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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#201

Post by trsohmers »

coldpie wrote: post #106
granitDev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's got money and power and a D in front of her name, she'll get voted in every time in California. Vote Blue no matter who, remember?

> Vote Blue no matter who, remember? I mean, yes. Feinstein is better than the alternative in the General. The Primaries are the way to get rid of her, I can't believe no one has booted her out yet.

You don't seem to understand the California Jungle/Blanket primary system... All candidates from any/all parties run against each other in the primary, and the top two are the contenders for the general election. Recently this has led to two Democrats always being facing each other in the general election.

In her 2018 race, Feinstein faced another Democrat, who lost by 10 points in the general with Feinstein winning the vast majority of the vote in densely populated areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#202

Post by a1369209993 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #137
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.

Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.

Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point.

(I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#203

Post by vxNsr »

nitrogen wrote: post #53
hundchenkatze wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...

Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.

Nope they lapsed bec trump was upset that they were illegally used against him and he didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#204

Post by chillacy »

surround wrote: post #121

“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%…

> This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house).

To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down.

This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-enterable without a key.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#205

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

treis wrote: post #126
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 E2…

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

call me old fashioned but every time I look at porn (which is very rare these days) I am disgusted by the meta-data that is added to these videos. It shows that people love to click on videos that read "stepdad and stepdaughter ..." and similar taglines. America has a problem with the whole "call me daddy" fetish. I never understood what this is about. It's deeply pedophelic imho and it's the main reason why I hate porn. It looks like it's hard to find videos where some form of domination (rough sex) isn't part of it. the way women are treated is IMO the gateway which normalizes violence first against women (even pretend rape is a genre here pushed by pornhub & co). why do people get off on this and why do porn companies get away with it ?? > Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but perhaps you can share examples?

the problem with FB is mostly that it many countries FB _is_ the Internet. Myanmar (the Rohinga's) would be a fitting example. Also the Philipines where the Duarte government is currently using it on their brutal war on drugs. If there would be justice Zuck and anyone working at FB would be rotting in jail even before we discuss pedophelia. thousands in the Philipines have been killed thanks to Duarte's messaging. FB literally kills and gets away with it.

FB agreeing to develop 0days to crack down on a few cases doesn't make them the good guys. I believe the world would be better off if FB wouldn't exist at all.

Vice is also known to push a pro-cop pro-LE agenda. I stopped watching their videos and reading their content when they showed how cannabis production in Albania hurts Europe (wtf) ... they are a pro-cop & ultra-conservative outlet. Screw vice and screw cops.

> 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,

I know security companies love to cite their work with law-enforcement and how they help fight crime. when I had an interview with the biggest Swiss security company few years ago they bragged about their work with Interpol and how they help fight the bad guys. But nobody ever mentions that the software companies like NSO, Gamma, HackingTeam makes doesn't just allow LS to compromise phones (people assume it's read-only) when reality is the features are always read-write. Putting things on these devices is possible because from an engineering pov why would you limit a feature and not allow write access ... I know enough cops who brag about how they abuse their power . So why would I trust them not to plant shit on these phones (especially when they're convinced that they're dealing with a bad guy).

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#206

Post by manuelabeledo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #188
manuelabeledo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A huge portion of Google Ad income is malicious content, and as long as they can't be sued or indited for it, they're going to continue to automatically approve and profit off criminal activity. Citation needed. Also, wouldn't this also apply to broadcasting companies? Say, potentially harmful commercials airing on prime time.

I was going to challenge you to find me a company selling malware on CBS or NBC, but then I remembered Google runs TV ads, so fair point. /s And importantly, broadcast television doesn't get Section 230 protections, and does just fine. A great example of why tech companies don't need immunity. Broadcast TV ads are sold on a smaller scale, such that humans are involved in the process and bad actors are caught early. >…

This doesn't address my question though: is it true that a significant percentage of Google's Adsense revenue comes from such ads?

I'm not denying that Google profits from these, that would be silly. My point is that broadcast companies run morally questionable ads all the time, yet it seems that we should be holding Google for a higher level of accountability.

Take for example drug commercials. If you are concerned about scams targeting seniors, then you must have reservations about these, since the way they portray drug positive effects, and downplay the adverse ones, is clearly misleading. Or, say, political ads. Facebook is taking a lot of flak because of these, but local TV stations have been running misleading and often borderline hateful commercials for ages, e.g.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-met-jeanne-ives-b...

https://www.kcur.org/show/up-to-date/2016-07-25/asian-americ...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/10577284453865390...

None of the broadcasters involved in playing these commercials faced any sort of legal consequences. Shouldn't that change, too?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#207

Post by bcassedy »

tzs wrote: post #145
manuelabeledo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the start of a false dichotomy.

Not necessarily. These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to keep proposing bills to address these problems until something passes. By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be another bill from the same general set of pe…

Child porn is a serious problem in that it is abhorrent.

I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem in that it has significant impact at a societal level.

These bills are not being introduced to significantly reduce child porn. They're meant to further enhance surveillance powers or earn easy political points. Any actual effect on crime is a side benefit.

Let's not forget that the same people that propose these bills are the ones hanging out at Epstein's private island.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#208

Post by apeace »

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument.

Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming.

We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal.

Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we should make changes to our society where having a private conversation is never allowed.

This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is also great.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#209

Post by surround »

chillacy wrote: post #204
surround wrote: post #121

“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%…

> This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house). To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down. This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-enterable without a key.

I included the clock.org homepage because I found it surprising how closely it describes the EARN IT act, despite being published before 1998. It’s a warning from over 20 years ago.

I agree that their analogy isn’t particularly strong, so I removed that part from my comment.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#210

Post by [deleted] »

treis wrote: post #126
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 E2…

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