They have decided that there’s no political will to ban crypto today, but have vowed to bring it back after some unspecific future terrorist atrocity.
This reminds me of the Patriot Act — hundreds of pages of legislation, sitting in a drawer, waiting to be produced when the right historical moment emerged. It’s always amazed me that 9/11 truthers think the worst indictment you could make of the US political establishment is that they killed 3,000+ people — what about the totally non-speculative, indisputable fact that there were US political actors who contemplated some nonspecific future disaster, and whose version of preparing for that disaster was to lay in an orwellian legal maneuver, as opposed to, say, a bunch of bandages, plasma and refugee shelters?
Although “the legislative environment is very hostile today,” the intelligence community’s top lawyer, Robert S. Litt, said to colleagues in an August e-mail, which was obtained by The Post, “it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.”
There is value, he said, in “keeping our options open for such a situation.”
Having Lost The Debate On Backdooring Encryption, Intelligence Community Plans To Wait Until Next Terrorist Attack [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]