> The bill establishes that: No one is above the law.
Yes - except diplomats, journalists, doctors, as well as conversations between people in person are all "warrant-proof", and therefore "above the law" as Feinstein calls it.
As Zdziarski also says in his post below [1], the 4th amendment doesn't grant the U.S. government anything. It tries to restrict the U.S. government from overreach. It says only upon probable cause can the government request personal information, but it doesn't say the government MUST get that information and in a format that's intelligible as well.
But when the U.S. government has started interpreting the Constitution however it gives it more power, even saying that your "emails" can be obtained without a warrant because they've been "opened" [2], or when it believes that spying on millions of people at once is "relevant" to a specific investigation (3-hop spying) then it's no surprise that they also believe the 4th amendment gives it the power to require the data in an intelligible format.
> No new collection authorities. The bill does not create any new collection authorities for the government to obtain communications. The bill simply requires covered entities to ensure that the government’s lawfully-obtained evidence is readable—so that law enforcement can solve crimes and protect our communities from criminal and terrorist activities.
Well, that's a lie. Until now, only "covered entities" under CALEA could be forced to facilitate spying. Now everyone else can be forced as well, including open source developers. I'd say that's quite an expansion of its "collection abilities", no?
It's pretty remarkable that Texas and California seem to elect the scummiest people possible to the Senate. I guess that's what happens when you have a massive population of mostly apathetic voters?
I really think this country would be better off if CA and TX were not allowed representation in the Senate (and I say this as a Texan).
There's nothing really wrong with Barbara Boxer, and she's retiring this year anyways. Sure California has one bad senator, but when you can only have two at a time, it's hard to even out one mistake.
>I really think this country would be better off if CA and TX were not allowed representation in the Senate (and I say this as a Texan).
Removing national government representation would be more antithetical to democracy than anything that's going on now. A better solution, in my opinion, would probably be new state redistricting. Voters are apathetic because they feel their votes don't count due to overwhelming concentrations of opposing viewpoints, which probably should be split off into their own states (Bay Area, New York City, so on).
It's really disheartening to read or hear almost any discussion about this issue. They're chock-full of broken analogies to meatspace that sound perfectly reasonable if you don't understand the nuances. The instant access, wide platform, and cheap copying that the Internet provides is unlike anything our species has dealt with before, and if you're not really informed on these issues, it's easy to lead yourself into what sounds like a reasonable position, but would actually destroy much of the modern economy.
My point being, the anti-encryption side has the support of nearly everyone who isn't informed about encryption and computing, which is a whole lot of people.
> My point being, the anti-encryption side has the support of nearly everyone who isn't informed about encryption and computing, which is a whole lot of people.
That just means there is more of a chance for technologists to take a leading role in this discussion through activism. It's an easy win if you can keep a cool head while explaining the issues.
Haha. It's an opportunity, not a responsibility. At some point in your life you may feel more inclined to contribute in that way. Or you may not. Both are fine =).
Ultimately you shouldn't feel pressured by what other people ask of you. The choice of what to do and how to feel about it is always yours. When other people say it's your responsibility, like even if I had said that, that would just be me trying to convince you. That means nothing when you choose how to feel about it.
I don't know enough about California politics, how is it that Feinstein is able to be a proponent of these crazy ideas and somehow get elected in the home state of Silicon Valley and many of the companies who will be ruined by these proposals?
Blaming reelection of corrupt officials on conspiracies and voting fraud before doing any introspection on why they actually won is the best way to perpetrate those reelections.
Tenure and pork. Same reason Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond kept getting reelected when most of the population didn't like them. To paraphrase: she's a jerk, but she's our jerk.
(Edit: What I'm trying to say is that she was the person that found Harvey Milk shot and was one of the people that police asked to identify the bodies of both Milk and Moscone. Certainly being that close to the aftermath of violence changes a person.)
Wow, I had no idea Feinstein was so close to the assassinations. That's traumatic. I wonder if those events lead to her positions on defense and privacy which are so uncharacteristic of the rest of her party.
Her positions on defense and privacy are actually pretty representative of the establishment wing of her party. The Democratic party has some pretty severe divisions in it, and has for years.
I highly recommend a book called Season of the Witch by David Talbot. It's a great history of SF in the 50s-80s with a strong focus on the 60s and the counterculture. It's some amazing history that many people don't know much about.
