• House bill will kill state, local bills that aim to weaken smartphone encryption.
    3 replies, posted
[quote]On Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) introduced a new bill in Congress that attempts to halt state-level efforts that would weaken encryption. The federal bill comes just weeks after two nearly identical state bills in New York state and California proposed to ban the sale of modern smartphones equipped with strong crypto that cannot be unlocked by the manufacturer. If the state bills are signed into law, current iPhone and Android phones would need to be substantially redesigned for those two states. Lieu and Farenthold’s federal bill would need to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as be signed by the president in order to take effect. If that happens before the state bills are enacted, it would pre-empt them. Lieu told Ars late Tuesday night by phone that the introduction of those two state bills got his attention, especially the one in his home state.[/quote] [quote] "It's very clear to me that the people who are asking for a backdoor encryption key do not understand the technology," he added. "You cannot have a backdoor key for the FBI. Either hackers will find that key or the FBI will let it get stolen. As you saw, it the [Department of Justice] just got hacked. The [Office of Personnel Management] got hacked multiple times. If our federal government cannot keep 20 million extremely sensitive security records, I don't see how our government can keep encryption keys safe." [/quote] [url]http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/house-bill-would-kill-state-local-bills-that-aim-to-weaken-smartphone-crypto/[/url] [url]http://www.cnet.com/au/news/us-bill-aims-to-stop-state-bans-of-encrypted-phones/[/url]
Thank. God. The fact that ANYONE thought this was a good idea to begin with is fucking ludicrous.
Woo, California and Texas Rep's doing something good. That and the fact it's being proposed by both a Republican and a Democrat might help it get passed. I hope.
[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;49715185]Woo, California and Texas Rep's doing something good. That and the fact it's being proposed by both a Republican and a Democrat might help it get passed. I hope.[/QUOTE] Considering those are the two states with huge amounts of large tech firm headquarters, that doesn't really surprise me. Hopefully it pans out well.
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