TechCrunch: Florida bill requiring encryption backdoors for social media accounts has failed

[Dennis Donovan]

TechCrunch - Florida bill requiring encryption backdoors for social media accounts has failed

6:15 AM PDT · May 9, 2025
Zack Whittaker

A Florida bill, which would have required social media companies to provide an encryption backdoor for allowing police to access user accounts and private messages, has failed to pass into law.

The Social Media Use by Minors bill was “indefinitely postponed” and “withdrawn from consideration” in the Florida House of Representatives earlier this week. Lawmakers in the Florida Senate had already voted to advance the legislation, but a bill requires both legislative chambers to pass before it can become law.

The bill would have required social media firms to “provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena,” which are typically issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial oversight.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill “dangerous and dumb.” Security professionals have long argued that it is impossible to create a secure backdoor that cannot also be maliciously abused, and encryption backdoors put user data at risk of data breaches.

/snip

[hildegaard28]

1. They're probably

More worried that their crimes will be discovered than they are for the privacy of the American people. But this just demonstrates how much Republicans hate the Constitution. They only pull these unconstitutional bills when they worry they might be applied to them.