I've long wondered whether this is a fight where the NRA would be an unlikely ally.
It shouldn't be that hard to cast strong encryption as a 2nd amendment issue, in emotional if not constitutional terms.
It shouldn't be that hard to cast strong encryption as a 2nd amendment issue, in emotional if not constitutional terms.
On the other hand, there's even more US legal precedent demonstrating the Supreme Court thinks that the 2nd Amendment applies very narrowly to a very specific class of arms. The Supreme Court fairly recently decided that my city's former ban on handguns is unconstitutional. This decision has not, however, been construed to also cover local bans on things like throwing knives. Nor, I think, would it cover the bans on things like small rockets, even though they are usable as (and originally invented to be) weapons.
I'm inclined to say that the latter body of precedent is the one that the Court would choose to lean on if this were cast as a 2nd Amendment issue.
Like I said: emotionally, if not constitutionally. For legislators, what the courts say is immaterial, if voting for such a bill is likely to make the unelectable.
Either we are free people able to do as we please with our property or we are serfs on a plantation. Free people have both the right to self defense and access to the proper tools without them being dumbed down.
But I understand the intent of the second amendment. It's not to allow hunting. It's not to allow you to protect your home from robbers. It's definitely a statement of defiance to tyrannical government. So if the NRA doesn't agree to some similar line of thought on encryption, they're hypocrites.
(Lifetime member of the NRA but I have no special insight or knowledge.)