Senators close to finishing encryption penalties legislation: sources | Hacker News Reader

Senators close to finishing encryption penalties legislation: sources

reuters.com

92 pointsaburan2829 comments

I really wish Dianne Feinstein would resign. She is consistently horrible.

I remember writing to her in Crypto Wars I. The response I got back from her staff was infuriating.

She will not be missed.

I'm sure not the first one to ask -- can you share??

I agree. She needs to have all of her personal information made public as an example of why nobody has anything to hide.

This kind of crap needs to stop if we want a civil society.

And what do you suggest that would otherwise get her attention?

The more important question is why do you assume that anything will change her mind. It is fine to be charitable and assume that somebody can eventually see reason, but continuing to do so after several years is just foolish. Some people are just dangerous and need to be avoided... We already have that mentality for wild animals, were you don't get morally outraged when a bear attacks a hiker - the bear is just being a bear. There are plenty of people like that, completely single-minded in their pursuit of goals that are against your own interests.

Now I'm not suggesting that we send a zookeeper with a tranquilizer gun after Feinstein... just do everything you can to avoid her. This is what they did in the first crypto war, where developers would travel out of the country in order to write encryption software.

The more important answer: obviously she doesn't understand or care about the impact on privacy and appeals to reason don't seem to be an avenue.

My original snarky remark (which got plenty of downvotes) was implying that she will only care if she feels the pain herself.

As for "just avoiding" a senior senator who has power over the laws of the land, I can only assume that means moving out of the country -- that's a rather arrogant and elitist approach (we're not all single brogrammers without ties to our communities).

> ...obviously she doesn't understand or care...

That isn't logically consistent, if she doesn't understand then appeals to reason are a potential avenue. By offering that unreasonable bit of charity you undermine your argument.

> ...that's a rather arrogant and elitist approach...

You are projecting. Why would would need to "assume that means moving out of the country" when I clearly pointed to the first crypto war? The battle over cryptography in the 90s demonstrated several methods of resistance that avoided directly confronting "a senior senator", and didn't requiring "moving out of the country". While I don't know the family situation of everybody on this list [0], I doubt they are all "brogrammers".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk?section=Noteworthy%...

Will she include a special provision in the bill, penalizing companies if they help the government spy on Congress? http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/politics/feinstein-cia-snoopin...

> I really wish Dianne Feinstein would resign

There's talk of her retiring this year.

Is she going to run again? She's up for re-election in 2018, but she'll be 85!! If she does run, now is the time to start building a strategy to try to stop that.

This legislation reminds me that as crazy as people like Donald Trump are, there are equally crazy people already serving in our government.

Uhm I don't think so.

I consider Mr. Donald a special case. Who would have had audacity to sue an airport over plane's noise... twice!

His Wiki read is really a material for a good movie. From over 150 lawsuits Mr. Trump is involved, the most hilarious seems to be his feud with Bill Maher.

Wiki does a better job at describing it...

Trump sued comedian Bill Maher for $5 million in 2013. Maher had appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and had offered to pay $5 million to a charity if Trump produced his birth certificate to prove that Trump's mother had not mated with an orangutan. This was said by Maher in response to Trump having previously challenged Obama to produce his birth certificate, and offering $5 million payable to a charity of Obama's choice, if Obama produced his college applications, transcripts, and passport records. Trump produced his birth certificate and filed a lawsuit after Maher was not forthcoming, claiming that Maher's $5 million offer was legally binding. "I don't think he was joking," Trump said. "He said it with venom." Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the comedian after eight weeks.

I don't think our legislators are "crazy", I just think they fall too far on one side of some values spectrum. In this case, Feinstein cares too much about national security and federal LEO tools and not enough about personal and data security.

How could this legislation possibly pass constitutional muster? You're essentially forcing companies to create code for you.

We are all, evidently, deputized slaves of the state.

Feinstein has never let the constitution stand in her way.

I always wondered what stopped the legislature passing laws that are unconstitutional, having it canceled a few years later by the supreme court and then passing a similar law again and having that take a few years in a large cycle. Unconstitutional laws basically become laws with informal sunsetting clauses.

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

The checks and balances the US has are generally pretty weak.

Often part of disputing the constitutionality of a law is requesting that the court considering it also temporarily put its enforcement on hold, as I understand it. If the court chooses to (and in a case where a law that was already basically ruled unconstitutional has been passed again, one assumes it would so choose), that law is simply ineffective until a final ruling is obtained. Naturally, you can appeal the decision to hold the law's enforcement, but the law is on hold unless and until a higher court overturns it.

it cant, the first company that gets asked to comply with this law will challenge it and it will be struck down. Past eaves dropping laws have only required that companies give the Feds access but they provide their own man power and resources. This is how NSA and others have employees with offices inside ISP datacenters. The ISPs merely provide them with full access to their datacenters but the government must provide all the workers who actually go through the data

> it cant, the first company that gets asked to comply with this law will challenge it

The first company with enough resources to endure a prolonged legal battle against the federal government, that is. What I wonder is what the response of the average 5 person startup with data on millions of users all over the world is going to be...

Because somehow people who don't even know what "code" means are in charge of technology for the country.

I'm kinda curious how tech companies are supposed to implement this. Send encryption keys to a central repo? If I encrypt a file, and store it on my phone, is phone manufacturer liable for it? I would assume not, but god knows how this law is written.

> It would expose companies like Apple Inc.

Apple seems to shift taxes to more tax-friendly countries to avoid high taxes in US.

How much time before they figure how to move headquarters and their legal standing outside of US jurisdiction??

The only answer to the illegitimate use of force is wide scale civil defiance.

Our government is corrupt and must be defied.

Remember that this isn't law yet and it hasn't passed the scrutiny of the US court system.

It's always like that when you deal with the State, first it gives you the freedom to argue and tries to convince you, if you don't, then a single piece of legislation is enough to coerce you.

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