Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

> The bill establishes that: No one is above the law.

Yes - except diplomats, journalists, doctors, as well as conversations between people in person are all "warrant-proof", and therefore "above the law" as Feinstein calls it.

As Zdziarski also says in his post below [1], the 4th amendment doesn't grant the U.S. government anything. It tries to restrict the U.S. government from overreach. It says only upon probable cause can the government request personal information, but it doesn't say the government MUST get that information and in a format that's intelligible as well.

But when the U.S. government has started interpreting the Constitution however it gives it more power, even saying that your "emails" can be obtained without a warrant because they've been "opened" [2], or when it believes that spying on millions of people at once is "relevant" to a specific investigation (3-hop spying) then it's no surprise that they also believe the 4th amendment gives it the power to require the data in an intelligible format.

> No new collection authorities. The bill does not create any new collection authorities for the government to obtain communications. The bill simply requires covered entities to ensure that the government’s lawfully-obtained evidence is readable—so that law enforcement can solve crimes and protect our communities from criminal and terrorist activities.

Well, that's a lie. Until now, only "covered entities" under CALEA could be forced to facilitate spying. Now everyone else can be forced as well, including open source developers. I'd say that's quite an expansion of its "collection abilities", no?

[1] - http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5912

[2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/eff-supports-rep-goodl...

What's the probability of this bill actually becoming law?

They don't care about your emails...

I think activism against it will matter a great deal. It should be close to SOPA-levels or even greater to be sure we can stop it.

That said, as it is, I think things are like this:

- House majority will not support it, unless it's dramatically watered down (The House has been quite privacy-friendly/anti-backdoors lately). However, that could still be bad news for us, if say they only demand large companies to never use end-to-end encryption for any of their products, and to only make local disk encryption optional on smartphones (but no backdoor). Apple would have to sell iPhones unencrypted, Whatsapp would have to go back to Hangouts-style encryption, and Google will never implement its End-to-End tool for Gmail. You can forget about research for homomorphic encryption for healthcare or other services (which I think Microsoft, for one, is doing right now).

- Senate majority will likely support it as is.

Edit: Senator Ron Wyden promises to filibuster it, so we have that going for us as well, although I'm not sure if this can guarantee it's dead. I think he threatened a filibuster with the USA Freedom Act as well, but didn't go through with it at the last moment, when they compromised on something else (I may not be remembering this exactly):

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-state...

- Obama wants to look "neutral" right now, but I don't think he is. I think he wants the Senate version passed as well. But he would probably accept a watered down version as well.

Bottom line, if we want to stop it completely, as we did for SOPA, then we need to organize, and we need companies to do what they did for SOPA, too, and alert the public about it en masse.

They care very little about your emails. They care slightly more about your phone calls and snail mails, and still slightly more about your office visits. Each increment is tiny, but enough of them add up.