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Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

act.eff.org

271–280 of 361 posts

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#271

The earn it bill is already unenforceable. open source crypto already exists and is available everywhere. so yea. good luck stopping people from using it.

This means anyone implementing and using effective crypto will be flagged for closer monitoring. A jury is made up of twelve people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. It won't be hard for a prosecutor to convince them that going out of your way to use encryption is proof of possessing child pornography. Or terrorist stuff. Or drug stuff. Or whatever else people are terrified of at the time.

Then start sending random bytes of everyone. Random bytes are undistinguishable from encrypted data. If everyone is in possession of what appears to be encrypted data, then it's no longer reasonable cause for suspicion.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#272
post #218
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do we solve this problem? We don't, we accept that encryption is part of the modern world and learn to live with it. Because there's nothing else you can do about it. See encryption is just math, and you can't really outlaw or limit how math is used. If we have bad actors who want to encrypt their communication, they absolutely can with or without this bill. Even if Whatsapp/Telegram/Whatever has to provide the…

Money laundering is just math too.

Yeah, so? Most acts of "money laundering" consist of nothing more or less than the basic principles of privacy applied to financial transactions. The fact that the government has somehow managed to normalize intrusive mass surveillance in the domain of finances does not justify extending the surveillance to other areas.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's not a waste of energy to spread depressing truths." It certainly is, if those "truths" are not absolutes. Find a way to redirect your -- and others' -- energies toward something positive and constructive. Spreading doom and gloom, full stop? Always a waste.

If you never move on to constructive action, that's a problem, for sure. However, telling a sad or difficult truth and stopping there is still a big improvement on pretending there was no issue in the first place.

[deleted]

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#274
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t because it isn’t a problem. It really is that simple. The cops can do their jobs in meatspace.

They used to be able to record phone calls with a warrant. They used to be able to read letters with a warrant, IIUC. With E2E encryption now widely available, no sane criminal will use any non-encrypted channel. So, a lot of methods law enforcement used to find very helpful effectively no longer exist. The steelman principle says that this is what you need to argue isn't a problem. Disclaimer: I lean towards the EFF…

I don't think the cops ever needed widespread surveillance capability.

They can park a van across the street from my house or office. They don't need access to the telco infrastructure to do their jobs.

The lack of foresight in previous generations is not an excuse to perpetuate their mistakes.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#275

Well I emailed 'em again. Don't think there's much hope when your reps are McCaul, Cornyn and fucking Ted Cruz. I hope this is Lindsey Graham's last piece of legislation though.

As someone represented by Feinstein - there is no much more hope as well.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#276

Back in late medieval europa most postal services had a back room, called cabinet noir where letters where carefully opened, read and resealed to check them for signs of treason against the crown or cross. These were often abused for what we today would call economic espionage. For these reasons many rich people employed private couriers who traveled to their business partners in person to hand over messages. Those w…

Society cannot function without privacy [1].

[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1203230

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Telegram, but I‘m not sure it is the prime candidate for privacy / secure communication. Hopefully Matrix gains traction. Element is getting better but is still full of bugs...

I couldn't see Matrix in the play store, the web page is unusable: I wanted to try it, not ,,learn more''. I installed Element, but it required username/password pair. I understand that it's a bit more secure than using phone number+email for first authentication, but it makes discovery of friends too hard. It trades too much UX for security, just like PGP.

I've not tried installing Element, but I imagine the app could gain the feature of automatically generating a password for you. Asking a user to select a username when joining a chat network seems like a reasonable UX, although having to pick a server is an extra burden.

Perhaps the creators of the app could partner with some big providers to allow the app to try creating your account on one of these providers at random (and keep trying different providers if your intended name is already taken on one that it tries).

I also agree with you about discovery of friends being hard unless users provide their phone numbers to a central server, so perhaps there should be an option for that when creating your account. This central database could run by an independent, audited, third party service. I'm not sure who could be trusted in that role (perhaps Let's Encrypt?), or how much it would cost, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's not a waste of energy to spread depressing truths." It certainly is, if those "truths" are not absolutes. Find a way to redirect your -- and others' -- energies toward something positive and constructive. Spreading doom and gloom, full stop? Always a waste.

If you never move on to constructive action, that's a problem, for sure. However, telling a sad or difficult truth and stopping there is still a big improvement on pretending there was no issue in the first place.

You have presented a false choice.

Saying negative things is just negative, full stop, as already stated. You can make this positive by suggesting a solution or asking someone qualified to suggest one and then helping them achieve it.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very real problem with "backdoors" and wiretapping in the digital age is that, in the past, wiretapping was for future communications and between two specific individuals. That is not how E2E encryption breaking will be used. For E2E encryption breaking, they won't ask for "future conversations between A and B for the next 2 weeks" they will say "give me all historical communication from this person between all of…

SMS texts and call logs are already accessible, for example. Letters kept have always been accessible. The fact that they may be accessed by law enforcement agencies in specific circumstances does not mean that they are not private. If you are seeking absolute privacy for all time , i.e. absolute secrecy, the only option now and since writing was invented is to leave no trace: either communicate face to face discreet…

> Letters kept have always been accessible.

The physical letters, yes—but if those letters were written in a code or private language it is well established in precedent that one cannot be compelled to translate them into plain language for the prosecution. Forget all the false skeuomorphic analogies about "locks" and "keys"; encryption is not a safe you put your message into, it's a set of private codes.

A warrant authorizes law enforcement to seize the physical evidence (letters, hard drives, memory chips, etc.). Making sense of the content afterward is entirely their problem, and that remains true even when making sense of the content is likely to be beyond their capabilities.

The particular mechanism being exploited in this law (revoking section 230 protections for companies that do not implement whatever "best practices" are promulgated by this new committee) is particularly bad because section 230 should never have been required in the first place. It should go without saying that a service provider is in no way liable for illegal content uploaded by users without the service provider's knowledge. Putting aside the fact that the idea of "illegal content" is itself nonsense in any country that purports to recognize freedom of speech, the occasional removal of unwanted content that is specifically brought to a moderator's attention does not imply that the service provider actively controls everything that is published on the platform. Logically, if a fully unmoderated site is not to be held liable for content uploaded by users then a partially moderated one likewise should not be held liable for content which has simply not yet been brought to the moderator's attention. The court erred in lumping partially moderated sites in with ones requiring full prior review and approval before posting. Section 230 was passed to address this miscarriage of justice, and as such revoking or weakening its protections, or holding them hostage as this EARN IT act would, is itself unjust.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#280
post #265

Things the EARN-IT bill (reminder: supposedly designed to protect children) doesn't do: - Increase funding for child protective services & foster care services - Increase funding for parents (EBT, social work, etc) - Increase funding for schools (comprehensive sex ed, etc) Because our priority is kids! Honestly! Seriously I mean it!

Are you mad that laws against murder (reminder: supposedly designed to protect people) don't include funding for domestic abuse shelters, food pantries, social workers, relocation programs, job retraining, college tuition assistance, and comprehensive sex ed? This kind of rhetoric is so boring at this point. Trying to destroy a proposal via scope creep is intellectually dishonest and does little more than weaken your…

Actually, yes. This is the entire problem with "tough on crime" policy: it doesn't attempt to handle the causes of criminality.
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