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Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

feinstein.senate.gov

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Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has a D after her name.

So do many people in California. And that's only relevant in a general election. Why hasn't she gotten a reasonable challenger in the primaries?

Tenure and pork. Same reason Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond kept getting reelected when most of the population didn't like them. To paraphrase: she's a jerk, but she's our jerk.

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#73
post #30

> "Today, terrorists and criminals are increasingly using encryption to foil law enforcement efforts, even in the face of a court order." How can you utter that sentence and simultaneously not understand why your bill is effectively worthless for its stated purpose?

When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#74
Government is trying to make it illegal for one person to keep secrets and whisper them into another's ear.

We can argue all day about how the law doesn't prevent criminals from using technologies (it doesn't, which makes the law idiotic, from a logic perspective), but that's not the important part.

The important part is that this group of folks we're calling Government is trying to prevent us from being allowed to have secrets and whisper to each other.

Government is not as stupid as we'd like to think. Government doesn't believe that "terrorists" will stop using encryption. These laws are not for "terrorists". They're for us. Take away somebody's ability to keep secrets, and you've gained a pretty good advantage over their position[1].

This is about only one thing: leverage; and leverage is power.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#Breaking_Enigma

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#75

Feinstein is just the worst. She is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell for the Democrats. She fully understands exactly what she's proposing and she's the biggest hypocrite for it.

It's pretty remarkable that Texas and California seem to elect the scummiest people possible to the Senate. I guess that's what happens when you have a massive population of mostly apathetic voters? I really think this country would be better off if CA and TX were not allowed representation in the Senate (and I say this as a Texan).

There's nothing really wrong with Barbara Boxer, and she's retiring this year anyways. Sure California has one bad senator, but when you can only have two at a time, it's hard to even out one mistake.

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#77
post #55

What Silicon Valley needs to make it's voice heard here and to do that they need to pull back donations not just to Feinstein but to the Democratic Party until this disaster is withdrawn

Good idea, here are her most recent top contributors [1]

[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=n0000...

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#78
They're really hitting the "nobody should be above the law" talking point hard. How fortunate for us — it sounds good but doesn't survive even casual scrutiny. Crypto might interfere with investigations, but that is very different from being above the law. There are huge numbers of cases where some perp used encryption and was still bought to justice.

The best analogy I can think of is the document shredder. As a society we accept that individuals can protect their personal privacy and safety even if this occasionally frustrates law enforcement investigations. Shedder manufacturers aren't forced to limit how good a job they do to potentially aid LE as this would do more harm than good. And, after all, if you banned shredders, criminals would still be able to just burn their incriminating papers.

Re: Intelligence Committee Leaders Release Discussion Draft of Encryption Bill

#79

How would this be enforceable with e to e encryption? The defendant could simply claim the private key has been lost. Then what??

It has nothing to do with defendants. They already have the fifth.

It is about the service provider.

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