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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


I believe the courts have ruled previously that your speech is not limited just because the government has access to it. Otherwise wiretaps would be illegal already. This is just an extension of wiretap law.

In both cases they need to be fought from another angle than freedom of speech, because we've already lost that battle.


If I wish to send you, jedberg, a message that looks like:

C8hWgwo5YeC5ojiOaDe3JVaLev+3zaZDfRVTAjvqNCA=

("Jedberg is thoughtful.", encrypted with AES key jedberg).

I must be able to do so. To compel a backdoor is to make some speech illegal.


The courts have already ruled that it’s ok to make speech illegal in the name of public safety.


To me, C8hWgwo5YeC5ojiOaDe3JVaLev+3zaZDfRVTAjvqNCA= is a lot less harmful than shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

Banning C8hWgwo5YeC5ojiOaDe3JVaLev+3zaZDfRVTAjvqNCA= is akin to banning shouting in a theater, for any purpose. In particular, the banning of political speech is highly protected. One cannot readily show that C8hWgwo5YeC5ojiOaDe3JVaLev+3zaZDfRVTAjvqNCA= is not political speech (and indeed, here, it is).




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