Congressional Reps Submit Bill Banning Encryption Bans

Legal Issues

from the [placard]-BAN-THE-BAN-[/end-placard] dept

Legislators in two states have proposed (largely unworkable) bans on the sale of encrypted phones, citing (of course) concerns about all the criminals who might get away with something if law enforcement can’t have near immediate access to the entire contents of their phones.

In reaction to these stupid bills, national legislators have stepped up to offer their own counterpunch: a nationwide ban on encryption bans. The Daily Dot’s Kevin Collier has the details.

Congressmen Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) have introduced what they call the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act of 2016. It’s an attempt, Lieu and Farenthold wrote in a letter to their colleagues, to address “[c]oncerns over the privacy, security and technological feasibility of a ‘backdoor’ into encrypted devices for the government and law enforcement” by making encryption a federal issue and keeping individual states from trying to ban it.

Update: We’ve been informed that it’s not just Lieu and Farenthold, but also Reps. Suzan Delbene and Mike Bishop. Not only would such bans/backdoors make device usage less safe for users, but the lack of unified stance on phone encryption would turn phone sales in the US into a logistical nightmare, to the detriment of all involved.

“We are deeply concerned,” Lieu told the Daily Dot in a phone interview, “that a patchwork system with different encryption requirements in every state would not only undermine national security—it would also threaten the competitiveness of American companies and dampen innovation.”

Lieu, as one of the few representatives with a background in computer science, is also one of the few who has been bold enough to refer to FBI director James Comey’s ongoing anti-encryption efforts as “stupid.”

Whether this will go anywhere remains to be seen. It would appear few legislators are willing — at least as this point — to tell the FBI to stop asking for backdoors or bans. Alarmingly, despite the ongoing discussion bringing more evidence to the surface that such actions are not only bad ideas, but pretty much impossible to implement without doing away with encryption entirely, it seems like more legislators are moving towards the FBI’s line of thinking.

Unfortunately, that is often the nature of the political business, where fear nearly always trumps rational thinking. For too many, it’s perfectly acceptable that thousands of phone users be left open to attacks than one criminal suspect go free.

Filed Under: blake farenthold, encrypt act, encryption, encryption bans, going dark, ted lieu