And you wonder why the TP'ers say we're headed towards a socialistic society. I think that they are too radical of course, but it does seem that one wall at a time is being built around us.

Thats old news already.

I agree it does need to be done for national security.

The Big Question - who is going to over see? ? Similar to a wire tap they needed to get a court order and I suspect this is much in the same way.

FaceBook and Twitter is all public so you don't need a court order for that.

And secret wiretaps (some found to be illegal) were OK if a rethugican president did it?

Did I say that?

With a warrant they are necessary for national security though. Yes it was abused, but this has the potential to be abused even easier than tapping phone lines, the technology is entirely different and too easy for anyone with a computer to abuse. Not the same as tapping phone lines. This plan is a blanket plan to make back doors into everybody's internets.

It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.

It's just the right's mantra: "It's OK if our guy does it, but it's the end of the world if the other guy does it." There is the potential for abuse in just about everything. I would assume that sufficient safeguards would be imposed. Of course, it's up to us to make sure.

It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.

Those technologies have been around for a long time - since Radio.
Unless your suggesting that the law go back to horses and paper

Really this is about how technology leap frogs the ability laws that are written decades ago to catch up.

Before you simply get a court order and then drive over to the suspects home and wire tap it or use the grid <-- Ta Dah

NOW

They cannot just go over to a suspects house and wire tap it. - They are on the internet - WiFi - Skype - email, you name it.

The Bottom Line Point is;
Authorities need to make this action legal or otherwise whatever evidence they gather off the internet is useless in court.

Yes that is the far right's mantra, but I'm not part of the far right. If I was at one time I must have been high. ;-)

There are supposedly sufficient safeguards for phone tapping too. The point is that the holes they want to put into the code are accessible by any geek sitting their Mom's basement, not just those with access to phone switching equipment.

So, when are you moving to the basement?



Anyone who wishes to remain "dark" would not be using anything that could be monitored.

Which is another reason to not jeopardize our rights. What's the purpose of enacting it if the bad guys aren't using it. Then there's him whining to Rolling Stone about Fox News and their freedom of the press he thinks should be corralled for the good of the country, just because they don't agree with him. The last part wasn't really his words but that was the message.

See a pattern of suppressing our rights forming? Just kind of like the old guard.

The basement? I thought here was as low as we could get.

Actually, the bottom line (or, at least what the government is saying) is that they don't have the capability to quickly and effectively decipher (legally or otherwise) modern encrypted communications, so they want developers of such communication protocols to purposely build-in back doors to make deciphering them easier ...

The trouble of course, is that if you make it easier for the authorities, you also make it easier for hackers and anyone else desiring to monitor those communications -- purposely weakening the security of your programs/protocols is not necessarily a good idea ;-)