Lawmakers move to block government from ordering digital back doors | Hacker News Reader

Lawmakers move to block government from ordering digital back doors

thehill.com

207 pointsrgbrenner24 comments

Just a reminder to contact your rep to voice your support for this legislation. It's important to contact them to support good legislation, not just when they do things you don't like.

Elections are coming this fall, and primaries are this summer, for everyone in the House and 1/3 of the Senate. Reps should be particularly sensitive to constituent desires.

Unfortunately my senators (Ron Wyden & Jeff Merkley) are always supporting these things, so writing them asking them to support it would be a waste of time.

Ron Wyden was also one of only two senators who voted against FOSTA. Rand Paul was the other.

only 1% of US senators have any (demonstrated) basic understanding of info sec, and that 1% is Ron. It's a shame. Maybe this fall will bring in more competent folks. On the bright side, since his seat is not up for election this year, the situation can't get worse.

Thanking them for doing so might be worthwhile.

Yeah, thanking them is a pretty good way to encourage them to continue.

They're more likely to continue doing so if their constituents continue to cry out in support.

Thanks for the reminder. I do write them occasionally so show support, but it has been a while so I will do that!

So thank them then!

Telling someone "that thing you're doing is great! Keep doing it!" is good for motivating and focusing them.

This also applies to the workplace.

I live halfway across the country and I've written to Sen. Wyden before to tell him that I wished he were my senator.

You could write him just to say "thanks"!

I like the idea as described in general, but the devil is always in the details. Unless I'm missing something, the article doesn't cite a bill number or name, to my frustration. That makes it harder to go look at the text of the bill to see if it is indeed something I should support or not, or to contact my representative to voice my support or disapproval.

The article did mention it was introduced Thursday, so that does narrow it down somewhat, but after a quick search, I haven't found it yet.

[PDF] https://lofgren.house.gov/sites/lofgren.house.gov/files/docu...

Thank you.

Reading this, this looks simple and straightforward. There's additional things I'd like to see, suggested elsewhere in the comments, but I'll be happy to take this, and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

My only worry is that getting a bill passed can require negotiation and compromise. In the process, key bits can be excised or altered, and what was good becomes bad. I hope that doesn't happen. I shall have to keep an eye on this bill.

EFF has a better article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/secure-data-act-would-...

they should make it so that is not legal to sell any device in the US with such a backdoor and if they really want to spice it up, no US company is permitted to do so for any other country.

If you're willing to do that, why not just make it illegal to do so, period? It doesn't matter why you're backdooring it for.

The first part of your idea would certainly go a long way in clearing up the trade deficit vis a vis China.

> The legislation makes an exception for mandates, requests or court orders that are authorized under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law requiring telephone companies to make changes to their network design in order to make it easier for the government to wiretap phone calls.

What's this mean, precisely? That device-level backdoors would be forbidden, but network-level backdoors would be allowed?

My guess is that they don't want to interfere with long-established procedures for wire-tapping (which probably pre-date 194). But perhaps the effect would be what you suggest.

If so that's good because it is still an important difference that the govt merely orders service providers about rather than mandating that your own device work against you.

For a high-level intro to wiretapping and the 4th amendment law around it, the Illustrated Guide to the Law is good: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1704

"Network-level backdoors", a.k.a. CALEA have already been allowed for two and a half decades. That wouldn't change, but this would prevent them from forcing Apple to backdoor the encryption on your iPhone, for example.

I would say it's safe to assume that the law would protect data that stays on your phone, but would not protect communication. So you could encrypt the contents of your phone but phone calls, SMS, and IM would still be possible to back door.

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