"House Bill Would Ban States From Weakening Encryption"

Four members of the U.S. House of Representatives recently reintroduced a bill known as the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act. This bill is designed to prevent states and municipalities from passing their own laws to weaken or ban strong encryption. One member pointed out that having a patchwork of many different mandatory state-level encryption standards would introduce cyber vulnerabilities, threaten privacy, and undermine American innovators' competitiveness. The bill addresses the different ways in which states might try to legislate access to encrypted devices or apps. The bill would prevent states from enacting measures that require product or service vendors to design or change the security functions in their product or service to enable the surveillance of users. States would also be prevented from passing measures that force vendors to allow the physical search of such products by any agency or instrumentality of a State, a political subdivision of a State, or the United States. The bill would also prevent states from establishing measures to force the implementation of backdoors or other decryption methods into products. This article continues to discuss the aim of the ENCRYPT Act and the importance of robust encryption.

Decipher reports "House Bill Would Ban States From Weakening Encryption"