Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) are introducing a bill today to effectively override bad state-level encryption bills. The ENCRYPT Act of 2016, or by its longer name, the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act, would preempt state and local government encryption laws. The two men said today they are “deeply concerned” that varying bills surrounding encryption would endanger the country as well as the competitiveness of American companies. The argument is that it wouldn’t be easy or even feasible to tailor phone encryption capabilities for specific states.
We’re going to need a lot of these laws – all over the world.
What we really need is to get governments off regulating encryption once and forever. Or at least an international treaty regulating encryption-related issues (freedom to encrypt communications, police procedures in encryption-related cases, etc.) and forbidding member states to implement additional rules and regulations.
http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Po…
I’m not saying these are the solutions, but it is telling that the matter of encryption, in the minds of anti-encryption politicians, doesn’t come under various human rights and privacy laws already.
This looks really nice in theory, until you realize that it sets a dangerous precedent where by the federal government can run over state encryption laws. Even if they use it for good today, the precedent is set to use it for evil tomorrow on a related issue, and case law is just as important as written law here. If this passes, then is challenged unsuccessfully, the federal government can then do whatever they wish regarding the encryption issue… including making future laws to enable themselves access on a broader scale even should a state wish to uphold their citizens’ right. Unless this law is written very carefully and specific in the extreme, this could open up the door for things much worse to come.
Some people really need to pull their head out of their ass. What you’re stating as the “slippery slope” here has always been the case: Federal law overrules state law everyday of the week, including Sundays. There’s no new precedent being made here. It’s the old, tried and true precedent finally being used for something useful.
In case you’re confused about all this legal stuff, state laws also overrules county laws. And county laws overrule homeowner association’s rules and regulations.
And some people need to brush up on their conversational skills. Apparently this is beyond you, however. Perhaps your head is someplace it should not be, rather than mine.
I had the same thought. On one hand you have those who normally hold states rights positions. On the other hand many of those same people are pro privacy.
So this bill kind of divides them, are they more interested in states rights, or are they in ensuring that the government’s ability to monitor communications is curtailed, preserving the fourth amendment?
I actually hold none of those positions very strongly, so its kind of interesting to see who cares more about what. But I understand the quandary some are in.
Of course it divides them… that’s the entire goal of modern politics to divide and subjugate.
I think you’re ignoring the Constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. This isn’t a 10th Amendment concern at all. Telecommunications, data storage, and transmission clearly falls under the Interstate Commerce clause in the US Constitution. The states/municipalities do not have the right to regulate that. They also do not have the right to invade personal or corporate privacy at whim which is exactly what trying to regulate or ban encryption would do.
These state bills are poorly imagined, poorly written, utterly incompetent, and written by people who don’t know a damned thing about the technology they are trying to (ineffectively) regulate. I don’t need some hick sheriff from some podunk town in Alabama arrest me because my encrypted android phone breaks a local law banning encryption! What’s on my phone is none of his damned business.
No argument. I just wish some of the feds involved weren’t just as ignorant of technology as those so-called “hicks” you deride so much. By the way, be careful stereotyping like that.
Thom, why can’t you westerners stop trying to act like you know everything and you want your ideas to be distributed all over the world?
I am not a fan of government surveillance, but I am not also a fan of westerners telling people all over the world how to act and behave.
Edited 2016-02-13 04:53 UTC
So let an Israeli middle-easterner tell you how to act instead. Besides, criminals break the law already, so why add to a list of charges they’ll still shoot you for trying to enforce over them.
If this keeps up there aren’t going to be enough non-terrorists to keep the terrorists under control. Care for some radical Christian terrorism anyone? What about Jewish terrorism?