If the 60s counterculture and the rest of America had been geographically segregated like the South and the North in the 1860s, you'd have had secession and civil war.
The good ones always die and the assholes live. It seems like Feinstein has been trying to legislate that day away for decades now. Shame on her. She's obviously not competent to do her job and this is not the first bill to reflect that.
* There are a lot of Republican voters in California who are happy to vote for Democrats, so even better if they're more towards the right
* I'm not old enough to have voted in too many elections, but her opponent in 2012 was a joke
* She doesn't really have an anti-Silicon Valley reputation (yet)
* California is more than just Silicon Valley
* Likelihood of voting correlates directly with age, and Silicon Valley is dominated by young people
* Her family is just so established in California politics, so the money's rolling in. Her husband is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents.
California is a conservative state outside of SF and LA, although because of their populations, the state is owned by the Democractic party.
Feinstein is a party machine candidate who can appeal across the aisle to those conservatives. Sure, she'll lose some Democrats, but the base will stick to voting with the party, and enough conservatives will crossover that it all works out.
Note that if SV goes to war over this, and it should, it could change the balance in the state. The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. And I imagine the Republicans are looking for a little payback if they can ever get the levers of power back.
So what do you do? Do you get rid of Feinstein over this one-issue, idiotic and harmful security state nonsense, then end up with a bunch of folks in power that might hurt you on a bunch of things, or do you grit your teeth and bear it?
Looks like the compromise is to let her posture a bit for the conservatives, then fund the opposition to make sure that nothing she proposes gets through. That's a tricky game to play, though.
> The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican.
Well, not necessarily. California abolished partisan primaries a few years ago. The way it works now is that all candidates for a position run in the same primary, and the top two advance to the general election, regardless of affiliation.
I'm not sure if there have been any races so far that involved two Democrats (it's only been two or so election cycles since the change) but the 2016 Senate race seems likely to be between two Democrats.
Of course there's still the problem of finding a Democrat with enough clout and balls to challenge Feinstein in 2018.
I don't know about her voting record to know if that's true or not, but again, I'm talking about her reputation, which is partially shaped by fact but also shaped by public perception. And she's not really perceived as anti-tech.
Sources please. I did a research on her legislation and voting record back then, expecting to find horrible things, and found her work to be thoughtful and helpful to the populous.
Things have dramatically changed since then, unfortunately. It'd be fascinating to uncover what caused this marked phase change.
Incidentally, my testimony in the second session that day is at
http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/judiciary.html, along with my answers to
subsequent written questions from Senators Thurmond, Grassley, Leahy, and
Feinstein. At the end of the first session. Senator Feinstein excused
herself to go to another hearing, but remarked that if FBI Director Freeh
said he needed access to essentially everything, we'd better give it to him.
She's a Democrat and a long tenured, high ranking one at that. Apathetic voters are largely to blame but no one wants to rock the boat because I'm sure she pork barrels a ton of money back to California.
She also has access to oodles of money from her husband (TPG Capital).
She's not opposed to being a hippocrite. She rails against guns but has a concealed gun permit. Her secret service detail carries automatic weapons and that's OK with her. It's not OK with most of her neighbors, but again, apathetic voters.
I wonder if Feinstein's relationship with the CFR has anything to do with her strangely strong stances on technology. It's weird that an 82 year old senator is so focused on technology issues.
I think activism against it will matter a great deal. It should be close to SOPA-levels or even greater to be sure we can stop it.
That said, as it is, I think things are like this:
- House majority will not support it, unless it's dramatically watered down (The House has been quite privacy-friendly/anti-backdoors lately). However, that could still be bad news for us, if say they only demand large companies to never use end-to-end encryption for any of their products, and to only make local disk encryption optional on smartphones (but no backdoor). Apple would have to sell iPhones unencrypted, Whatsapp would have to go back to Hangouts-style encryption, and Google will never implement its End-to-End tool for Gmail. You can forget about research for homomorphic encryption for healthcare or other services (which I think Microsoft, for one, is doing right now).
- Senate majority will likely support it as is.
Edit: Senator Ron Wyden promises to filibuster it, so we have that going for us as well, although I'm not sure if this can guarantee it's dead. I think he threatened a filibuster with the USA Freedom Act as well, but didn't go through with it at the last moment, when they compromised on something else (I may not be remembering this exactly):
- Obama wants to look "neutral" right now, but I don't think he is. I think he wants the Senate version passed as well. But he would probably accept a watered down version as well.
