Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, with a caustic take on the Burr Feinstein encryption bill:

This is dangerously delusional. You can’t protect privacy and security when you have all of these encryption keys floating around. Pretending otherwise shows ignorance, delusion, or dishonesty, and it ignores very recent history: Recall that the Office of Personal Management that couldn’t protect the privacy of 18 million government employees. Even the hypersecretive NSA couldn’t keep some of its own secrets.

Furthermore, the bill does nothing to stop bad actors from using freely and openly available unbreakable cipher technology, nor can it prevent them from using clever ways, such as steganography, to make their communications invisible. (One US Attorney came up with a novel idea for fighting unbreakable encryption: Just ban the import of Open Source encryption. So ordered!)

The bill’s greatest danger, however, is its disregard for the dire consequences of putting US tech companies at a competitive disadvantage in World markets. How does a company export communication technology that contains a US government backdoor? Overseas customers will balk.

These arguments have all surfaced before, but they cannot be stated enough. I have yet to hear a well crafted response to these arguments from the government personnel crafting the legislation.

Jean-Louis does a terrific job. The whole post is right on, top to bottom.