If Sen. Lindsey Graham gets his way, the federal government will launch another attack on online privacy. The South Carolina Republican will ask lawmakers to give Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice unchecked access to all of your messaging, file-sharing, and video-sharing tools. That is bad news for just about everyone and a nightmare for those who value digital privacy.
So what’s the point?
It seems the point is simply to give unchecked power to the attorney general and allow the federal government to impose other de facto mandates that could never get through Congress as stand-alone legislation.
It continues to astonish me how the ideological shift has fully completed within the GOP. After having elected arguably the most authoritarian person to ever hold the office of the Presidency, now one of his most fervent and unapologetic surrogates in the Senate is promoting legislation that would further erode our privacy and empower the AG and DOJ even more than they already are.
Welcome to the new GOP under Trump. Authoritarianism is now en-vogue. Cheers or jeers? What say you?
Wasn’t surprised to read that it also has to do with Barr’s whining about not being able to force companies (Apple) to unlock devices for law enforcement.
Cue the “well if you’ve got nothing bad on your device you’ve got nothing to worry about” crowd.
Barr is nothing if not a proponent of authoritarianism and government control and power over everyone else. He is another reason, in an ever-growing list of reasons, why Trump is the most authoritarian President to ever hold the office.
This proposed law sounds bad in the article. If the article is accurate, I wholeheartedly oppose it. Be interesting to see what it actually looks like.
