You should really just read Riana’s piece on the new crypto bill. But there are two parts of it I specifically want to call out. 1/
First: to the tech people who thought they could bargain with William Barr and Lindsey Graham and get a reasonable bill that confined itself to encrypted phones without trying to grab messaging, phone calls for desert: you’re all useful idiots. 2/ 
Seriously. I really, really need to reiterate this. There is no grand bargain to be made with these folks that leads to a reasonable law enforcement access policy in which security is ever going to be more than an afterthought. None. Zero. 3/
When we, your colleagues told you that these people didn’t appreciate the challenge and weren’t going to legislate in good faith; that any system mandated would be hastily designed and hugely insecure: we weren’t being security absolutists and we weren’t being pessimists. 4/
But you felt that there was good faith here and that you should lend your considerable technical skill to finding a compromise. Some of you testified as friendly witnesses before the Senate. Congratulations: this is your reward. 5/
Moving on: the second point I want to call out from @Riana_Crypto’s piece is this: the new bill is kind of a giant piece of crap. It doesn’t seem like a serious piece of legislation. Unlike EARN-IT, which really does seem like a serious attempt to weaken encryption.
I wrote about EARN-IT earlier this year. That bill really does seem like a clever attempt to kill encrypted messaging by disguising it as an anti-child-porn bill. It’s eminently passable, unlike this giant Spruce Goose they dropped today.
Piece on EARN-IT: google.com/amp/s/blog.cry…
Anyway, I thank our Federal representatives for allowing me this brief respite from being horrified at our pandemic response, so I can be horrified about the way we’re dealing with cybersecurity.