Bottom line, if we want to stop it completely, as we did for SOPA, then we need to organize, and we need companies to do what they did for SOPA, too, and alert the public about it en masse.
Yeah I don't think Obama is neutral. He says the same thing as this bill. He says he "supports strong encryption", and says criminals should not be able to hide their digital communications from government.
They still do not understand that it's not possible to force criminals to use government-approved encryption software. Criminals can write their own encryption.
The sooner we voice up and vote out those who support such unreasonable laws, the sooner we can progress as a society towards finding the right ways to keep each other safe.
Does anyone know if there is a list of representatives showing their positions on this bill?
>They still do not understand that it's not possible to force criminals to use government-approved encryption software.
I think in this instance this is a case of you assuming ignorance where malice is far more likely. Looking at the comprehensive mass surveillance of, well, everyone (by the NSA et al), I think the point here is to further the goal of population control i.e. they don't care about criminals who would write their own, they just want always-on access to everyone.
> I think in this instance this is a case of you assuming ignorance where malice is far more likely
I doubt it because (1) this would involve a wide-ranging conspiracy, and (2) they won't achieve their goal. If they were informed, they would know they will fail. As it is, Obama, Comey, etc will go down in history as asking technologists to perform magic. Nothing about this law helps them catch terrorists, and it hurts the US government's relationship with technologists going forward.
> they don't care about criminals who would write their own, they just want always-on access to everyone
That will not happen without a fight from companies like Apple. Ultimately, this just brings more awareness to users. It is not hard for companies to convince their users that backdoors for government make their data less secure. Tim Cook already took the first step.
More likely, I think, is technologists view government as lying about everything. We are iconoclasts seeking to break down cultural conservatisms. Also, we generalize too easily. We see government being disingenuous about one thing and assume they're dishonest about everything.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if certain members of government are lying or not. We should be educating the public and our representatives about the fact that we can't force criminals to use government-mandated encryption.
They care very little about your emails. They care slightly more about your phone calls and snail mails, and still slightly more about your office visits. Each increment is tiny, but enough of them add up.
Key for me is to identify certain dangerous provisions that has a high chance of sneaking through and becoming law.
I'm sure the senators involved put in as much outrageous stuff knowing it'll be watered down. This with the hopes a few key provisions are not watered down.
That's why in my opinion that bills like these should not be put up for discussions, amendments, and vote. I fear the worst though.
What are we going to do a out it? Maybe Wikipedia or Google will deface their own websites, and the bill will die only to resurrect shortly after.
A better solution would be for the millions of tech workers to unite and vote GOP just to send a message that we don't automatically vote for anyone or any party.
If California's vote is locked for a certain party, then it is taken for granted.
Better to start up a new party with a clever nerd name--like Bitwise Party, or Breakpoint Party, or similar--and run its own candidates. The automate the hell out of political party organization. Make running for office as easy as registering a new domain name.
But that will probably never happen, because forming and operating a political party is too much like joining a union with its own PAC. And also, third parties don't count for much in the US.
Of course not. Unless you happen to have R. Paul as your senator the GOP typically is worse.
Its playing the two sides off each other that might work. Make the GOP think will vote for them. Make the democrats think they'll loose our contributions.
Getting rid of Feinstein will be an excellent first step.
Think of every demographic in the US that politicians whore themselves to. The most successful ones are not always large. But they vote as a block, in high numbers, and are not overly faithful to any party.
Tech workers should support senators like Wyden or R. Paul and take steps to really knock down Feinsteins or Burrs.
From reading the draft, it doesn't seem to say what happens if it is not technically possible (or practical, anyway) for the entity being ordered to comply.
Will they simply be held in contempt of court until they finish brute forcing an encryption key at the heat death of the Universe?
I wish Congresspeople were held to the same standard as the rest of us. This kind of lack of understanding of technology (intentional or not) is evidence of gross incompetence. Feinstein/Burr should be expelled. We all would fired if we demonstrated this lack of ability
It feels like everyone would be better served if the tech community admitted the legitimacy of the government's (and many, MANY people's) security concerns and stopped pretending that the right to privacy always trumps the right to security of the person. (All occurrences of the string "secur" in that EFF letter[1], for instance, are in reference to data and computer systems. Not one is in [direct] reference to people.) Or, if we don't go that far, we need to at least realise the need for political communities to have serious discussions about how to reconcile those two rights without jeopardising either of them.
