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Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

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Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#31

Post by inkeddeveloper »

pico303 wrote: post #29

I don’t understand why folks don’t just point out any back doors in these services will be abused or hacked eventually. Do our leaders want their own personal correspondence—-to their big donors, bankers, brokers, interns, mistresses, drug dealers, coup instigators—-available to the FBI or the media too?

At this point, they don’t care. Plenty of politicians have had criminal investigations and have had zero consequences. Hell, one man won a reelection while he was in jail. Matt Gaetz is still walking around free even.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#32

Post by pessimizer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
vitiral wrote: post #20

I feel like they missed the primary point which is that E2E encryption is the primary thing protecting everyone from hackers/criminals/other-governments. Without it the criminals WILL have access to your systems and data and then you can basically say goodbye to anything being valuable at all. Locking your door at night is a poor metaphor. A criminal can literally infiltrate and search through every unsecured compute…

> Without it the criminals WILL have access to your systems and data Replacing criminals and state overreach with foreign adversaries may be more salient. Our encryption debate came of age after the Cold War. The boogeymen of that era have been surpassed. We have new ones, and they're more sinister than thieves and more tangible than a your government turning on you.

On what occasion have any of these new cyberattacking boogeymen-on-steroids done anything to anyone?

I'm going to continue to worry about criminal fraud and my own government, rather than ghosts with foreign names.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#33

Post by noisy_boy »

I have said this before: this is a losing battle for individuals striving to protect the freedom, if we just try to do it individually. People bringing this get paid to do this during office time (and maybe after office time too by lobbyists) so they will keep at this; my protests require me to do it by taking time out of the limited time I have left after office.

Fight fire with fire, fund EFF so that we have our own well stocked army. To be clear, I'm not trivialising or belittling the impact of individual effort, just that it takes too much to be sustainable. And yes, individual and organized efforts are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#35

Post by heavyset_go »

vitiral wrote: post #20

I feel like they missed the primary point which is that E2E encryption is the primary thing protecting everyone from hackers/criminals/other-governments. Without it the criminals WILL have access to your systems and data and then you can basically say goodbye to anything being valuable at all. Locking your door at night is a poor metaphor. A criminal can literally infiltrate and search through every unsecured compute…

Our security doesn't matter to them, the only security they value is their security from the rest of us. This bill grants them just that.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#36

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pessimizer wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without it the criminals WILL have access to your systems and data Replacing criminals and state overreach with foreign adversaries may be more salient. Our encryption debate came of age after the Cold War. The boogeymen of that era have been surpassed. We have new ones, and they're more sinister than thieves and more tangible than a your government turning on you.

On what occasion have any of these new cyberattacking boogeymen-on-steroids done anything to anyone? I'm going to continue to worry about criminal fraud and my own government, rather than ghosts with foreign names.

> what occasion have any of these new cyberattacking boogeymen-on-steroids done anything to anyone?

One of them is invading its neighbor.

> I'm going to continue to worry about criminal fraud and my own government

That's fine and these are things to worry about. But if the argument wants staying power, it needs to be adaptable.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#37

Post by Sniffnoy »

userbinator wrote: post #25

Devil's advocate: encryption is also what's stopping users with locked-down devices (increasingly common and hard to avoid) from having freedom to run and/or modify the software they use. It's a tough situation. Encryption can be used for good or bad (and even the definition of what's "good" or "bad" encryption varies depending on who you ask). Unfortunately, I see it increasingly being used to oppress users, in the…

What does any of this have to do with the EARN-IT act? This all appears to be just claims about possible uses of encryption with no particular relation to the subject of the article. If these other uses of encryption you're discussing wouldn't be affected by the EARN-IT act, then they aren't relevant here.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#38

Post by pdonis »

charcircuit wrote: post #18
judge2020 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has something to hide from public view, at least in the sense that you don't want anyone (government or civilian burglar) being able to steal your stuff or know what sort of stuff you have on your hard drive. And by everyone, I include regular people who might have a regular desktop or laptop without disk encryption.

>Everyone has something to hide from public view But we aren't talking about making something public. We are only talking about a case where the government already has a warrant.

No, we're not. We're talking about the EARN-IT act, which wants to legally require all website owners to report all kinds of things to law enforcement, without any probable cause that anyone has commmitted a crime and without any kind of warrant.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#39

Post by cgriswald »

charcircuit wrote: post #18
judge2020 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has something to hide from public view, at least in the sense that you don't want anyone (government or civilian burglar) being able to steal your stuff or know what sort of stuff you have on your hard drive. And by everyone, I include regular people who might have a regular desktop or laptop without disk encryption.

>Everyone has something to hide from public view But we aren't talking about making something public. We are only talking about a case where the government already has a warrant.

There's literally no difference. None. This was tried before with special locks that 'only the TSA had the keys to open'. The keys were posted online for anyone to make their own. It's also been tried commercially with various DRM and failed.

There is no such thing as a 'government only, and only with a warrant' backdoor. There is either private or not private.

Re: Earn-IT threatens encryption and therefore user freedom

#40

Post by User23 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19
galangalalgol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you explain your firmware comment?

You can ask @marcan42 who is porting Linux to Apple Silicon for more information. https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/10406262109994311...

That thread is pretty persuasive, but I don’t know if he’s attacking a straw-man. Sadly, as seen in some comments here, more than a few people have an irrational animosity towards the FSF. Can anyone present a steel-man of the FSF position?
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