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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#121

Post by surround »

“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993)

> There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through...

> One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will...

> Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...]

https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html

(I recommend reading the full parable.)

—————

clock.org homepage (c. 1998)

> Some agencies of the United States Government (notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), want to prevent the deployment of encryption technology. They want either encryption so weak that just about anyone can break it, or they want a copy of every key used with strong encryption.

https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock....

Sound familiar?

—————

Mujahedeen Secrets (first release: 2007), Al-Queda’s own encrypted messaging software. Those developers aren’t going to respond to a US court order.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#122

Post by pphysch »

president wrote: post #44

Has anyone considered that maybe there are actually people in this world that want to be able to catch criminals and terrorists? Even if the bill does result in adding backdoors (which is all based on speculation anyway), you don't think people and technology would recalibrate itself to overcome issues caused by backdoors? I find it insane that people think technology is so much more important than the potential for…

I'm all for _benevolent_ authoritarian governance.

Problems start to arise when the government pretends they _are_ the former and pretends they _are_not_ the latter.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#123

Post by gspr »

cavanasm wrote: post #112
lukifer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.

Major this. Also plug for CGP Grey's "politics in the animal kingdom" video series that explains exactly why we have that 'lesser of two evils' problem, and how exactly RCV and Alternative vote systems resolve that problem, in a very simple, understandable way. https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom

What I, as a European from a country that elects proportionally (which isn't perfect, but anyway), cannot understand is the blank stare Americans give me when people point out that the two-party system and FPTP are the things that need to be fixed for the US to have a democratic future. It's like so many of them cannot wrap their heads around something being fundamentally broken. The same goes for Canadians and UKians.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#124

Post by xwdv »

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 can. I have one administration in particular that I think can be blamed for this massive expansion of the surveillance state in the past 10 years.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#125

Post by gspr »

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.

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

Really? What country are you in, if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#126

Post by treis »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #88
treis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself?

No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse.

>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.

Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but perhaps you can share examples?

>I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything

Here's one that comes to mind:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fb...

Facebook helped develop a zero day exploit that the FBI used to catch a predator that abused dozens of girls. In this one specific case clearly more power to the cops solved something.

I can't cite any numbers, but it seems the majority of convictions I've read have some variation of evidence being found on phones, computers, or from sites like Facebook. It stands to reason that if we saw default E2E encryption across the board it would be a lot harder for the police to get evidence and would lead to a lot fewer convictions.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#127

Post by gspr »

DudeInBasement wrote: post #74

Why does this matter? The US government can force you to give them your keys, and gag you so you can't say anything...

Yes, but at least when they do that they don't have to fundamentally break crypto. Not that it's OK. I'm just saying.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#128

Post by jedberg »

krapp wrote: post #87
snarf21 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 course everyone wants those bad people stopped. But every law that claims to be "to stop the bad people and save the children" end up not actually getting used to that end, but instead to further harm the people. They all have far more collateral damage.

I used to investigate computer crime. You know what would have made my job really easy? Unlimited access to all computers worldwide.

Luckily I had to learn alternative investigative methods because we value privacy more than we value catching criminals, which is a good thing. I'd rather a criminal go free once in a while than a complete loss of privacy.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#130

Post by jedberg »

choppaface wrote: post #100
qppo wrote: post #40

To Californians, Dianne Feinstein is one of the cosponsors of the bill in the Senate. It really grinds my gears seeing our senior leadership from California take actions that directly harm our interests, both towards our peoples' freedom and our businesses. I feel vindicated for voting against her in 2018, because I thought she'd be out of touch with our interests as a state.

Send her an e-mail in 2 minutes telling her to stop supporting EARN-IT https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

Been there, done that. Her office sends back a letter that boils down to, "We know better than you, please be quiet".
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