The Insightful Troll

Rants and ruminations.

Republicans Trying to Outlaw Encryption

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Looks like the Republicans are at it again.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) today introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, a bill to bolster national security interests and better protect communities across the country by ending the use of “warrant-proof” encrypted technology by terrorists and other bad actors to conceal illicit behavior.

You can’t just “add a backdoor” to a proper end-to-end encryption scheme. A good encryption system has no backdoors - and you can prove it mathematically. The only people that have access to the plain text data are those that have the keys. Which is why we can trust it.

By adding a mandatory “backdoor” to encryption, If there is such a “backdoor”, then anyone who has that key can access any data that is encrypted with that encryption algorightm. You are negating the very purpose of its existence.

Under the current laws, you can issue a warrant for the key holder to give you access to that key. So this law is really not at all required, and would destroy all of the security in secure transactional systems.

I am hoping this is just a political stunt by ignorant Senators.

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