The tech community's solutions WAY too often feel like they're motivated only by libertarian concerns for freedom which, while extremely important, are not exhaustively fundamental or final to -- and certainly do not settle the question for -- non-libertarians.
There's a lot of trust of the government here[1] and in general[2] -- though, as that Gallup link shows, it MASSIVELY depends on which arm of the government you're talking about.
Again, not many people live in or around the libertarian bubble. And there are lots of intelligent people who avoid it for very, very good reasons.
Firstly because, well, that's just the way it is sometimes. Putting a gate in your wall can let in bad guys who can plunder your city, yes. But it can also let in good guys who can fortify it. You just need to design and use your gate well...and, I suppose, think of the government as good guys. (Soz, I've been indulging in some nostalgia with AOE 2: HD recently....)
And two: who says this has to involve decreasing IT security? I haven't seen enough evidence of cooperation between the gov't and the tech industry on this for me to believe that an agreement on this would require decreasing IT security.
>who says this has to involve decreasing IT security?
Which type of system would you feel safer guarding all of your most personal information in? Keep in mind that the system doesn't care if you're a "bad guy" or a "good guy":
1. A system which was designed to be "unbreakable"
2. A system which was designed to be breakable
Without encryption there is no IT security (if there even was such a thing).
Many have noted this isn't about security vs. privacy. It's about security vs. security [1] [2] [3]
Also, I think there's something different about getting access to someone's digital communications that makes digital data different from data previously obtained by warrants. Digital databases increasingly contain the entire history of people's communications. That's never been true before and it warrants additional discussion at the very least.
The other argument against this bill is it is unenforceable. Terrorists won't be using the government-mandated encryption tools. They'll create their own.
This is an opportunity for technologists to step up and take a larger role within government by educating representatives and the public, starting campaigns or non-profits, or perhaps running for office.
I don't agree with you but the downvotes for disagreement are very inappropriate, this is a contrarian position to the party line around here but fairly well put and helps to further the discussion beyond some sort of echo chamber.
Remember right now a huge proportion of the US population does NOT agree with us, no matter how many facts you explain to them.
Telling, for example, president Obama that he's an idiot and doesn't understand technology is both a lie and not helpful. He has hundreds of advisors who each know as much as the smartest of us here.
These guys just don't get it... they'll come back saying "crooks are dumb" and that's the end of it. I remember this being discussed when Skype went backdoor friendly. They'll catch some even... just no one who knows what they're doing.
When guns are outlawed, only lawmen and outlaws will have guns. Good. That's the state of affairs in every developed country except one and it's demonstrably better in every way.
PS: I have actually been paid to look into crime statistics. Guns are bad, really really bad. But, you can twist statistics to say the sky is orange if you want to.
You may not have realized that your statement is ambiguous between the state of affairs and the sole exception.
Either way you meant it, that is your individual belief based upon your own preferences, and there are literally millions of people who would disagree with you on this particular point. If there were no exceptions, where would all those dissenters go?
No more difficult to produce than many illicit drugs. Potentially much easier even, with the right parts. Besides, there are plenty of other countries you can smuggle arms into the U.S. from given sufficient demand.
Of course the knife analogy is still useful. We all know the futility of outlawing software.
Any weapon analogy is bad for our side of the argument, because weapons sound to many people like things that bad people use to do bad things. Yes, I realize that knives are used in kitchens to cut vegetables, but with the way this discussion is rightly framed as a security thing, people are not thinking about kitchens.
I would prefer to see lock analogies. Here's a half baked example: This is like a law requiring all builders of buildings to install locks that can be opened by any person who gets access to a copy of a law enforcement key.
Personally I like that analogy because it was recently revealed that people can 3D print working keys from a photo of a key. So even the "physical" key is vulnerable to security attacks of a digital nature. All someone needs to do is get a photo of the global "key" and they can then get into anybody's safe.
I read it. There seems to have been a bunch of studies that reached the consensus that the laws had little impact on a trend that existed before the laws and continued afterwords.
>The authors conclude that "the hypothesis that Australia's prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported
>In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.
