Yeah, a better written bill would include "Within 48 hours" or "Within three seconds of a request from someone whose third cousin is a dog-catcher who can spell

Yeah, a better written bill would include "Within 48 hours" or "Within three seconds of a request from someone whose third cousin is a dog-catcher who can spell 'Lawful request'" (too much to hope for "Within heat-death of the known universe"). These two bills are actually clever probes, IMHO. What are the chances they run afoul of interstate commerce provisions? But hey, C compilers are tiny. It's no problem to put one on a phone. I would: - Comply. Rip encryption out of the OS. [keep reading!] - Make a plug-in for the crypto. That probably already exists in the form of a library, but in any event it doesn't seem hard. - Have a system update -- one that is fetched very, very early in system setup -- download and install that plugin. To avoid the possibility that downloads can be blocked, you release the source code and give existing phones, already in many hands, the ability to compile that code on the device (some handwaving here, but you can probably make that secure, for specifically that plugin, and maybe exactly that version of the source). You need a way to distribute bug fixes, but again you're dealing with source that's not part of the OS. That source-level plugin isn't an operating system, and we're back in territory where the government has to ban specific software components, and maybe ban source code (which is going to be a really difficult 1st Amendment argument).