The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever(cyberlaw.stanford.edu)

1,363 pointsby grappler4 tahun yang lalu482 comments

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2022/02/earn-it-act-back-and-it%E2%80%99s-more-dangerous-ever

482 comments

mrandish4 tahun yang lalu

While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection to most, I'd like to see more mainstream discussion about who this bill benefits and why. The legislation 'coincidentally' achieves exactly the agenda proposed by the "surveillance state" (ie CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, law enforcement lobby, state prosecutors, etc). While it doesn't specifically prohibit public access to encryption, it seeks to create nearly the same effect by making it legally risky for large social media and platform companies to offer end-to-end encryption as a default to law-abiding citizens. It's no accident that almost every version of the bill creates this exposure to essentially bottomless legal liability for platforms offering secure communications.

Frankly, this scares the crap out of me. These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. While not explicitly outlawing untappable communications, it's much easier to identify who is choosing to use end-to-end encryption when it's not the typical default. This will ultimately put all of us who care about secure communications under default suspicion, whether our interest in private comms is a moral ideal, political principle or simply proper technical architecture and data hygiene. In today's multi-national environment of nation-state, criminal and privateer (NSO etc) threat actors, insecure communications over Internet infrastructure should only be seen as an ill-advised risky behavior or a technical bug.

loteck4 tahun yang lalu

The 3 Techdirt links in the article are especially helpful for catching up.

EARN IT is another skirmish in the 30+ year old Crypto Wars. For those who care about defending privacy and encryption, exhaustion is not an option.

Power-hungry governments must be viewed similarly to an APT in this context. They are following their very nature, and they will never stop inventing new approaches.

There is no other option except to stay organized and always ready to engage.

NewMountain4 tahun yang lalu

For those living in California: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

