New Bill Aims to Stop State-Level Decryption Before It Starts
Over the last several months, local legislators have embarked on a curious quest to ban encryption at a state level. For a litany of reasons, this makes no sense. And now, a new bill in Congress will attempt to stop the inanity before it becomes a trend.
California Congressman Ted Lieu has introduced the “Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications Act of 2016,” which we’ll call ENCRYPT. It’s a short, straightforward bill with a simple aim: to preempt states from attempting to implement their own anti-encryption policies at a state level.
We’ve outlined the reasons that a patchwork of state anti-encryption laws makes no sense before, but it’s worth a quick recap. Lieu himself considers there to be three main issues with allowing government backdoors generally. (He’s also, for what it’s worth, one of four sitting Congressman with a computer science degree).