>In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[49] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had little to no effect on violence.
One of the only 'wins' seems to be that people who committed suicide were less likely to use guns, but more likely to use other methods.
>As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.
>Most recently, McPhedran and Baker found there was little evidence for any impacts of the gun laws on firearm suicide among people under 35 years of age, and suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with Australia's firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact on youth suicide.
It's what happens when legislators have precisely no domain knowledge. I used to be surprised at the naiveté and ignorance when politicians spoke on topics I knew a little about. I'm too old to be surprised any more.
> You think legislators do not understand the subject because of what they said?
Depends. Frequently not as can be seen when the policy to achieve "x" does nothing of the sort, loses them the election or becomes some sort of personal vanity thing. Of course it depends on if the views expressed are of the politician or the party after you've attempted to pick out the double meaning. :)
> You believe what the politicians say?
If it's an independent I might. A party politician of any colour, usually not.
This makes the FBI's requests to Apple look like child's play. I cannot possibly see how our tech economy can survive once all these backdoors are in the hands of criminals (other than the US govt) and enemy states. Feinstein is especially known for her extreme stupidity but killing one of the last prosperous industries in America (tech), this is just simply too much. At least we'll know who to blame when no one wants to buy US tech anymore.
Politicians legislating for technology is the best real life example of the blind leading the deaf I've ever seen. We should add a constitutional amendment that requires the voting representatives understand the topic for which they're voting in order to have their votes count.
Maybe I'm a bit confused; if this bill were to pass, would this make SSH illegal? How about geli on FreeBSD? Am I going to be required to hand over my encryption keys on my server?
The plain-spoken language of the bill is irritating, because it hides how much assistance it provides to the existing surveillance machinery.
For example, it doesn't exempt the FISA court, as far as I can tell, and seems to embrace that use.
I'm having a little trouble with the paradoxes... "Nothing in this Act may be construed to authorize any government officer to require or prohibit any specific design". Is this a fig leaf? If you design a system that makes it impossible for you to comply with the act, you're still required to comply, right?
It means "unlike with the Clipper Chip, we take no responsibility for finding the miraculous back door that will only work for US law enforcement. YOU do it. YOU face the embarrassment when it turns out to be usable by Vladimir Putin."
What Silicon Valley needs to make it's voice heard here and to do that they need to pull back donations not just to Feinstein but to the Democratic Party until this disaster is withdrawn
Take whatever money you were planning on spending to support Democrats this election and give it to Planned Parenthood and the EFF until this bill is withdraw
"Certain communication service providers that distribute licenses for a covered entity’s products and services also must ensure that these products and services are capable of providing information or data in an intelligible format."
I'm having trouble understanding the meaning of that, but is it saying if you provide a means of encrypting customers data you must be able to access it unencrypted?
274 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadYes - except diplomats, journalists, doctors, as well as conversations between people in person are all "warrant-proof", and therefore "above the law" as Feinstein calls it.
As Zdziarski also says in his post below [1], the 4th amendment doesn't grant the U.S. government anything. It tries to restrict the U.S. government from overreach. It says only upon probable cause can the government request personal information, but it doesn't say the government MUST get that information and in a format that's intelligible as well.
But when the U.S. government has started interpreting the Constitution however it gives it more power, even saying that your "emails" can be obtained without a warrant because they've been "opened" [2], or when it believes that spying on millions of people at once is "relevant" to a specific investigation (3-hop spying) then it's no surprise that they also believe the 4th amendment gives it the power to require the data in an intelligible format.
> No new collection authorities. The bill does not create any new collection authorities for the government to obtain communications. The bill simply requires covered entities to ensure that the government’s lawfully-obtained evidence is readable—so that law enforcement can solve crimes and protect our communities from criminal and terrorist activities.
Well, that's a lie. Until now, only "covered entities" under CALEA could be forced to facilitate spying. Now everyone else can be forced as well, including open source developers. I'd say that's quite an expansion of its "collection abilities", no?
[1] - http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5912
[2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/eff-supports-rep-goodl...
She is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell for the Democrats.
She fully understands exactly what she's proposing and she's the biggest hypocrite for it.
I really think this country would be better off if CA and TX were not allowed representation in the Senate (and I say this as a Texan).
