Oppose the Earn IT Act • Hacker News Board

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#541

Post by kortilla » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #377

kortilla wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks can’t base mortgage on possibility of dying: https://www.55places.com/blog/60-year-old-can-get-30-year-mo... Even barring the legal requirement, banks already prices mortgages such that they can handle being stuck holding the title with no payment. Down payments or government guarantees prevent them from holding the bag unless the housing market takes a big downturn.

Yes they can, they just can't use your age or other protected characteristics in the calculation of those odds. The ECOA doesn't say anything about health.

Let me be more clear. Banks don’t give a fuck if you have a high chance of dying a couple of years into a mortgage. It’s no different than you walking away from your mortgage, which they already have priced in.

Additionally, the underwriter of the mortgage sells off the mortgages to other banks once everything is closed up. If a chance of death had any impact on repayment probability, this resale value would be impacted (where age discrimination doesn’t apply) and that doesn’t happen today.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#542

Post by _pmf_ » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 8:37 AM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #511

_pmf_ wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woke cancel culture is a bigger threat to honest people than most governments.

That might be technically true if you consider woke cancel culture as a single entity and compare it individually to each of the 200-ish less-than-median-size countries (and is definitely (technically) true if you count each state/province/city/county/etc government), but we don't actually care about the average government, we care about the governments that are the biggest threat to honest people, like America, Russ…

Speaking for the Third Reich, the Gestapo heavily relied on Blockwarte, the equivalent of the modern SJW,people who have been manipulated into believing snitching on other people is morally good. A fascist state cannot work against unwilling people.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#543

Post by a1369209993 » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #542

a1369209993 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be technically true if you consider woke cancel culture as a single entity and compare it individually to each of the 200-ish less-than-median-size countries (and is definitely (technically) true if you count each state/province/city/county/etc government), but we don't actually care about the average government, we care about the governments that are the biggest threat to honest people, like America, Russ…

Speaking for the Third Reich, the Gestapo heavily relied on Blockwarte, the equivalent of the modern SJW,people who have been manipulated into believing snitching on other people is morally good. A fascist state cannot work against unwilling people.

Well, it can work fine (if less easily) on people who are unwilling, but not sufficiently principled to martyr themselves, using techniques like described at (https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_beli...).

But, yes, social justice goes hand in hand with facism as the two main pillars of naziism.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#544

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #314

kulahan wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best argument I ever heard was: "Would you give up your right to free speech just because you have nothing important to say? No? Then why would you give up your right to privacy just because you have nothing to hide?"

While I fully support strong privacy & encryption, there is absolutely no logic in this argument because it tries to build upon an unrelated hypothetical. A stronger argument should have tried to explain how this violates the constitution: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-c...

It creates a committee which is extremely likely to pass policies which violate the Constitution. In fact, if there were really effective ways to reduce crime online which didn't violate it, they likely would have been passed twenty years ago without trying to piggyback on another bill.

I agree, the EFF should have elaborated more on concrete examples of how it violates the Constitution.

The potential space for bad policy is gargantuan and hard to explore without additional hints or context. Given that enumerated in rhetoric, tech company policy, recent events and the bill itself:

It may create potential for witch hunts. Think of some recent conspiracy theories here.

To censor speech which comes close to looking "suspicious" whomever is the one to define this. This is most likely the government.

It may push companies to use filters which over-censor speech and it may be impossible to get a remedy at the scale at which they operate.

Trolls could abuse mechanisms to silence opinions they disagree with. If a government decides to smear someone's reputation through a coordinated campaign, they could make the argument they are a danger to society and pressure platforms to silence them.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#545

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #366

apeace wrote: post #208

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 ju…

> 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. If we are doing imaginary situations, the proponents of this bill can also do something like this: Imagine there is a bar, where the police are unable to go inside. Every day, p…

Filling someone's head with hateful, racist lies is 100% legal so it would not be applicable to the proponents of the bill. Terrorism is another beast.

You will find a lot more people than you would like in a lot of communities are racist. I do not approve of it but preventing it would enter the realm of thought policing and would require a totalitarian police state.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#546

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

mzakharo1 wrote: post #539

apeace wrote: post #208

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 ju…

Strong encryption is another tool of the rich and powerful to help evade public oversight and scrutiny. Unpopular thought here, cuz, well, most people commenting here are the top wealthy 5-10%, the rich and powerful. It would be a cognitive dissonance to blieve otherwise.

Do you think the rich and powerful would be affected by this bill?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#547

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

metta2uall wrote: post #526

antoncohen wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because when police have a search warrant and storm your home, they can't seize the private conversation you had in bed with your partner a year earlier. They can't suck the memories out of your head. Technology like mobile phones and messaging have become an extension of us, they are used for private conversations and personal memories. Breaking encryption on these is not like search warrants of yesteryear, and…

Whether traditional search warrants or breaking end-to-end encryption violates privacy more really depends on specific cases and the details of how the end-to-end encryption gets broken. Search warrants definitely aim to seize communications and intrude into private notes, collections, offline-only meetings, affairs, and all kinds of potentially embarrassing bedroom items that were purchased anonymously. The only rea…

There is no evidence to suggest people are developing extremely dangerous genetically engineered bio-weapons in their homes or will be capable of doing such in the future.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#548

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #307

apeace wrote: post #208

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 ju…

Most people implicitly mean, "nothing unlawful to hide" when they say that, I think.

What if the government decides protesting is unlawful?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#549

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #479

apeace wrote: post #208

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 ju…

Woke cancel culture is a bigger threat to honest people than most governments.

This is only the case when your government isn't targeting you.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#550

Post by suizi » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

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…

How many of these images are re-circulations? How many of them are new images? How much abuse is actually facilitated on the platform? Does directing more resources towards this take away resources and mind share which could be used to tackle more serious crime than someone posting images over and over?