> But the proposals are the digital equivalent of giving law enforcement a key to every citizens’ home
To be fair, it’s more like giving law enforcement the key to everyones heavily fortified unobtanium bunker. There’s no way they can possibly get in if the owner doesn’t let them.
I think the intended image there is that they can come and go without announcing themselves, which is what's being proposed.
They can still access your E2E encrypted messages under existing laws by bringing a warrant to your door and asking you to hand over your phone, then:
A: finding it unlocked.
B: hacking it.
C: using normal police techniques to convince you to hand over the passphrase.
D: using a key disclosure law to compel you to hand over the passphrase.
What they want to do instead is take the warrant to Facebook/Signal/etc. and get them to hand the messages over without needing to interact with you at all.
Seriously though, we do need to acknowledge that there are some baddies who wont hand over their passphrases no matter what law enforcement does to compel them.
That said, I'm not sure it's really such a big deal. After all, terrorists will always have access to E2E encryption as long as they have access to general computing tech. Making E2E encryption illegal just hurts law-abiding citizens.
To be fair, it’s more like giving law enforcement the key to everyones heavily fortified unobtanium bunker. There’s no way they can possibly get in if the owner doesn’t let them.