It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.
> It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments That doesn't follow. The worst laws passed (e.g. the Patriot Act) tend to have bipartisan support.
The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
31–40 of 520 posts
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#32No matter your opinion on the issue, the firearm lobby would probably serve as an effective model for fighting legislation like this on a long term basis.
Would anyone here switch party votes to a candidate who sided their way on tech privacy — even if they disagreed on other core principles like abortion, gun rights, religion in schools, etc?
Maybe a few, but I'm not convinced many.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#33While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection t…
> While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's have no fear to face down our opponents' claims. Senators pushing this bill laid down their claims in a document [0], and everyone should put on their critical thinking caps and grapple with it. [0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21194217-earn_it_act...
Thank you, something like this is exactly what I was looking for. Balances out nicely with the original posted link.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-on-re...
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#35It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.
The “pros” are fairly straightforward, mass data collection makes it easier for law enforcement to do their jobs, or, at least, that’s their opinion.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#36While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection t…
Your points are well-heard, even by those in the IC. What isn't occurring, is a good-faith discussion on solving the issues faced by law enforcement and the IC related to the growing entropy of E2EE wielded at scale by folks, a large subset of whom are engaging in criminal behavior. I strongly believe that fighting this issue with a hard-line no compromise response will result in an undesirable outcome for your agenda.
I am not a fan of kneecapped cybersecurity in consumer endpoints, which is the elephant in the room. It's a compromise borne of the E2EE entropy problem, intentional or not. I don't support unchecked recoverable encryption in any centralized fashion, nor do I support covert backdoors or skeleton keys.
Unfortunately, too many folks defend their position from libertarian ideals, a position which does have a technical justification. It just misses the bigger picture - that most folks in govt are just doing their job. A compromise will seek to enable those doing their job correctly while preventing abuses with technological means.
Telling the govt "too bad, you can't stop math" will backfire. The law can be used to force tech companies to literally stop doing math at scale.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#37This seems like it could have a significant upside if passed. That it would help promote federated and peer to peer free software systems with no centralized, commercial target to sue. Might even require some of the current giant social networks to pair back significantly to avoid liability. I'm not saying I want it to pass, just think the unintended consequences might be interesting and even beneficial in some ways.
Decentralized does not mean lack of liability. That's a marketing ploy. P2P filesharers and tor hosted sites are taken to court on the daily because of this one little trick called the IP address. Everything you send has your external IP. It doesn't matter that they "can't prove it was you". Courts have continually upheld that an IP address is grounds for either civil discovery or further criminal investigation. And…
With P2P and Federated systems (encrypted or not), the people hosting the content are breaking the law and are the ones you go after. Just like now (pre Earn-It), where they go after the people posting the files to the central servers and not the central servers themselves.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#38This seems like it could have a significant upside if passed. That it would help promote federated and peer to peer free software systems with no centralized, commercial target to sue. Might even require some of the current giant social networks to pair back significantly to avoid liability. I'm not saying I want it to pass, just think the unintended consequences might be interesting and even beneficial in some ways.
Pretty sure the government won't view it that way. It'll be called a loophole and crushed if it gets mainstream. This is the country where sending an HTML GET and receiving response 200 can be prosecuted under the CFAA. We need a legal environment that explicitly protects encrypted communications, not one where they are are maybe tolerated on the fringe.
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.
And Mozilla Corporation’s entire business model is built on Google’s financial support. Does that make Mozilla’s (or the ACLU etc.) work inherently suspect or anti-democratic?
Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever
#40While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection t…
> While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.