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The New York Times reports today that the Obama adminstration plans to propose “sweeping new regulations for the Internet” that will help them wiretap communications by criminal and terrorism suspects. In particular, they want anyone who provides encrypted communications services to have the ability to monitor, decrypt, and make messages available to the feds when they ask for them:

Susan Landau, a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise costly impediments to innovation by small startups. “Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the product out faster,” she said.

I look forward to conservatives at Fox News and the Heritage Foundation expressing outrage over a proposal that will heighten uncertainty and burden our small businesses with yet another set of bureaucratic rules. After all, we know how important small businesses are to these guys. So they’ll surely object. Right?

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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