Removing national government representation would be more antithetical to democracy than anything that's going on now. A better solution, in my opinion, would probably be new state redistricting. Voters are apathetic because they feel their votes don't count due to overwhelming concentrations of opposing viewpoints, which probably should be split off into their own states (Bay Area, New York City, so on).
If it's just Feinstein and Burr, they can keep dreaming, but I imagine there are a few more.
My point being, the anti-encryption side has the support of nearly everyone who isn't informed about encryption and computing, which is a whole lot of people.
That just means there is more of a chance for technologists to take a leading role in this discussion through activism. It's an easy win if you can keep a cool head while explaining the issues.
Ultimately you shouldn't feel pressured by what other people ask of you. The choice of what to do and how to feel about it is always yours. When other people say it's your responsibility, like even if I had said that, that would just be me trying to convince you. That means nothing when you choose how to feel about it.
But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, and Feinstein is just that loved in California. After all, US is a democracy, not some banana republic!
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-vot...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21...
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#Ca...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassina...
(Edit: What I'm trying to say is that she was the person that found Harvey Milk shot and was one of the people that police asked to identify the bodies of both Milk and Moscone. Certainly being that close to the aftermath of violence changes a person.)
If the 60s counterculture and the rest of America had been geographically segregated like the South and the North in the 1860s, you'd have had secession and civil war.
* There are a lot of Republican voters in California who are happy to vote for Democrats, so even better if they're more towards the right
* I'm not old enough to have voted in too many elections, but her opponent in 2012 was a joke
* She doesn't really have an anti-Silicon Valley reputation (yet)
* California is more than just Silicon Valley
* Likelihood of voting correlates directly with age, and Silicon Valley is dominated by young people
* Her family is just so established in California politics, so the money's rolling in. Her husband is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents.
I'm not a fan either.
California is a conservative state outside of SF and LA, although because of their populations, the state is owned by the Democractic party.
Feinstein is a party machine candidate who can appeal across the aisle to those conservatives. Sure, she'll lose some Democrats, but the base will stick to voting with the party, and enough conservatives will crossover that it all works out.
Note that if SV goes to war over this, and it should, it could change the balance in the state. The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. And I imagine the Republicans are looking for a little payback if they can ever get the levers of power back.
So what do you do? Do you get rid of Feinstein over this one-issue, idiotic and harmful security state nonsense, then end up with a bunch of folks in power that might hurt you on a bunch of things, or do you grit your teeth and bear it?
Looks like the compromise is to let her posture a bit for the conservatives, then fund the opposition to make sure that nothing she proposes gets through. That's a tricky game to play, though.
Well, not necessarily. California abolished partisan primaries a few years ago. The way it works now is that all candidates for a position run in the same primary, and the top two advance to the general election, regardless of affiliation.
I'm not sure if there have been any races so far that involved two Democrats (it's only been two or so election cycles since the change) but the 2016 Senate race seems likely to be between two Democrats.
Of course there's still the problem of finding a Democrat with enough clout and balls to challenge Feinstein in 2018.
Fetch my geritol before you gear up, sonny.
Things have dramatically changed since then, unfortunately. It'd be fascinating to uncover what caused this marked phase change.
Find Feinstein's comments. Doesn't look like anything changed.
Incidentally, my testimony in the second session that day is at http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/judiciary.html, along with my answers to subsequent written questions from Senators Thurmond, Grassley, Leahy, and Feinstein. At the end of the first session. Senator Feinstein excused herself to go to another hearing, but remarked that if FBI Director Freeh said he needed access to essentially everything, we'd better give it to him.
She also has access to oodles of money from her husband (TPG Capital).
She's not opposed to being a hippocrite. She rails against guns but has a concealed gun permit. Her secret service detail carries automatic weapons and that's OK with her. It's not OK with most of her neighbors, but again, apathetic voters.
That said, as it is, I think things are like this:
- House majority will not support it, unless it's dramatically watered down (The House has been quite privacy-friendly/anti-backdoors lately). However, that could still be bad news for us, if say they only demand large companies to never use end-to-end encryption for any of their products, and to only make local disk encryption optional on smartphones (but no backdoor). Apple would have to sell iPhones unencrypted, Whatsapp would have to go back to Hangouts-style encryption, and Google will never implement its End-to-End tool for Gmail. You can forget about research for homomorphic encryption for healthcare or other services (which I think Microsoft, for one, is doing right now).
- Senate majority will likely support it as is.
