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The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#171

Post by csomar »

BoorishBears wrote: post #154
csomar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. I think, what most people are missing, is that Democratic (the free world) governments have lost control of the narrative. It's not that there wasn't corruption before, but people trusted the government more back in the day. Before the immersion of social media, information moved slowly. There w…

This entire comment is the definition of FUD. It's not that complicated: Politicians don't know technology Politicians hear there's this thing that lets bad guys have fully secure conversations that even 3 letter agencies can't crack. Politicians see blocking that as a political win. - All of this nonsense about corruption... you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs tha…

Stop trying to explain for Politicians. Ignorance is just as harmful and evil.

> This entire comment is the definition of FUD.

This would have been true if this was the first bill. But this bill (and variants of it) keep getting proposed again and again. From different and multiple angles. It's not a small political win here they are looking for.

> you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs that say bad things about them?

Yes. But you need the Technology there first. Once it's there, it's much easier to pass these things.

> Or this is the first step to a CPP-esque lockdown on free speech?

Yes. It worked for China. So it might work for us.

> That's fantasy at best and a disturbing level of paranoia at worst.

It's not. The amount of restrictions and surveillance we have today is unprecedented. Things can move fast once the technology is ready and the moment is there to seize.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#172

Post by defiUs88 »

treis wrote: post #50
kragen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which…

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

No post body was provided.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#173

Post by stjohnswarts »

treis wrote: post #50
kragen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which…

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

Yes, but if you shut down the most "free" information platform, and make it only free to those who are rich enough to pay for anonymity then you are doing aggregious harm to democracy and freedom. Perhaps moreso that anyone has ever done in human history. Look no further than China to see the wrong way of doing things and that is precisely what this bill seeks to do. It is not to "protect the children" it is to protect the elite power centers from criticism and transparency by forcing you to open up all your secrets and communications to them to judge and eliminate the challenges and criticisms of their power under the guise of "law and order".

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#174

Post by owly »

wayoutthere wrote: post #147
treis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not really, no, What? You're really arguing that, to put a year on it, in 1990 we didn't have a free society and democracy?

In 1990 school kids were pledging our fucking allegiance to an evil empire. Hell no we didn’t have a free society then.

100%

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#175

Post by clusterfish »

eikenberry wrote: post #37
devwastaken wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I said P2P, not TOR. With P2P systems you only host your own stuff. So if they want to take someone to court it would be the person with the illegal content on their system... IE. who you want to go after. There is no reason to have to prove anything. Those P2P filesharers that are taken to court are the ones sharing the files, not just random people on the network. With P2P and Federated systems (encrypted or not),…

As a general rule it's unwise to hope for some unintended side effect of bad legislation to solve unrelated problems. The goal of this legislation is surveillance and control. If passed, it will achieve that goal. If it has a side effect of significant number of people starting to use encrypted P2P communication (doubtful imo), they will pass more legislation to make that illegal too, since "child abusers are obviously using P2P encryption now", and most "normal people" don't. And that time it will be even easier than passing the original EARN IT act.

Government overreach must be fought every step of the way, otherwise by the time it finally gets you personally, it will be too late.

Let's not get blinded by our dislike for centralized platforms. This is not the way to solve their problems, this way only creates more problems for people.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#176

Post by citruscomputing »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #137
bradleyjg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that matter? Cops weren’t listening to those old face to face communications. That was practically impossible which is analogous to the technical impossibility of listening in on E2EE connections. Instead they were cracking cases in other ways (physical evidence, confidential sources, etc.)

To play Devil's Advocate: people had to meet up for face-to-face communications, but they don't have to meet up for remote communication.

Does the devil need an advocate?

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#177

Post by BurningFrog »

cnelsenmilt wrote: post #160
omeze wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. Look up Western Unions role in the 1876 US election[1]. Stolen communications to support a specific candidate and a compromise between political parties on military presence sounds like a very precarious position for free society to be in. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/how-the-robber-b... (also referenced in Tim Wu’s The Master Switch)

One way to look at it then is that we have dealt with similar issues before and survived.

Actually, no one involved in the 1876 US election survived.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#178

Post by oceanghost »

nirav72 wrote: post #64
treis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

You must not have been around when the government was pushing for backdoors on Telecom products in the 1990s. Before the internet was a thing for most people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#179

Post by BoorishBears »

csomar wrote: post #171
BoorishBears wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire comment is the definition of FUD. It's not that complicated: Politicians don't know technology Politicians hear there's this thing that lets bad guys have fully secure conversations that even 3 letter agencies can't crack. Politicians see blocking that as a political win. - All of this nonsense about corruption... you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs tha…

Stop trying to explain for Politicians. Ignorance is just as harmful and evil. > This entire comment is the definition of FUD. This would have been true if this was the first bill. But this bill (and variants of it) keep getting proposed again and again. From different and multiple angles. It's not a small political win here they are looking for. > you think politicians are successfully going to get social media gian…

So you're saying your own comment is FUD except "they keep pushing the bill!"

You agree your comment is FUD except... politicians keep pushing for a bill they see as a political win.

Right.

-

And your entire comment is doing exactly what you said I shouldn't: explaining for politicians.

Except you're taking this paranoid interpretation where elected officials are un-ironically intentionally trying to turn the US into the next CPP.

Also I love the very well buried lede with "amount of restrictions". Might be related to the pandemic that killed millions but who knows...

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#180

Post by IAmGraydon »

bitL wrote: post #43
mrandish wrote: post #10

While 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…

Maybe those people absolutely understand the implications for free society. What if there was a power transfer on the background, over many years, unnoticed, and the winning group now doesn't want any disruptions coming from encrypted communication in the future?

It’s truly amazing how many people are conspiracy theorists these days.
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