Re: Shut up Princess Hillary
Weakening encryption systems has nothing at all to do with the fourth amendment, which in any case does not apply to foreign actors, terrorist or not. Protests and misinformation notwithstanding, I do not think anyone has seriously proposed an arrangement whereby encrypted material in possession of US citizens and others legally in the US would be searched without a warrant based on probable cause. Courts have been reducing the government's freedom to in this area for a long time, most recently in connection with cell phone searches incident to an arrest. They are unlikely to change direction. In the US, the concern officials have expressed is that even when they have a valid warrant or other court order, they will not be able to execute it effectively against encrypted material in the way they can against material in locked containers.
These officials are misguided about the practicality of what they ask for, and to the extent they ask for the ability to decrypt arbitrary messages originating in places not under US law (or perhaps laws of the US and its firm allies) they are descending to absurdity. Companies surely could produce backdoored cryptosystems and might do so for money, but only those compelled by effective laws would use them, and criminals (or terrorists) would ignore them if they thought it beneficial. And, as others have observed, regular mail, although slow, is relatively secure and the content can be effectively coded or encrypted without great difficulty.
I suspect that any candidates for office who talk about this are simply trying to pander to those who know little about either cryptography or the magnitude of the terrorist risk.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
