When the United States government started promoting the idea of installing backdoors on computers and devices in order to help in criminal investigations, several tech companies jumped in alarm, citing some serious security and privacy repercussions of the proposal. Now, two lawmakers have proposed a House bill that if approved, will prevent any state or even local government bodies from forcing tech companies to create backdoors on their software or hardware products.

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The bill was proposed by Democrat Representative Ted Lieu from California and Republican Representative Blake Farenthold from New York.

It is important to note that both California and New York have proposed state legislations that would legally allow law enforcement agencies to install backdoor access to hardware manufacturer devices and even service providers.

Should these bills be enacted into laws even only in New York or California, it would effectively apply to all hardware devices and service all over the US since it will be impractical to design systems that are only specific to one or two states.

Lieu, who holds a degree in Computer Science, said that the proposal to add backdoors on computer systems and other devices is technologically stupid. Tech companies have been debating that should these backdoors be implemented, it will weaken and endanger the security and privacy of the entire system.

In a statement acquired by Wired, Lieu said, "You cannot design a technological backdoor only for the good guys, because hackers will eventually find that backdoor, or what's more likely is the federal government will get hacked through that backdoor."

Lieu also cited the recent hack of the Federal Bureau of Investigations that exposed some highly sensitive information. The representative said that if the government does not have the capacity to protect itself from hackers, the proposed backdoor access will also be vulnerable to such entities.

The bill called "Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications Act of 2016" also known as ENCRYPT has been widely praised by online privacy advocates.

Tagsdata encryption, Data Security, online security, online data security, hackers