So its Crypto Wars 2. There are two possible ways this will play out:
a) Obama is just being polite given that "Call me Dave" is in town and has an election to fight so he can't been seen as being soft on terrorism. He knows that its highly likely that Cameron will be out of a job in six months time so is just stringing him along.
OR:
b) The fix is in, a tame lawmaker will drop a bill that they just happened to have prepared that was sitting in their drawer for a rainy day. Given the Republican's have never met a national security bill that they didn't like expect it to pass through the house and senate with the usual added pork and pardons for the NSA/CIA to make sure nobody goes to jail for recent revelations (Democrats being too chicken to filibuster).
If we don't see a huge outcry from the tech industry pointing out what an insanely bad idea this is on Tuesday then I fear for the future.
There are a fair number of Republicans who would oppose this sort of thing (as many did last time). The most prominent might be Rand Paul, who is a serious prospect for the GOP presidential nomination.
But look at what just happened with civil forfeiture; pressure on the administration came from Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans like to feel privacy from the government too. It just needs to be framed correctly; "imagine if someone like Lois Lerner had a backdoor to every conservative group's email server," or something like that.
And there are other routes they could take with legislation besides global key escrow. They could pass a law that mandates stiff penalties for people who decline to provide their encryption password in the face of a warrant.
There is already laws on the books to handle that. If the government can get a warrant describing the item(s) to be retrieved from the encrypted volume then you can be held in contempt of court if you don't hand them over. There was a recent ruling that (that is being appealed) that ruled in this direction.
But as per the 4th, if the government can't say what they want from the encrypted volume then they are on a fishing trip and you can tell them to get lost. There was a recent ruling that confirmed this (again being appealed).
What is up in the air is whether or not you can be compelled to provide your password to decrypt the volume. Expect the Supremes to have weigh in on this one in the coming years.
Basically all this is an end run around what's left of the 4th and 5th amendments. Probable cause means that law enforcement actually has do its job and build reasonable case rather than just deciding you are a bad person, looking to see which laws you've broken based on your data shadow, and then throwing the book at you in hope you'll settle for a plea.
> They could pass a law that mandates stiff penalties for people who decline to provide their encryption password in the face of a warrant.
It's interesting though -- or scary, even -- that this would mean forgetting the password to an encrypted volume could land you in jail. You don't have the means to prove you're innocent (by providing the password and revealing the data), and because of this you're thrown in jail.
It doesn't seem fair to me. Basically, the authorities are saying "we claim you have illegal encrypted data on that disk". If you cannot prove to us that you don't, you're going to jail. The outcome of this is that even a suspicion can land you in jail. It's on you to prove you're innocent, not on the authorities to prove you're guilty.
a) Obama is just being polite given that "Call me Dave" is in town and has an election to fight so he can't been seen as being soft on terrorism. He knows that its highly likely that Cameron will be out of a job in six months time so is just stringing him along.
OR:
b) The fix is in, a tame lawmaker will drop a bill that they just happened to have prepared that was sitting in their drawer for a rainy day. Given the Republican's have never met a national security bill that they didn't like expect it to pass through the house and senate with the usual added pork and pardons for the NSA/CIA to make sure nobody goes to jail for recent revelations (Democrats being too chicken to filibuster).
If we don't see a huge outcry from the tech industry pointing out what an insanely bad idea this is on Tuesday then I fear for the future.