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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#81

Post by bzb3 »

ajzinsbwbs wrote: post #75
ipnon wrote: post #33

The primary impediment to combating child sexual abuse material is the scarcity of law enforcement agents relative to the scale of offenders.[0] Law enforcement agencies are already at the limit of how many offenders they can prosecute because offenders are primarily detected by agents who are posing as offenders or by agents who are posing as victims. The solution proposed by the researchers in the referenced docume…

That scares me. If that entrapment-at-scale is legal, it could be deployed to throw huge numbers of people in jail for buying drugs or supporting terrorism.

If I emailed you and offered you to share pictures of naked 13 year olds, would you accept?

If I texted you and told you I'm 13 years old, would you start hitting on me?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#82

Post by crusso »

danboarder wrote: post #35
mikestew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run, and with that platform your opponent will conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the audience. Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT…

In that case we need to provide working definitions advocating for privacy and information freedom that the average consumer can appreciate and support. I'm open to ideas. One approach is to explain that without private encrypted communications your information cannot be free: instead it will be monitored and censored by the many parties that believe we should not see or say one thing or another. Privacy enables free…

"information cannot be free"

You're talking about an electorate that has been shown the abuses of its data by Google, Facebook, and others time and again and couldn't care less.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#83

Post by AsyncAwait »

ollo wrote: post #48
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.

> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.

Sure, but I think the U.S. even worse. It's basically right-wing (Democrats) and off the spectrum (Republicans).

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#85

Post by muddythrowaway »

mikestew wrote: post #8
danboarder wrote: post #4

Where are my elected representatives that represent my privacy rights on bills like this? Maybe I need to run for office since I care about end2end encryption, free software, and the rights of free people and information to freely travel around the world...

You can run, and with that platform your opponent will conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the audience. Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT…

Bill Maher may be right -- you have to fight fire with fire. Once mud has been thrown your only option is to throw more mud back. Point out the Cosbys, Epsteins, Trumps, warmongers, etc. "The untouchable elite are the terrorists and molestors"

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#86

Post by foolfoolz »

Klonoar wrote: post #64
programmarchy wrote: post #13

Thankful for Mozilla and EFF, but have any tech elites spoken out against this or put money into defeating it? Thiel, Musk, Altman, Graham... hello? Should we assume SV is complicit?

Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook (who this would presumably really hit at), etc. I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge the idea that you might just try to fight this as unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky given th…

because apple, google, facebook already comply with this. they have built ways for the government to access their data. any company with an important enough set of information is going to get this request and you can’t say no

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#87

Post by krapp »

snarf21 wrote: post #79
blintz wrote: post #3

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

Fear-mongering is strong. Look at all the freedoms we lost after 9/11. Pedophiles and terrorists and porn are always the scapegoats. It is also a very electable sound bite. Everyone is against the "bad people". Re-election at any cost is the goal. We have government of the people and by the people but we stopped being for the people long long ago.

But pedophiles and terrorists are 'bad people' and 'the people' are overwhelmingly in favor of stopping them.

It's only in libertarian/ancap bubbles of places like HN where pedos and terrorists are treated like noble antiheroes in the eternal war against fascism and political correctness. If you're going to talk about government "for the people" you need to remember who "the people" actually are and what the majority of them want.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#88

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

treis wrote: post #70
blintz wrote: post #3

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

>I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right? There's clearly a valid argument from the other side. For example: >Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. https://www.nytimes.com/interact…

as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? I'm actually convinced that all this does is reduce the sharing of such material, e.g. what people are outraged with is usually not only the act in itself but the fact that some sickos get off on this material. but I wouldn't think for a moment that because of some law less kids will be abused.

I'm actually fine with some kids biting the dust (yes literally being killed) to prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything (especially in poor volatile countries where cops are in fact part of the problem and happy to look away ...)

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#89

Post by Klonoar »

foolfoolz wrote: post #86
Klonoar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook (who this would presumably really hit at), etc. I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge the idea that you might just try to fight this as unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky given th…

because apple, google, facebook already comply with this. they have built ways for the government to access their data. any company with an important enough set of information is going to get this request and you can’t say no

I know what you're saying, but where do you think you are? Please have enough common sense to assume I asked the question knowing how that works.

The primary thing with this bill that the companies seem explicitly quiet on is the fact that the use case it opens up for the government (sidestepping user privacy/encryption) coupled with the level of power it more or less places in the Attorney General's hands.

I can't in good faith assume that these companies are comfortable with this, and I'd like to know why they're not speaking up.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#90

Post by granitDev »

There's another good reason for term limits, how many of these VERY OLD people don't even understand what encryption is and couldn't possibly understand the concept that this is like passing a law demanding that you leave your house key at the local police station, unless you let them search your house every second Tuesday.
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