Julian Sanchez and Seth Schoen have some initial reactions to the news that the administration will be asking communications companies to design their systems so that it's easier for the government to eavesdrop on them. The Obama administration is arguing that the current legal wiretapping regime needs to be "updated" (read: expanded) so that the government can have an easier time monitoring people's communications over the Internet.
As Sanchez points out, building systems with a backdoor in this matter just makes it easier for people other than the government to find it, and in the future it would be hard for firms to avoid giving governments Americans consider "repressive" similar privileges.
Third, this demand has implications beyond the United States. Networks designed for interception by U.S. authorities will also be more easily tapped by authoritarian governments looking to keep tabs on dissidents. And indeed, this proposal echoes demands from the likes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that their Blackberry system be redesigned for easier interception. By joining that chorus, the U.S. makes it more difficult for firms to resist similar demands from unlovely regimes.
I put "repressive" in quotes only because I think it's an oxymoron to say Americans are more free, therefore we don't have to worry about the government watching everything we do. It should be clear at this point that Internet communications are in many ways far more substantive and intimate than mere phone calls. There's also something ironic about the administration demanding more domestic surveillance authority at a time when FBI agents are getting caught cheating on tests designed to make them more cognizant of Americans' civil liberties.
Kevin Drum snarks about protecting Republicans protecting small-business interests, but part of me wonders if this law will end up being written in a way that allows certain kinds of Internet communications companies not included in the statute to offer encryption without the "backdoor." In a surveillance society, privacy becomes a precious commodity, and someone is going to want to sell it. What that probably means, though, is that regular people won't be able to afford it.
