The Trump administration has revived the debate over “end-to-end encryption” — systems so secure that the tech companies themselves aren’t able to read the messages, even when police present them with a warrant.

“It is hard to overstate how perilous this is,” U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a speech last fall. “By enabling dangerous criminals to cloak their communications and activities behind an essentially impenetrable digital shield, the deployment of warrant-proof encryption is already imposing huge costs on society.”

…

Riana Pfefferkorn, at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, says it’s a safe bet the best practices would include a requirement that law enforcement get access to encrypted content.

“The bill as it’s drafted does a bizarre and alarming end run around normal legislative or even agency rule-making processes,” Pfefferkorn says, giving the attorney general “the keys for deciding what rules apply on the Internet.”

Read More