On Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 8:04 PM jim bell wrote:

https://news.bitcoin.com/lawful-access-to-encrypted-data-act-backdoor/

US lawmakers have introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act to ensure law enforcement can access encrypted information. This bill is “a full-frontal nuclear assault on encryption in the United States,” one expert says. It requires manufacturers of encrypted devices and operating systems to have the ability to decrypt data upon request, creating a backdoor requirement.

This is tragic and thematic news. I think it's interesting to raise a parallel with physical locks. I don't know whether people have heard the below before or not. In cities, pretty much every building has something like a knoxbox.com box on the front for emergency services to use to properly enter the building if needed. I believe they are each a secure box that can be opened with 1 key for the whole city, containing a copy of the key for the building door within. On disassembly of the locking mechanism to these devices, they use the same principal as a conventional front door lock, but with radically altered form factor. I don't recall well but they may have had something surprising like more than one row of pins, at different actual angles from the keyway rather than all up and down like most locks. Additionally the key was not flat like most keys, but bent into an unusual shape. Efforts to learn to pick normal locks do not produce tools that unlock the govcorpmafiamedicalfire knoxbox.com locks. Similarly locksmiths and hardware stores do not have the tools to make these locks either. But crafting a key at a makerspace would be easy for anybody with the patience to comprehend the lock and to cut metal to precision. Of course, doing that would mean that everybody at the maker space would see you do it, and everybody near the front door would see you open the emergency services box. People breaking into buildings this way probably dress up as someone official. It is unfortunate that cities are paying knoxbox to have a key to all their buildings, and to make it possible for somebody else to craft such a thing, in ways that tenants have no option to reject. But it seems to have worked well for the middle class. Regarding other classes, those who oppress the people worst off probably have other ways of getting into their buildings, but it is always nice to reduce these ways. This historical pattern is interesting. Regarding emergency medical access and burglary, I have been both very concerned regarding my personal security and at extended severe risk of medical need, and I can see the value of both changing one's locks to prevent access (which is not hard to do), and providing immediate access to emergency services when in a time of need. It would be nice if the respect for our preference with regard to which one we need were overt. Changing the policies of a city is said to be easy but requires persistent attending of meetings and talking with people. Contrariwise, in some rural areas, it can take so many hours for authorities or medics to arrive that nobody actually uses such things or even cares what the laws are. I only see knoxboxes in cities. Security is an interesting space that has been run by common obscurity and lack-of-education in the physical domain for some time, and this has apparently worked well for existing powers. Cryptographers may want to question how much they want to empower those requiring backdoors, or give authority to private businesses, when these requests are asked by people who do not understand cryptography in the slightest.