Live data from Hacker News

Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

eff.org

11–20 of 348 posts

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#11

What I don't see in the writeup, is which senators are voting which way. I can tell from the writeup what Blumenthal thinks of it, but not any other committee participants. I really wish politicians would embrace a "we will make policies for things we can understand" motto.

> I really wish politicians would embrace a "we will make policies for things we can understand" motto.

If that were the case we’d have a lot less cockamamie gun laws.

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#12

May crypto advocates are going about this the wrong way. Instead of emphasizing that crypto should be protected by freedom of speech, they should acknowledge crypto is a dangerous munition. Therefore it’s protected by the Second Amendment. The second amendment says the right to bear “arms” will not be abridged. Not firearms. Shouldn’t that protect crypto?

oi, do you have a loicense for that hashing algo from the ATF?

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#13
post #4

I haven't tried reading the text of The Act, most of the press about it focuses on E2EE-type messaging systems. So presumably if this passes, Signal would have to move offshore or something? (for example) But what about HTTPS certificates, would The Act have any effect on them? Would there be any legal issues with (for example) running your own Matrix server? And what about hosting providers (instead of platforms). W…

I very much doubt it. Law enforcement doesn’t seem too concerned about regular old HTTPS. I wonder why?

Because, it's a massive centralized decrypted data repository, law enforcement can simply ask for the data and the company will hand it over. It's not their data so they don't care to defend it but because of the third party doctrine it's legally their data to hand off w/o your permission.

Peer to peer or end to end encryption removes this trivially easy access, which is why they don't like it.

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#14

What I don't see in the writeup, is which senators are voting which way. I can tell from the writeup what Blumenthal thinks of it, but not any other committee participants. I really wish politicians would embrace a "we will make policies for things we can understand" motto.

> I really wish politicians would embrace a "we will make policies for things we can understand" motto. I don't think they'd make many policies if that were the case

It would potentially mean a huge backlog of boring but basically uncontroversial technical legislation, most likely.

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#15

May crypto advocates are going about this the wrong way. Instead of emphasizing that crypto should be protected by freedom of speech, they should acknowledge crypto is a dangerous munition. Therefore it’s protected by the Second Amendment. The second amendment says the right to bear “arms” will not be abridged. Not firearms. Shouldn’t that protect crypto?

I’m guessing you’re not a lawyer

Re: Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt it. Law enforcement doesn’t seem too concerned about regular old HTTPS. I wonder why?

HTTPS is not end-to-end encrypted (it kinda would be if we used P2P but we don't) so you can subpoena the server.

> HTTPS is not end-to-end encrypted (it kinda would be if we used P2P but we don't) so you can subpoena the server.

How is https communication not end to end encrypted? And what’s the difference between subpoenaing a server vs an end user? The server is just another person/organization.

Edit: Re-reading this I guess you mean that having a centra server acting as a middle man would probably not be end to end which I agree with. I thought you meant user server wasn’t end to end.

Post reply on HN