Long ago, back when I wrote code for fun as much as for profit, I came up with a quick encryption scheme which mixed 2 keys of different prime-number lengths. ASCII characters, so it was sort of like 256-bit encryption. This was just curiosity leading to the creation of something quickly from scratch.
The reason I bring this up is: how in the hell would any legislation prevent strong-encryption software from sprouting up all over, even if all the big corporations render their own useless? It's not that difficult to do. Decryption without the proper keys--that's what's bloody difficult. The process of encryption is fairly straightforward. Granted, having to use custom encryption/decryption software at each end is much less convenient than depending on built-in encryption, behind the scenes. But there is no way that what the administration wants to do is possible through legislation. If bad players want to scramble their communications so the government can't eavesdrop, they will do it regardless. And all that the meddling will cause is the usual: law-abiding people will suffer; criminals will not.
Exactly. The whole idea is completely stupid. There are already tools available worldwide that can do AES-128, AES-256, and Twofish, all of which are
extremely strong symmetric key encryption mechanisms. There are already open source libraries available that can provide secure transport via private and public key encryption (with a single private key) such as OpenSSL and LibreSSL, which can do the incredibly strong RSA 2048, the ludicrous RSA 4096, and newer schemes like ECDSA that are even stronger.
What is the point of legislating that commercial vendors that have encryption built-in somewhere can only sell products that provide some sort of backdoor for that encryption to the government and that it's illegal to make new open source encryption schemes that don't also allow for the same? What's to stop criminals from using the existing tools, which are thought will already provide protection for the next 20 - 30 years? Even when those cryptography systems are found to be weak in some regard or can be brute-forced, what's to stop programmers from other countries from making new, strong cryptography systems? Absolutely nothing!
All such laws will do is enable spying on the American public and American corporations. Does anyone think ISIS, some other future terrorist organization, or enemy nation-states are going to use any American encryption products? Of course not!
Perhaps the intent in the first place is actually to spy on Americans. The oligarchy has to know that the U.S. masses are starting to become pretty restless. There is the severe (and growing) wealth inequality, erosion of the middle class, continued attempts at anti-gun policies (though gangs and disturbed people aren't helping matters in that regard), the revelations of the ridiculous levels of domestic surveillance with more capability being rolled out almost daily, the militarization and growing intelligence apparatus of the police, the fact that our leaders (especially those in the GOP) don't even bother to act like they aren't doing anything but looking out for the interests of massive corporations and extremely wealthy individuals... the list goes on and on. The Occupy movement that happened back in 2008 is just the beginning.
If the U.S. sufficiently enables enough massive surveillance and continues to militarize the police, it will become difficult, if not outright impossible, to actually organize any sort of movement against the government. That said, nothing really stops such future revolutionaries from using existing encryption tools and methods either.
For the NSA/FBI/Florida police/whatever other stooges are probably going to end up reading this: I'm not a terrorist or any other sort of criminal! I'm a normal person, a normal U.S. citizen. I just don't like to be treated with mistrust like I am a terrorist. Stop spying on your own citizens already! I want liberty, not tyranny! The founding fathers would be ashamed!
We should probably look at doing TLS on this site...
