The people who want a skeleton key to open all electronic doors are the same people who compiled a blackmail database on their own high-clearance employees and failed to keep it safe (the OPM data breach).

My only question to this proposed act is how they're going to keep online banking and e-commerce working..

It's like shooting oneself in the foot before hiking.

> Mujahedeen Secrets (first release: 2007), Al-Queda’s own encrypted messaging software. Those developers aren’t going to respond to a US court order.

Even with that, you are now forcing the terrorists to roll their own encryption. The likelihood of finding an exploit in Mujahadeen Secrets is likely much higher than finding an exploit in Apple Messenger or WhatsApp or something by djb or Moxie, etc. In addition, Mujahadeen is likely having to be side loaded - you won't find it in the App Store. This gives a chance to try to hack a single storage location to have a trojan horse version spread through their network. Finally, it affects recruiting. Basically only someone already comitted will go to the trouble of having Mujahadeen Secrets on their device, whereas a lot more people could be expected to have a common end-to-end messenger on their device. So overall, thinking from a purely law enforcement, anti-terrorist perspective, it would still be better for them to not have e2e in widely used apps, even if the terrorists tried to develop their own app.

The point is that the EARN IT act primarily affects the general population. Al-Queda hasn’t used American-made encryption software for the past 13 years.

> This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house).

To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down.

This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-enterable without a key.

The problem with the doors and locks analogies is that it's not really what this is about.

This isn't about their ability to seize things you have after they get a warrant. It's that they want the ability to seize things you have before they get a warrant, just in case they get one later.

It's like requiring everyone to have video cameras in their house with recordings sent to law enforcement no matter whether they're under suspicion or not, and then claiming that it's fine because they pinky swear not to look at them without a warrant. (Never mind that then you can't prove that they're not cheating, and that it would be the world's largest target for organized crime and foreign powers.)

Where the "bad guys" can build their own indestructible and un-enterable house themselves, without having to give the sheriff a key.

I included the clock.org homepage because I found it surprising how closely it describes the EARN IT act, despite being published before 1998. It’s a warning from over 20 years ago.

I agree that their analogy isn’t particularly strong, so I removed that part from my comment.

> The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down.

That requires following due process, the presumption of innocence, and observing the right to privacy. You have to convince a judge, in the context of the existing laws, that a certain individual or group are suspicious enough to call for (specific) further investigation.

Mass surveillance and forcing weak encryption bypass or overturn all that. It's a radically different view when you assume everybody is guilty of something by default and that they have no right to privacy.