iOS and Android — in addition to attacks the CIA has borrowed from other, public sources of malware. Some of the exploits, in addition to those purportedly developed by the CIA, were discovered and released by cybersecurity companies, hacker groups, and independent researchers, and purchased, downloaded, or otherwise acquired by the CIA, in some cases through other members of the intelligence community, including the FBI, NSA, and the NSA’s British counterpart GCHQ , the documents indicate.

The Intercept

a reply to: CriticalStinker

Yeah, but they are for the governments crazy laws for show and private investor funds for Harvard and other douchefunds.

The shutting of citizen grand juries took our only means of law enforcement away when the system goes corrupt.
We need a seperate legal system, complte with prison. This one has been hijacked.

a reply to: Mandroid7

The shutting of citizen grand juries took our only means of law enforcement away when the system goes corrupt. We need a seperate legal system, complte with prison. This one has been hijacked.

That's our own populaces fault.

Society's apathy has allowed this and will continue to.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

This would be a dead in the water thing. If this passed no one would build one. And no one would buy one. Of if they did someone would just find a way to disable the backdoor.

This also reads like another bs gov larp.
They are backdoored right now.
Google /Alphabet is the gov.
They put their covid tracking crap on my phone.
Updates disabled, firewalled, logged.
They have a connection outside of what they are showing you.
Nothing in traffic logs.

Kinda like the fake congress grilling of Facebook and Zuckerspook.
Congress shut down darpas lifelog prog and made it private the same day under the name FB and adds a lame ass college kid success story.

Technology is a trap now. Weaponized for control of the population.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

www.eff.org...

The new Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act—introduced this week by Senators Graham, Blackburn, and Cotton—ignores expert consensus and public opinion, which is unfortunately par for the course. But the bill is actually even more out of touch with reality than many other recent anti-encryption bills.

As a hearing led by Senator Graham last December demonstrated, many legislators and law enforcement officials believe that even though any backdoor could be exploited by bad actors and put hundreds of millions of ordinary users at risk, that doesn’t mean it’s “technically impossible.” In fact, even if decryption would be “impossible” because the system is designed to be secure against everyone except the user who holds the key —as with full-disk encryption schemes designed by Apple and Google—that’s likely not a defense. Instead, the government can require the system to be redesigned.

a reply to: grey580

Maybe.

But I still don't like that my employees want this.

This stupid crap again. They've recycled this ignorant nonsense through congress so many times it's not even funny.

Yeah, let's just undermine the basis of secure internet communication, including commerce, because you wanna play spy.

What abject bull#.

This is why people hate Congress.

a reply to: projectvxn

This is why people hate Congress.

This was the Senate... But that's why people think poorly of both to be honest. They rarely reflect the constituents best interests.

I just assume my wireless devices are always livestreaming to begin with. It's why I pull the sim for much of the day and keep it in a small faraday box when guests are over. Lately I don't even travel with it.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
I just assume my wireless devices are always livestreaming to begin with. It's why I pull the sim for much of the day and keep it in a small faraday box when guests are over. Lately I don't even travel with it.

Your guests have full surveillance turned on though, and gps coords are tracked for you and them.
Honestly can't tell if you're joking, but even if you're not that's not enough.

The spooks have gone too far.

In reality, why entrust any service/device provider, to secure YOUR information? If you care enough about the data you transmit.....encrypt it yourself. There are plenty of DIY encryption tools, for example Pretty Good Privacy or Gnu Privacy Guard.

For the gov't to arrange a deal with social media and cell phone companies to decipher end user data is only going to have the effect of ensnaring only the most careless and stupid targets. Anybody trafficking information with sophistication or understanding of cryptography is not not going to be impacted one iota by Facebook handing a 'backdoor' over to the FBI.

I also don't believe that the government is clueless enough to advertise their intention of passing legislation to force data vendors to play ball with them. The best way to intercept data is to affect the appearance of helplessness or inability to break encoding; then those communicating have a false sense of confidence that their data is 'secure'. This was the reason that the knowledge of the Allies breaking German Enigma code was such a closely guarded secret during WWII. Once you announce that you can snoop in on the info traversing a communication channel, either everyone switches to a new comm scheme, or they simply no longer transmit sensitive data over that line.

This is heading back to the clipper chip era and that went well...…

If I know there is a backdoor then its not worth using as all it takes is one person to pop the required code on WikiLeaks and game over.

At the moment good encryption is hard to crack due to the effort required and the spooks generally aim more for a statistical way of cracking it so they can reduce the workload required down to a manageable effort which is why the nsa need places the size of Maryland.