NemWan

Feinstein's thumbing her nose at the two biggest companies in her state, Apple and Google. She's so brave to stand up to big business! No, wait, that's not it, it's really just that she's just become unaccountable to anyone.

Let's take a moment remember the brilliant ploy to get Windows users to download QuickTime: No, before iTunes. The Phantom Menace trailer.

eightzero said:

I would expect this to actually strengthen encryption technologies. As reported here, there would be no requirement for the companies to actually be able to break the encryption.  

Everyone seems to believe that failure to provide intelligible data when ordered would be in violation of the law. Unbreakable encryption could not be used without risking violation if the data should ever be demanded in a case, similar to how in some states a homeowner can be charged with having illegal fortifiactions if police find that a home has been intentionally foritified for the purpose of delaying entry by police.

vvswarup said:

From the very beginning when Apple implemented strong encryption, Comey has been upset. For years, the government got away with things of questionable legality. All that changed with Snowden. Comey and other people in the government were livid that they couldn't hide behind secrecy in the name of national security to cover up their actions. They would actually have to start showing some proof. Meanwhile, tech companies started locking up their systems and throwing away the keys. 

Comey tried to appeal to emotion. He used the buzzwords-rapists, child pornographers, terrorists, murderers. Then came San Bernardino. Comey thought he had the perfect case. He thought he could use the media to sling mud at Apple, hoping Apple would capitulate for fear of alienating the public and its customer base. We don't know what happened but evidently, the public wasn't overwhelmingly on the FBI's side. For whatever reason, the FBI withdrew the case. 

The government has seen limited success in the courts so far. It seems that Comey has turned to Congress only after all of his other options are exhausted. If any of this other tactics had worked, he definitely wouldn't be calling for a legislative solution. 

The FBI has also seen limited success in Congress for decades, e.g. the Clipper chip.

This is a terrible idea. You have to prove your innocence. An "implied consent" law that makes you sign away your rights to participate in modern life is part of a dangerous notion that rights are based in the 18th century, therefore living a 21st century lifestyle is only a priviledge. That attitude imposes forced obsolescence on freedom and is just wrong on every level.

But, if this sort of law catches on, there would hopefully be some standardization so Apple and other companies could design products to balance privacy with minimal compliance, for example the phone OS could write a log file, containing only the data required by the "textalyzer", which is stored in a separate enclave from the rest of your data. This would eliminate the need to unlock all your data for law enforcement with only trust that they'll follow whatever law that limits the scope of their data collection and search.

Consider the slippery slope:  the gist of this law is that your phone is serving the government as an aircraft-like black box, recording what was happening before the accident. Next they're going to want the accelerometer data, recent location data, maybe even "cockpit voice recording" — audio recorded in the car before an accident or being pulled over. Is that why you bought your phone? Who does your phone serve?