Congress may block state laws mandating access to encrypted devices

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress is pushing legislation to bar states from enacting their own laws that would require manufacturers to maintain the ability to unlock encrypted smartphones. State legislators in California and New York have introduced bills to effectively ban encryption on any smartphone sold in their states. That has prompted members of the US House to offer the ENCRYPT Act, which would stop states from adopting their own encryption laws. "A patchwork of 50 different encryption standards is a recipe for disaster that would create new security vulnerabilities, threaten individual privacy and undermine the competitiveness of American innovators," said Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA), who is sponsoring the federal bill with Reps Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Mike Bishop (R-MI). "National issues require national responses."