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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting pretty deep into bets on Twitter AGAINST this bill having a chance of passing. My logic is simple: this bill outlaws all sorts of things huge corporations use to protect their networks. No big company I've ever done security work for has ever been OK with crypto keys being escrowed by vendors; in fact, we were often instructed to look for exactly those kinds of features as disqualifiers for products.

I do not believe this Congress will succeed in passing a bill that would require Bank of America to escrow keys with IBM and Symantec.

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I wouldn't count on that. They could go with a licensing system where you need to pay big bucks to use crypto without escrow. This scheme, of course would be beneficial for incumbents, because it raises the barrier for entry and pushes out the smaller players who can't afford such costs.

Sure, but that's not this law.

This is still the initial draft of the law, and it's common for laws to get marked up with changes that benefit those in power.

The poor drafting of the bill is reflective of lack of support from groups who have the expertise to produce a more realistic bill like NSA lawyers. The bill reflects the lack of cooperation from the Intelligence Community that has been reported.

This is negotiation. It's an adversarial system. The proponents of this bill know they are not going to get everything they ask for. The point is to stake out a position very far toward what they want so as to force opponents of this bill to just whittle it down.

If they proposed something saner and lost, they'd lose completely. But propose something insane and lose and you still might win something.

Hopefully companies will actually use their lobbying/bribery power for good this time, since it happens to benefit everyone, including them.

If it passes, what are the chances of it being struck down as a first amendment violation?

The first amendment does not guarantee the right to privacy. Most Americans would be surprised to know that the Constitution does not guarantee privacy at all.

The closest you get is the 4th amendment which only protects against unreasonable search and seizure (without a warrant).

Some argue that the 3rd amendment implies a right to privacy and was the intent of the amendment, but alas it only protects against being forced to house soldiers.

Disclaimer: IANAL

The 1A argument is that code is a form of expressive speech, and that laws that limit what kind of speech you can make are in effect prior restraints.

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