Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 367 posts

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#11

Post by raxxorrax »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

This bill will be sold to the right as helping fight against foreign terrorists living in the US. It will be sold to the left as helping against the alt-right organizing and spreading hate. And it will be sold to everyone as helping stop child exploitation. In addition, there is already a lot going on in the country to keep the average person from focusing on this issue. It seems like allowing the government to spy o…

Not from the US, but many on the left will see these capabilities as a counterweight to corporate data collection, others against the "dangers" of free thought. Very naive thought, but I think this will pass. Republicans mostly don't seem to know much of anything but certainly won't drop this opportunity.

That said, I don't think it would end encryption though, since it is out of the hands of governments. Of course a lot of traffic will be compromised still and it would grant access to large data hoarders.

edit: Of course that also means that Apple and MS OS aren't safe anymore.

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#14

Post by anon9001 »

gentleman11 wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

This bill will be sold to the right as helping fight against foreign terrorists living in the US. It will be sold to the left as helping against the alt-right organizing and spreading hate. And it will be sold to everyone as helping stop child exploitation. In addition, there is already a lot going on in the country to keep the average person from focusing on this issue. It seems like allowing the government to spy o…

The further we get from wwii, and the Cold War to some extent, the harder it is to remind the public how scary it is to live without freedoms. How do we remind them? Could China and Russia act as cautionary tales that voters would respond to? Putin jailing and murdering his political opposition, Chinese concentration camps for muslims - why do so many people assume it can’t happen here? Nazi germany wasnt some backwa…

> why do so many people assume it can’t happen here?

Is that actually the assumption? I'm pretty sure everyone already assumes that the government already has all of your messages, browsing history, transactions, etc, and they can come for you if they want.

Between the massive surveillance state that already exists and the judicial miracle of "parallel construction", it's already very much a problem. The only thing left to do is scale up.

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#15

Post by incompatible »

Would this be for "online services" only, or would operating system vendors have to decrypt users' encrypted file systems on demand?

Answer: according to the article "any device that has more than a gigabyte of storage and sells more than a million units a year could have to build a government-required backdoor if it is subject to five warrants or other requests, as would any operating system or communication system with more than a million active users."

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#16

Post by NalNezumi »

0xy wrote: post #4

This bill wouldn't receive enough support to pass considering the libertarian wing of the Republican Party right?

Isn't the libertarian wing considerably small part of the Republican party at the moment? On top of my head I can only recount 3 major figures. The rest are libertarians until they enter the game(get elected), then switch to being party acolytes.

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#17

Post by pensatoio »

These bills terrify me. A lot of stuff happens in politics that’s frustrating, and much of it doesn’t catch my attention. There’s something about the pure ignorance that goes into breaking encryption that I can’t comprehend. I can understand when bills come through and the extreme differences in opinion are the result of different interpretations of facts and truth, but when it comes to encryption, there is no safe party. We will all suffer equally, every political party and apolitical individual alike, once these idiots make math illegal.

Whatever your political affiliations may be, these are grounds for r/pcm level unity.

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#18

Post by cheschire »

ashton314 wrote: post #13

Is there a way to see exactly which senators vote for a bill? I’m writing my senators now about how bad this bill would be, and I want to see if they follow through.

Yes! https://www.senate.gov/legislative/HowTo/how_to_votes.htm

There's also third party sites, such as this one which offers email services. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes

Re: An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

#19

Post by personjerry »

A more digestible way to read the article: https://thinkerapp.com/shared/RichArchetypalBettong

Context: I'm building an app to help the intellectually curious like me to be better able to approach dry, long, and intimidating articles. The link is a highlighted summary generated with this app, and if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it!

Post reply on HN