White House won't publicly back legislation allowing judges to order decryption - report
Despite recent comments by President Obama, the White House won't publicly support upcoming draft legislation that would let judges order companies like Apple to help decrypt their products, a report said on Thursday.
The legislation -- a bipartisan effort from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein -- could be introduced as quickly as this week, Reuters noted. But while the White House has reviewed it and provided feedback, it will provide little if any public input, sources told the newswire agency.
The administration is split on the issue, the sources added, and its position may reflect a realization than an encryption bill would be controversial, and unlikely to make it far in a deadlocked Congress also facing impending elections.
The draft bill would reportedly grant judges the power to order companies to help the government, but in its current state it doesn't say how companies might be obligated, what penalties might be imposed, or even under what circumstances an order could be issued.
During March's SXSW festival in Austin, Tex., Obama appeared to support the idea of safeguarding private data, but also argued against "absolutist" stances, suggesting there are times when law enforcement agencies should have access. Perhaps most significantly, he cautioned against any "sloppy and rushed" efforts by Congress.
The ongoing encryption debate was sparked by Apple's refusal to circumvent the passcode retry limit on the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. The Department of Justice ultimately backed down, saying another method had successfully extracted data, but the situation is still unresolved in many ways -- Apple, for instance, is looking to discover what that method was.
The legislation -- a bipartisan effort from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein -- could be introduced as quickly as this week, Reuters noted. But while the White House has reviewed it and provided feedback, it will provide little if any public input, sources told the newswire agency.
The administration is split on the issue, the sources added, and its position may reflect a realization than an encryption bill would be controversial, and unlikely to make it far in a deadlocked Congress also facing impending elections.
The draft bill would reportedly grant judges the power to order companies to help the government, but in its current state it doesn't say how companies might be obligated, what penalties might be imposed, or even under what circumstances an order could be issued.
During March's SXSW festival in Austin, Tex., Obama appeared to support the idea of safeguarding private data, but also argued against "absolutist" stances, suggesting there are times when law enforcement agencies should have access. Perhaps most significantly, he cautioned against any "sloppy and rushed" efforts by Congress.
The ongoing encryption debate was sparked by Apple's refusal to circumvent the passcode retry limit on the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. The Department of Justice ultimately backed down, saying another method had successfully extracted data, but the situation is still unresolved in many ways -- Apple, for instance, is looking to discover what that method was.
Comments
Wtf?
They'll be back most likely and Apple should encrypt their devices so well that a backdoor is impossible.
Yet the draft bill doesn't declare to what limit. In other words, if said company does help, yet fails to perform due to its encryption being that good, does the company get fined for trying and failing? If so, why try? That also leaves the 'forced speech' question of constitutionality if the gov't/court should order code to be written. Would that also in Apple being required to write code to crack RSA encryption? If so, wouldn't that also crack every other device/method using RSA encryption, including the gov't's own super computers?
Congress really better think this one through and read through the entire legislation, else wind up passing an unread bill with a huge amount of holes and unexpected consequences in it.
I think Tim Cook has the right stance on this. If they did write the code there would be no way to keep it safe. Once the code is written it has to be stored somewhere and you cannot trust anyone when the stakes are so high, even at Apple and especially not if the code is in the government's hands.
Lame-Duck president and staff riding the fence. Not unexpected.
Code writing is protected by the 1st Amendment. Not counting the attempted forced conscription of Apple to write it. That's another couple of Amendments.
It’s not a matter of uniting. The First Amendment (and Second, and several others) cannot be repealed. It’s not a matter of law that they encompass. The government could vote 435:0, 100:0, 1:0, and 9:0 in favor of repealing the First Amendment and it would not be legal for them to do. To do so would be to sign their own suicide notes.