[TriLUG] Obama administration won’t seek encryption-backdoor legislation

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

Came across this article this morning:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/obama-administration-wont-seek-encryption-backdoor-legislation/

"FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel that the Obama
administration won't ask Congress for legislation requiring the tech
sector to install backdoors into their products so the authorities can
access encrypted data.

(snip)

The government's lobbying efforts, at least publicly, appear to be failing
to convince tech companies to build backdoors into their products. Some of
the biggest names in tech, like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, have
publicly opposed allowing the government a key to access their consumers'
encrypted products. All the while, some government officials, including
Comey, have railed against Apple and Google for selling encrypted products
where only the end-user has the decryption passcode."

I thought that this was interesting in light of the conversation last week
about effectively using "executive action" to kill open source network
solutions like Tomato and WRT as well as flashing phones to avoid using
carrier authorized systems.

It would seem that while the govt is now open about it's unlawful desire
to spy on everyone, thanks to Snowden no doubt, they are working a two
pronged approach: one focus on pressuring corporate based products to
comply with their scheme, while two, criminalizing alternative non
corporate solutions.

As I understand it, current key based cryptography makes it difficult for
a third party to decode data and nearly impossible to do so in real time
unless it possesses the private key.  Of course having people hold the
keys rather than a (not so) trusted 3rd party is contrary to the govt.'s
agenda.