
Lawmakers move to block government from ordering digital back doors - rgbrenner
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/387122-house-lawmakers-move-to-block-govt-from-ordering-digital-back-doors
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rgbrenner
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.

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craftyguy
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.

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Zak
Thanking them for doing so might be worthwhile.

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

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korethr
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.

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RaptorJ
[PDF]
[https://lofgren.house.gov/sites/lofgren.house.gov/files/docu...](https://lofgren.house.gov/sites/lofgren.house.gov/files/documents/Secure%20Data%20Act%202018.pdf)

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korethr
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.

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mleonhard
EFF has a better article: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/secure-data-
act-would-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/secure-data-act-would-
stop-backdoors)

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Shivetya
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.

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saagarjha
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.

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Lionsion
> 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?

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adrianratnapala
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.

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afarrell
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](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1704)

