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An even worse anti-encryption bill than EARN IT

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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

#51

Post by zelphirkalt »

> Incentivizes technical innovation

What a load of bs.

Because those tech-freaks always find a way right? Innovation will simply appear without any doing on our part. We can just create non-sense bills and laws and they will make it work. They will magically find a way.

These imbeciles do not even understand the simplest things about encryption, but want to make laws for it. Ridiculous. I would laugh right now, if it was not such a serious issue.

Well, I am not in the US, but it will affect people world wide, who use services hosted in the US and next things happening EU comes around the corner with an equally stupid idea and it will hit me directly. Time for EFF again to save this world from idiotic leadership. You have my support.

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

#52

Post by bluescarni »

mjburgess wrote: post #49
grey-area wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the symbol of fasces was only used in ancient Rome and has no other meaning? Or the swastika, used in India as a symbol meaning wellbeing? Do you genuinely think symbolism and the meaning of words isn't plastic and contingent on context?

I think when people trade on the negative connotations of "fascism" and then turn around and go "oh i mean this..." they're being duplicitous and alarmist. The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc. These did not lead to Fascism, the "obviously bad thing" which they are being alarmist about. Fascism…

> Fascism was a direct result of, and contingent upon, the mass death and poverty caused by WWI.

That is grossly wrong. There was no "mass death and poverty" in Italy during or after WWI.

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

#53

Post by throw47654 »

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…

I would dare say it’s already happened here to a segment of our population. The War on Drugs, secret prisons, National Security Letters, extraordinary renditions, and “signature strikes.”

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

#54

Post by nix23 »

choeger wrote: post #3

With China on the one end going into full dystopian mode and the US aiming for a modern police state, I really wonder what the endgame is. Full fascism again?

Would be exceptionally fine if Europe leave out this round of overall extremism...would be a first timer ;)

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

#56

Post by austincheney »

nikitaga wrote: post #44
austincheney wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These anti encryption policies are almost always about online services though. Government is generally not so concerned with encryption in the OS because people rarely encrypt their data at rest and even when they do it is still stored data at rest that can be brute forced in time. If you are using a web browser for a typical online service any backdoor is less concerning than simply going straight to the service pro…

The article says that this bill applies to operating systems just as well. It's doesn't matter what's typical or reasonable, the hostile actors pushing this and the EARN IT act don't care. Let's skip the denial stage. This is not a technical problem, it's a political problem and needs political solutions. Whatever technical solution you come up with will simply be made illegal if anyone but the nerdy 0.0001% will end…

> Whatever technical solution you come up with will simply be made illegal if anyone but the nerdy 0.0001% will end up using it.

But that never happened with BitTorrent. Conversely, industry gradually stopped caring about pursuits of IP violators. While this is ultimately a political problem it will only be practiced where it’s enforceable like all other political problems.

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

#57

Post by kd5bjo »

noodlesUK wrote: post #43

What’s the situation when two (ostensibly friendly) superpowers, the US and EU, have totally mutually incompatible laws regarding something totally transnational? I’m not asking rhetorically, I’m asking legally, what is a company to do if they want to do business in both locations?

Depending on the nature of the conflict, it might not be possible at all. Countries generally reserve the right to control both what crosses and happens within their borders- that’s more or less the definiton of sovereignty. If two countries have mutually-exclusive regulations regarding some goods, there isn’t a legal trade in those goods between them.

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

#58

Post by nexuist »

ngold wrote: post #45
pensatoio wrote: post #17

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 p…

It's very simple. The powers that be just want to break encryption, but only for law enforcement use. Simple. Uggg.

One of the long term consequence of legally dismantling our Constitution (which is the US equivalent to "company values", both in terms of how often they are invoked and by how often the same people ignore them) is that it dramatically reduces our soft power on the world stage.

Right now China is engaging in textbook "secret war" with Hong Kong as well as a variety of other human rights abuses. It used to be that we, the U.S., could speak up, and have dozens of allies rush to our side on the principle that we are to be trusted. Consider how shoddy the evidence for justifying Iraq was, and the fact that most countries still chose to send their troops with ours. Our word used to mean something.

But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own?

Backdooring encryption is just another attack on our basic freedoms. It is crazy that at a time we should be touting our values as proof they are objectively better compared to our competitors', we are also trying to take them apart and bring us down to the same level as our competitors. It's like a vast cargo ship encountering a dinghy, and the captain tells the dinghy "you need to change your construction materials, you're shooting yourself in the foot by making poor choices" while his crewmen are hard at work drilling holes into the windows below deck.

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

#59

Post by throwaway49872 »

mjburgess wrote: post #49
grey-area wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the symbol of fasces was only used in ancient Rome and has no other meaning? Or the swastika, used in India as a symbol meaning wellbeing? Do you genuinely think symbolism and the meaning of words isn't plastic and contingent on context?

I think when people trade on the negative connotations of "fascism" and then turn around and go "oh i mean this..." they're being duplicitous and alarmist. The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc. These did not lead to Fascism, the "obviously bad thing" which they are being alarmist about. Fascism…

> The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc.

Add authoritarianism and militarism to it and you have the definition used by historians and political scientists.

> Fascism was a direct result of, and contingent upon, the mass death and poverty caused by WWI.

"mass death and poverty" in Italy? This is plain false. But it's also besides the point:

The word "fascism" is used to describe any similar pattern of thought and behavior, just like "communism", "skepticism", "pacifism".

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

#60

Post by proverbialbunny »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #55

who would be he people in congress backing this bill? is there a list?

It says at the top of the article

>On Tuesday, June 23, Senators Graham (R-SC), Cotton (R-AR), and Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill that is a full-frontal nuclear assault on encryption in the United States.

As a general rule of thumb with how US politics have been going, this bill will probably be split down party line.

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