On the recordJune 3, 2015
Madam Chair, I will just summarize why this is an important amendment. We trust the National Institute of Standards and Technology to perform their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. That is one of the great things about NIST: its authorization is in the Constitution, to set the standards of weights and measures. So I appreciate the job they do. But we put a lot of trust into them when they set these standards. And a lot of people make business decisions. It is kind of like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, if I may use that analogy. So, when we stamp something as a government-approved standard, we want to know it is the best in the world, that the United States has the best encryption in their products, the best encryption. We want the products that our government buys to be safe. So it would be wrong for NIST to spend money working to put back doors in our products. That is why I urge our colleagues to vote for this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.
