[dhfhduk]

I'm confused about this. I'm hurried at the moment, but this seems to a bill that orders tech companies to provide a solution to encryption without having a backdoor?

Isn't this like legislating a violation of mathematics or something?

[rietta]

As I just put it in my open letter: "Let me be clear. This distinction that the Director makes has no basis in fact or science. Any imaginable key escrow system that would by design provide routine access to encrypted data is a backdoor that will be able to be hacked. Any such system of so called lawful intercept is an unfixable, mandated security vulnerability that will make Americans less safe both at home and abroad." (https://rietta.com/blog/2017/05/03/americans-access-to-stron...)

[ghughes]

I wrote a similar letter: https://medium.com/@flukes1/my-letter-to-amber-rudd-on-encry...

[rietta]

Excellent read. Thank you for sharing.

[sillysaurus3]

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPBH1eW28mo is a pretty good video for persuading people why this legislation is a bad idea. We might still be able to beat it by rallying support.

[pdkl95]

Susan Landau's congressional testimony - with Comey siting one table away - applies to this as well. She explains in detail not only the problem with backdoors, but also how the FBI badly needs to update their methods. The quote from the NSA that legal access doesn't mean that access will be easy should have ended this brouhaha last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GgnbN9oNw&t=3h35m50s

[cracell]

Sounds like the thinking is "Anyone can use backdoors so they are bad but we have to have access to everything. So give us access without a backdoor."

I suppose tech companies could give them a backdoor and call it a front door?

[abritinthebay]

> I suppose tech companies could give them a backdoor and call it a front door?

They're more likely to go "LOL, no" and as it's both impossible AND compelling speech is impossible per 1st Amendment the Government would end up losing in the courts.

[lern_too_spel]

The compelling speech argument would not have held up in court. Apple was putting on a show because they had already advertised to customers that they wouldn't unlock phones for law enforcement.

[BinaryIdiot]

What? Apple was not putting on a show. What the FBI requested required actual software development to be done. You can't force someone to work for you.

[lern_too_spel]

Judges absolutely can force work and do it all the time. See the discovery process Uber is going through now. For an example more relevant to the Apple case, look at the Lavabit court orders.

The idea that writing software not intended for public release is compelled speech under the standard of Wooley v. Maynard is laughable. Nobody except a few gullible tech bloggers (are there any other kind?) took that argument seriously.

[BinaryIdiot]

> Judges absolutely can force work and do it all the time. See the discovery process Uber is going through now. For an example more relevant to the Apple case, look at the Lavabit court orders.

Discovery is different. Laws already require you to retain various records for later discovery. That's just general "shuffle stuff around" work that doesn't really require much effort.

What the FBI was asking for was custom software development to be done to circumvent existing software and hardware functions.

> The idea that writing software not intended for public release is compelled speech under the standard of Wooley v. Maynard is laughable.

Not sure I follow. The distinction wasn't public versus private release; it was writing the custom software itself. The whole "you can keep it and destroy it afterwards" didn't really matter. The FBI can't simply insert itself into your business, have engineers reprioritized from what they're currently working on and expect you to produce something for them.

[lern_too_spel]

The idea is that it is currently infeasible to build a consumer product that updates itself that is not vulnerable to exploitation by the manufacturer (see Apple's San Bernardino case). It looks like the FBI would like legislation that grants them access to the manufacturer's de-facto backdoor without having to pay for a work order.