Edit: Senator Ron Wyden promises to filibuster it, so we have that going for us as well, although I'm not sure if this can guarantee it's dead. I think he threatened a filibuster with the USA Freedom Act as well, but didn't go through with it at the last moment, when they compromised on something else (I may not be remembering this exactly):
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-state...
- Obama wants to look "neutral" right now, but I don't think he is. I think he wants the Senate version passed as well. But he would probably accept a watered down version as well.
Bottom line, if we want to stop it completely, as we did for SOPA, then we need to organize, and we need companies to do what they did for SOPA, too, and alert the public about it en masse.
They still do not understand that it's not possible to force criminals to use government-approved encryption software. Criminals can write their own encryption.
The sooner we voice up and vote out those who support such unreasonable laws, the sooner we can progress as a society towards finding the right ways to keep each other safe.
Does anyone know if there is a list of representatives showing their positions on this bill?
I think in this instance this is a case of you assuming ignorance where malice is far more likely. Looking at the comprehensive mass surveillance of, well, everyone (by the NSA et al), I think the point here is to further the goal of population control i.e. they don't care about criminals who would write their own, they just want always-on access to everyone.
I doubt it because (1) this would involve a wide-ranging conspiracy, and (2) they won't achieve their goal. If they were informed, they would know they will fail. As it is, Obama, Comey, etc will go down in history as asking technologists to perform magic. Nothing about this law helps them catch terrorists, and it hurts the US government's relationship with technologists going forward.
> they don't care about criminals who would write their own, they just want always-on access to everyone
That will not happen without a fight from companies like Apple. Ultimately, this just brings more awareness to users. It is not hard for companies to convince their users that backdoors for government make their data less secure. Tim Cook already took the first step.
More likely, I think, is technologists view government as lying about everything. We are iconoclasts seeking to break down cultural conservatisms. Also, we generalize too easily. We see government being disingenuous about one thing and assume they're dishonest about everything.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if certain members of government are lying or not. We should be educating the public and our representatives about the fact that we can't force criminals to use government-mandated encryption.
https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-stop-the-burr-feins...
It's free and I have no affiliation. I just saw it on r/apple's monthly appreciation thread [2]
Representatives do care about your calls. They get reports on them every day
[1] http://tryvoices.com/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4d71kg/monthly_appre...
I'm sure the senators involved put in as much outrageous stuff knowing it'll be watered down. This with the hopes a few key provisions are not watered down.
That's why in my opinion that bills like these should not be put up for discussions, amendments, and vote. I fear the worst though.
So any crypto researcher, in the USA, must be able to also defeat their own 2 channel crypto?
Also, since government compensation is listed, how does that work with intractable cryptanalysis of said work?
What are we going to do a out it? Maybe Wikipedia or Google will deface their own websites, and the bill will die only to resurrect shortly after.
A better solution would be for the millions of tech workers to unite and vote GOP just to send a message that we don't automatically vote for anyone or any party.
If California's vote is locked for a certain party, then it is taken for granted.
But that will probably never happen, because forming and operating a political party is too much like joining a union with its own PAC. And also, third parties don't count for much in the US.
Its playing the two sides off each other that might work. Make the GOP think will vote for them. Make the democrats think they'll loose our contributions.
Getting rid of Feinstein will be an excellent first step.
Tech workers should support senators like Wyden or R. Paul and take steps to really knock down Feinsteins or Burrs.
Will they simply be held in contempt of court until they finish brute forcing an encryption key at the heat death of the Universe?
The tech community's solutions WAY too often feel like they're motivated only by libertarian concerns for freedom which, while extremely important, are not exhaustively fundamental or final to -- and certainly do not settle the question for -- non-libertarians.
1. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-stop-the-burr-feins...
Period.
We are not surfs, we are not subjects.
Without the trust of its people, a government is not legitimate, has no "right" to look at its people's behavior, is simply afraid of losing power.
If instead of spying, governments focused on increasing overall goodwill there could be trust, not suspicion, on both sides of this encryption line.
Again, not many people live in or around the libertarian bubble. And there are lots of intelligent people who avoid it for very, very good reasons.
-----
1. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/02/apple-fb...
2. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Firstly because, well, that's just the way it is sometimes. Putting a gate in your wall can let in bad guys who can plunder your city, yes. But it can also let in good guys who can fortify it. You just need to design and use your gate well...and, I suppose, think of the government as good guys. (Soz, I've been indulging in some nostalgia with AOE 2: HD recently....)
And two: who says this has to involve decreasing IT security? I haven't seen enough evidence of cooperation between the gov't and the tech industry on this for me to believe that an agreement on this would require decreasing IT security.
Which type of system would you feel safer guarding all of your most personal information in? Keep in mind that the system doesn't care if you're a "bad guy" or a "good guy":
1. A system which was designed to be "unbreakable"
2. A system which was designed to be breakable
Without encryption there is no IT security (if there even was such a thing).
Love me some AOE btw.
Also, I think there's something different about getting access to someone's digital communications that makes digital data different from data previously obtained by warrants. Digital databases increasingly contain the entire history of people's communications. That's never been true before and it warrants additional discussion at the very least.
The other argument against this bill is it is unenforceable. Terrorists won't be using the government-mandated encryption tools. They'll create their own.
This is an opportunity for technologists to step up and take a larger role within government by educating representatives and the public, starting campaigns or non-profits, or perhaps running for office.
[1] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s
[2] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s
[3] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s
Remember right now a huge proportion of the US population does NOT agree with us, no matter how many facts you explain to them.
Telling, for example, president Obama that he's an idiot and doesn't understand technology is both a lie and not helpful. He has hundreds of advisors who each know as much as the smartest of us here.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-i...
How can you utter that sentence and simultaneously not understand why your bill is effectively worthless for its stated purpose?
Pious idolization of the State.
Not to say that I'd approve this farce.
I hear hand guns in particular are quite accident prone. Even if there's less crime, we might still have more deaths.
PS: I have actually been paid to look into crime statistics. Guns are bad, really really bad. But, you can twist statistics to say the sky is orange if you want to.
He came into it with a bias but still ended up with the opposite book from his intentions, due to honest research.
Either way you meant it, that is your individual belief based upon your own preferences, and there are literally millions of people who would disagree with you on this particular point. If there were no exceptions, where would all those dissenters go?
Not even close to factual.
This is more akin to knife control.
Of course the knife analogy is still useful. We all know the futility of outlawing software.
I would prefer to see lock analogies. Here's a half baked example: This is like a law requiring all builders of buildings to install locks that can be opened by any person who gets access to a copy of a law enforcement key.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Box
>The authors conclude that "the hypothesis that Australia's prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported
>In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.
>In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[49] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had little to no effect on violence.
One of the only 'wins' seems to be that people who committed suicide were less likely to use guns, but more likely to use other methods.
>As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.
>Most recently, McPhedran and Baker found there was little evidence for any impacts of the gun laws on firearm suicide among people under 35 years of age, and suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with Australia's firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact on youth suicide.
You think legislators do not understand the subject because of what they said?
You believe what the politicians say?
Depends. Frequently not as can be seen when the policy to achieve "x" does nothing of the sort, loses them the election or becomes some sort of personal vanity thing. Of course it depends on if the views expressed are of the politician or the party after you've attempted to pick out the double meaning. :)
> You believe what the politicians say?
If it's an independent I might. A party politician of any colour, usually not.
> The government cannot require or prohibit any specific design or operating system for any covered entity to use in complying with a court order.
This seems to specifically exclude one of the main concerns of the whole Apple/FBI thing.
I also don't see anything explicitly requiring back doors or security loopholes.
If a customer's data is encrypted and the service doesn't have the keys, I'm not sure how this bill would help.
Of course, if it really doesn't change anything, I see that as a reason to not pass the bill.
Of course they're trying to change something. But, the bill contradicts itself. It was written by people who don't understand technology.
It's an attempt by the authors to outline goals without stating how to achieve those goals.
They would be hard pressed to find a technologist who would support it.
It is about the service provider.
For example, it doesn't exempt the FISA court, as far as I can tell, and seems to embrace that use.
I'm having a little trouble with the paradoxes... "Nothing in this Act may be construed to authorize any government officer to require or prohibit any specific design". Is this a fig leaf? If you design a system that makes it impossible for you to comply with the act, you're still required to comply, right?
I pray this can't pass in my country.
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=n0000...
I'm having trouble understanding the meaning of that, but is it saying if you provide a means of encrypting customers data you must be able to access it unencrypted?