Screaming Penguin

Yahoo's top tech story this morning: "Police don't like them darn computer scrambling programs!" For those of you not fluent in redneck, "computer scrambling programs" refers to encryption programs such as Pretty Good Privacy. The basis of Yahoo's story is that the US Justice Department has proposed legislation, Cyberspace Electronic Security Act, which would allow investigators to attain warrants which would allow them to secretly enter homes and offices of suspected criminals in order to locate passwords or install encryption breaking devices. Sounds like an interesting story, but that is as much detail as we get from the story. The rest of the story is a tediously generic explanation of what "computer scrambling" is and how it can be a "safe haven" for criminals. I want to know more detail about the actual legislation and what priveledges it will give law enforcement. I am certainly not against giving crimefighters an edge over high-tech criminals, but the media has to do a better job of detailing for us the ramifications upon our freedom of speech and rights to privacy so that we can form opinions and take action if we feel the need to protect ourselves from such legislation. Don't dumb your story down to widen your audience by meeting the lowest common denominator.