This is, far and away, the most authoritarian proposal for the regulation of encryption that I have EVER seen. As far as I know, no nation on Earth has legal provisions so explicitly authoritarian as to require every civilian to maintain copies of all their communication in a form that cops can access after the fact.

If I send you a letter and you promptly burn it, that does not entitle the police to imprison either of us, no matter what sorts of subpoenas they obtain after the fact. But if I send you an encrypted message, we both throw away the key, and the police later subpoena our communications, this proposed law would permit one or both of us to be jailed for the ENTIRE term of whatever crime we are ACCUSED of:

> Then, fourth and finally (drum roll, please!), they'll need to allow courts to jail the accused until: (a) the communication has been decrypted by someone; (b) the maximum penalty for the charged crime has been exceeded

Unless this is a joke that's gone over my head, this is an open embrace of totalitarian surveillance. Either way, it's farcical. Fortunately it would not survive basic constitutional challenges in any liberal democracy.

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Here's another silly detail. (Ugh, this article is bad on so many levels.)

> Then the legislators can get to work. First, they'll need to make it a crime to force or trick anyone into using stronger encryption than they consent to, no matter how that might be done. (Note that IT liberalists who claim encryption is a human right never realize this should also include the right not to be forced to use encryption against one's will.)

This means, if you start a conversation with me in plaintext, I'm obliged to continue exactly as I would if we were talking through encryption. This compels speech, which is both unconstitutional in most places and completely untenable in practice. (And why would there be a human right not to be "forced" to use encryption? There's no human right precluding "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policies. People who don't use encryption do not constitute a protected class!)

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Terr_ 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> If I send you a letter and you promptly burn it, that does not entitle the police to imprison either of us

Aside: The fact that someone (legally) deleted data or (legally) switched to an encrypted channel may still be used against them, when establishing mens rea regarding some other actual crime.

That said, I don't want to dissuade anyone from taking steps to be safe.

	▲	giantg2 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think that only establishes mens rea if it's not part of your normal procedure. If I always shred my mail that has my information on it after reading it, then shredding a piece of mail allegedly related to some crime is just normal. I would have to be an unusual intentional act, such as only shredding the illegal mail and not the regular mail.

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wasabi991011 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> This means, if you start a conversation with me in plaintext, I'm obliged to continue exactly as I would if we were talking through encryption. This compels speech,...

I think the author would say that if you don't want to continue in plaintext, you can just not respond.

	▲	bccdee 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think so. If you run a server that won't respond to unencrypted requests, I think that would be considered a form of forcing people to use encryption. That's the only way I can interpret "they'll need to make it a crime to force or trick anyone into using stronger encryption than they consent to, no matter how that might be done." Refusing to respond to unencrypted requests is honestly the only thing I can think of that would really constitute "forcing someone to use encryption." (Unless they mean forcing via threats, but why would they mean that? Who's going around forcing people at gunpoint to encrypt messages?)