“We knew that Sen. Diane Feinstein was cooking up a bill with North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr in response to Apple’s dispute with the FBI over the San Bernarndino iPhone,” Troy Wolverton writes for SiliconBeat. “We knew that the bill was going to target companies like Apple that refused to help the government unscramble encrypted data. And we suspected, given Feinstein’s past history of being unconcerned about anyone’s privacy other than her own, that the bill was going to be pretty bad for the privacy of everyday citizens and the security of tech products.”
“How bad? Well we now know,” Wolverton writes. “The bill would require companies, in response to a court order, to decrypt data stored on devices they make, apps they design or online services they offer. It would compel them to provide to governments whatever technical assistance ‘is necessary’ to unscramble the data.”
“Perhaps worst of all, the bill would essentially require Apple, Google and other operators of application stores to ensure that the data sent through the apps they sell through them can all be unscrambled as well,” Wolverton writes. “Needless to say, consumer, privacy and tech industry advocates trashed the bill.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month regarding this idiotic bill: “Encryption is a binary issue. It’s either on or off. There is no middle ground. There is no magical ‘access’ for just the ‘good guys.’ …Oppose ill-informed senators like Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein who seem to live in some fantasyland that does not exist.”
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
SEE ALSO:
White House declines to support legislation to defeat strong encryption – April 7, 2016
U.S. Senator Wyden pledges to fight limits on encryption – March 31, 2016
California Democrat Diane Feinstein backs U.S. government overreach over Apple – March 10, 2016
