Don't underestimate their potential for ignorance and stupidity. I think the Feinstein bill represents a genuine attempt to push their solution through and not

Don't underestimate their potential for ignorance and stupidity. I think the Feinstein bill represents a genuine attempt to push their solution through and not an attempt to force a false compromise later. For that strategy to work, they'd at least need a decent understanding of encryption in order to draft a proposal that was so over the top that the desired compromise would look palatable by comparison. Have you come across any statements from Feinstein, Burr, or their supporters to suggest that they have anything remotely close to that sort of technical understanding of the issues at stake? I sure as hell haven't. Their bill's text is actually pretty straight-forward when read in light of the level of ignorance on display in their interviews and the WSJ op-ed piece. In fact, the bill matches up really well with how they think encryption actually works: encryption is bad, so just make it effectively disappear. Unfortunately, the people who can best explain to them why they're wrong are the same people they've already written off as just another competing advocacy group instead of subject-matter experts. To be fair, that's pretty common in Washington. But the jadedness it creates is hugely problematic when they mischaracterize things. So instead of recognizing the community's pretty obvious credibility, they see the exact opposite.