A copy of my note if you would like a template:

``` Dear Senator Feinstein,

I am deeply disappointed with your support of the EARN IT act and am expressing my deep concern and disapproval of such a bill.

Congruent with the recent report released by Stanford, I am expressing my deep disappointment in your sponsorship of the EARN IT act. I believe it represents a fundamental undermining of citizens right to privacy through strong encryption under the extremely divisive framing of "protecting the children". As a Father of two children myself, I do not believe that whatever incremental improvement to their safety, if any at all, justifies the undermining of encryption of ordinary citizens. In my opinion, this law actively undermines the fourth amendment in the digital realm and I must state that if you believe this is in my best interest, you have lost both my vote and my trust. ```

boppo14 tahun yang lalu

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only way this ends with the preservation of encryption as a standard is a bipartisan fappening-style leak of CEOs, politicians, lawyers, etc. Not just sexual content, but intimate content of any and all kinds: financial records, healthcare visits, everyday texts, etc.

cyberlurker4 tahun yang lalu

No matter your opinion on the issue, the firearm lobby would probably serve as an effective model for fighting legislation like this on a long term basis.

jimbob454 tahun yang lalu

Graham (R-SC)

Blumenthal (D-CT)*

Durbin (D-IL)

Grassley (R-IA)*

Feinstein (D-CA)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Whitehouse (D-RI)

Hawley (R-MO)

Hirono (D-HI)

Kennedy (D-LA)*

Casey (D-PA)

Blackburn (R-TN)

Masto (D-NV)*

Collins (R-ME)

Hassan (D-NH)*

Ernst (R-IA)

Warner (D-VA)

Hyde-Smith (R-MI)

Murkowski (R-AK)*

Portman (R-OH)*

* are up for re-election this year.

Bit of a pain to find this information really - couldn't find a single news outlet with a list of who introduced the bill. Kinda seems like they don't want to be known.

MatekCopatek4 tahun yang lalu

To start, I absolutely don't think this bill is good, BUT I think there might be potential for some interesting silver lining.

Let's say it's passed and big platforms such as FB need to start heavily policing their users because they become responsible for all published content. This level of moderation is nearly impossible to achieve, so they are forced to heavily limit participation (you can only post a limited amount, posts need to be confirmed before becoming public, AI filters auto-reject various topics etc.).

Users are pissed and move to platforms with "more freedom", but nothing lasts - as soon as they grow, they all hit those same issues.

Because all the responsibility is on the publisher, the only realistic solutions are smaller and more distributed communities. You can self publish your blog or create an invite-only forum/chatroom/Mastodon instance for your friends/family/neighbourhood.

Because now everyone is doing this, hosting providers, ISPs and software publishers adapt by improving UX and reducing technical barrier to entry. It's basically a reneissance of oldschool internet.

Whaddya say, too optimistic?

dsign4 tahun yang lalu

Here is where we are going:

https://dsignrandom.tumblr.com/post/675431677522329600/not-s...

I think that these bills will have not only a chilling effect over free speech, but also reduce the overall safety of citizens, both of which are truly bad things. And make no mistake, many countries will follow the lead of USA, UK and Australia in taking these steps.

On the plus side, moving free speech outside the moderation of big tech and, by extension, big-government, is a good thing. And that will happen the moment people realize that they are liable for CSAM crimes for posting photos of bread and having a stupid AI flag them, or referring to their cat as "my kid" in a tweet. People with a strong political opinion on bread or otherwise will need to find high-effort platforms to publish those opinions, i.e. magazines, books, and (eventually) face-to-face meetups. My perhaps over-optimistic hope is that this will attenuate the rage-by-tweet phenomenon, we will get back to thinking before publicly expressing something, and people will only get mobilized after informing themselves properly on a subject. Even if this is a "count your blessings" attitude.

kweingar4 tahun yang lalu

The main concern I have is the technological/administrative burden put on smaller platforms, which would cause further consolidation of the web.

What obligations this would impose on an operator of a small web forum?

beebmam4 tahun yang lalu

All it is going to take is one big violent event organized using end-to-end encryption and that's it, this bill (or something like it) will pass. So you should probably prepare for that political battle if this is an issue you care about

grammers4 tahun yang lalu

Man that's bad. I wish if a bill was off the table once, it can't be simply brought back again and again. It feels like constantly treading water, no wonder people are frustrated with politics.

ghoward4 tahun yang lalu

If anyone needs a link to point politicians to, you can use [1].

Suggestions welcome for improvements.

[1]: https://everyoneneedsencryption.gavinhoward.com/

prepend4 tahun yang lalu

I wish they would address real problems like arbitrary enforcement of TOS that damages users with no recourse. There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support.

Child abuse is serious, but not that common and this law will do little to change that. The lack of a UCC-style law for big tech platforms affects way more people.

This seems like BS that will squelch small players that can’t afford to comply. And consolidate more power into a few small firms.

tehwebguy4 tahun yang lalu

It’s not just this specific legislation, there is no reason to give police any additional power and all the reason in the world to dial back the extraordinary power they already have.

iopq4 tahun yang lalu

Only Rand Paul and Ron Wyden voted against FOSTA/SESTA, the legislation passing 97 to 2

friendlydog4 tahun yang lalu

Instead of just getting these shutdown how about an opposing act which puts penalties for lobbyists and politicians who back this kind of thing?

I don't want to keep fighting zombie bills like these, because we will eventually miss one.

uejfiweun4 tahun yang lalu

It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.

urthor4 tahun yang lalu

I feel like there's two big issues at war with this one.

1) The Web 2.0 war over how much legal liability internet platforms have to bear. This is the big one to me, ever since the DMCA this is the pivotal issues about the internet.

2) The ongoing war against E2E encryption. This is a nonissue, the attempts of the authorities to restrict digital encryption are pointless and futile.

I'm a big fan of reform in #1. The big internet platforms like Facebook absolutely need to face far more legal liability for their actions.

But conflating the thing into one big bill that pushes forward E2E encryption restrictions is one of the issues with democracy in America.

There is so much horse trading involved in Washington required to do anything, because of lobbyist vetos, the fact all these issues have to end up in an omnibus bill is ridiculous.

HowardPlayzOA4 tahun yang lalu

The EARN IT bill was not dangerous before this year; it was to hunt down some child predators in all platforms such as TikTok. I don’t know why they need to pass the bill, but the ways of living under this such a bill will be terrifying; such a thing would be spied like Mainland China when they are using a social credit technique for everyone who browses things online. In other words, we must protest the bill by sending some important details of why the bill must rip off from the checklists due to our own security and privacy. Even I am using ZOOM in my iPhone to chat with my friends, including Signal and Discord. Whenever this bill passed, we must be ready for the REVOLUTION to start. That’s all I have to say today.

totorovirus4 tahun yang lalu

wow I am just utterly surprised how the politicians in US are trying to pass the bill via CSAM just like the politicians in korea. Korea already has a DNS surveilance on porn related websites because it may contain sexually abusive material that may harm teenagers' mental health (it is called children and teenangers act). They even passed a bill to monitor the videos shared in online chatroom because people may share sexually abusive material via messengers. They have a very strong ethical reason in that they are trying to protect children and teenagers, and it is difficult to overcome that by making a case for privacy protection.

SturgeonsLaw4 tahun yang lalu

These assholes just keep trying and trying until they get their way. At least it's good to see there's some actual pushback in the United States. Here in Australia, this sort of legislation has bipartisan support, it gets rubberstamped and passed on a Friday evening before a public holiday with the media staying silent.

Keep fighting against these bills, or else you'll get a government that happily runs roughshod over your civil liberties like ours.

jeegsy4 tahun yang lalu

I'm not sure why a law is needed. These big tech companies do the government's bidding all the time.

shmerl4 tahun yang lalu

Using encryption should be considered a right, this way such kind of bills will become impossible.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

ryeights4 tahun yang lalu

Politicians are malignant tumors on free, democratic society. IMO anyone who would choose to run for a political office in today’s society should be banned from ever holding a position of power.

natsup1234904 tahun yang lalu

If this bill passes, it will only weaken America's position as leader in the Internet space. The world will eventually benefit from that weakening. We will route around America.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

neycoda4 tahun yang lalu

I can't read the article on mobile, it's apparently formatted for an 85" ultra-widescreen 4K screen

lstroud4 tahun yang lalu

Will all government agencies be required to comply? I would think that would be an issue.

lawrenceyan4 tahun yang lalu

Great power comes with great responsibility. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?