White House Declines To Support Encryption Legislation

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According to anonymous sources, the White House is refusing to offer public support for legislation that would require technology companies to help law enforcement crack encrypted data. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the pending legislation.

The White House is declining to offer public support for draft legislation that would empower judges to require technology companies such as Apple Inc to help law enforcement crack encrypted data, sources familiar with the discussions said. The decision all but assures that the years-long political impasse over encryption will continue even in the wake of the high-profile effort by the Department of Justice to force Apple to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last December's shootings in San Bernardino, California.
 
They're probably making backdoor deals as they often do when they know that the public won't support the types of legislation they want to pass. It's going to be a TPP situation where the public won't get to see what is in the proposed law(s) until it is already passed.
 
I agree that the government does not, and should never get, the power to force companies to "help" them, and that any court order attempting to impel this sort of thing should be null and void.

OTOH, as others have said, I am sure that there are shady dealings going on behind the scenes, regardless of how potentially nefarious such dealings may be.
 
Since "say one thing, do another" is the norm this needs to be stopped in Congress if its not too late.
 
Meh, they can say whatever, and then label something as in the interest of national defence and then do whatever.
 
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Yakk said:
Meh, they can say whatever, and then label something as in the interest of national defence and then do whatever.
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Yup. They'll do it in the interest of national security and make it legal through some other law (Patriot Act or whatever else they can). If it's for national security, we have to do it, because terrorists.
 
Well, of course Obama's White House doesn't want us to have any national security. They're the reason we're not safe in the first place, and that's how they intend to keep it as long as they can stay in power. They want us to have to live among people that want to kill us as some sort of weird liberal "punishment" for the Iraq War, and have their rights protected at the expense of our own well-being.
 
Yakk said:
Meh, they can say whatever, and then label something as in the interest of national defence and then do whatever.
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More likely it'll be slipped into some totally unrelated bill as a rider. SOPA/CISPA/CISA anyone? Fought against it multiple times only to have it back-doored in a must-pass budget bill.
 
Kueller said:
More likely it'll be slipped into some totally unrelated bill as a rider. SOPA/CISPA/CISA anyone? Fought against it multiple times only to have it back-doored in a must-pass budget bill.
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I could see that very well. Make a big deal of it and over expose the issue until the general public isn't interested anymore and has gone on to other news, then slip it in.
 
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Madoc said:
I agree that the government does not, and should never get, the power to force companies to "help" them, and that any court order attempting to impel this sort of thing should be null and void.

OTOH, as others have said, I am sure that there are shady dealings going on behind the scenes, regardless of how potentially nefarious such dealings may be.
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I am thinking you are about 100 years too late as the All Writs Act has been doing exactly that for about that long. It's the entire purpose of the law's existence.

In fact, I am thinking we should all be very happy this Law existed in the first place.
The All Writs Act

The 1789 Judiciary Act was litigated in perhaps the most famous case ever, Marbury v. Madison. In 1803 the Supreme Court decided to look at just how big its own britches were, and by its decision in Marbury set up judicial review of Congressional legislation – the idea that the Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional (which it did with part of the 1789 Act). Essentially: the Constitution is either a superior law or it’s on the level with ordinary legislative acts and at the mercy of the legislature to change. If the first part is true: a law “repugnant to the Constitution” is no law at all. If the second: constitutions are stupid. We went with the first bit.
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If it weren't for the predecessor of the All Writs Act, the Constitution might have been ruined by Congress before we ever got passed the year 1800.
 
Sorry, but there just isn't any way a government can legislate, mandate, or enforce "safety" from terrorism.

The world's a dangerous place. And all the laws in the world aren't going to make it any less so.

It's simply a matter of how much of our freedom and liberties will the average schlub willingly sign away (as well as how much the government will just TAKE because the public is too spineless to contest it) for the false promise of "safety".

So, we can have liberty and danger, or we can have tyranny and danger. Which do YOU prefer?
 
evilsofa said:
Whoa, there. We were safe before 2008?
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He could just be commenting on one white house rule, and not another because he knows one better than another.

But to your question, yes... at least a bit more, because I don't think they realized how much they can infiltrate at that point, not to mention, the amount of data has increased exponentially in comparison to the past.
 
evilsofa said:
Whoa, there. We were safe before 2008?
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Safe? Well, we're never safe, you know. But we were a little bit safer when we didn't have the leader of the free world cutting the military, ignoring the threat, and undermining our intelligence efforts when we have jihadists trying to kill us. At least in the past, we acknowledged there was a threat. Obama just wants to bury his head in the sand and pretend like we can just make nice with these people and everything will be okay. He pulled out troops too soon, and relaxed immigration standards too much. We're definitely less safe. It's a matter of degrees rather than absolutes, IMO.
 
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