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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

#201

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

guy98238710 wrote: post #194
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…

> They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. But we all know that giving excessive power to good guys turns them rather reliably into bad guys.

Yeah but it always looks different if that power is going to be in your hands. Or maybe it doesn't and they just don't care, but I'd like to think it's the former.

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

#202

Post by catlifeonmars »

mrandish wrote: post #121
loteck wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's likely to be strong bipartisan opponents to this bill in the Senate as well. Their issues are likely aligned with another senator's response. https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-on-re...

Wyden (like Rand Paul) is the rare congressperson that, while I don't agree with all their views, tends to get certain fundamental freedom issues right, especially where other politicians don't on issues with a lot of money and special interest lobbying. On any particular issue where Wyden goes against his Democratic party leadership AND Paul goes against his Republican party leadership to agree with each other, that…

> Too bad there's no way to vote for a 'virtual politician' that's the logic-gate intersection of those two.

Now this is an intriguing idea.

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

#203

Post by noelsusman »

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…

I'm reminded of when I was told for years that eliminating net neutrality would destroy the Internet as we know it. Then it was eliminated and the Internet is exactly the same as it was before. Point being, I am extremely skeptical that this bill is an existential threat to free society and democracy.

Anyway, the text of the bill clearly states that offering encryption services cannot serve as a basis for liability under the new CSAM carveout. I haven't seen critics of the bill explain why that language isn't good enough to protect E2EE services from liability. Most critics just pretend that part of the bill doesn't exist.

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #148
EarlKing wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a society in which all media was controlled by a handful of corporations who dictated what people saw and thought. That is not by any means a free society. Then along came Bulletin Board Systems and then the Internet, and all that changed. Legislation like the EARN IT Act is meant to turn back the clock to silence the voice of the people so that, once again, only the voice of the bourgeoisie can be heard.

Then along came Bulletin Board Systems and then the Internet, and all that changed. No BBS ever changed diddly squat. Even the internet had minimal impact on politics until the 2000's. The entire comment just sounds like speculation about a time that is, in fact, fairly recent history. We had a society in which all media was controlled by a handful of corporations who dictated what people saw and thought. That only m…

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by netizen-936824 »

guy98238710 wrote: post #194
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…

> They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. But we all know that giving excessive power to good guys turns them rather reliably into bad guys.

Nobody ever said politicians were smart

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

#206

Post by zbrozek »

ridaj wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #2

I wish they would address real problems like arbitrary enforcement of TOS that damages users with no recourse. There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Child abuse is serious, but not that common and this law will do little to change that. The lack of a UCC-style law for big tech platforms affects way more people. This seems like…

> There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Yes there is, per the trade regulations you're entitled to a refund . Wait I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you…

Paying for their services doesn't seem to make the customer service any better.

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

#207

Post by dchftcs »

eikenberry wrote: post #38
bo1024 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a different battle. The government has gone after general purpose encryption multiple times and has been beaten back so far. And while this would definitely be a win for that side of things it isn't the same battle and the Earn IT Act is not about encryption in general. It is about encryption in the context of commercial entities and their managed content.

With greater surveillance power and the precedence of passing this bill the government gains the ability to push a stronger one, including one that targets general encryption.

Your intended effect is uncertain at best, I'm not even sure it's going to be a net benefit in the most ideal scenario (losing encryption in commercial setting is at the very least extremely inefficient), and there would certainly be high costs to the society until that materializes. At worst it would never materialize.

You're effectively advocating to take a very high risk to liberty and privacy for some very wishful thinking.

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

#208

Post by ipaddr »

mgerdts wrote: post #132
EarlKing wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a society in which all media was controlled by a handful of corporations who dictated what people saw and thought. That is not by any means a free society. Then along came Bulletin Board Systems and then the Internet, and all that changed. Legislation like the EARN IT Act is meant to turn back the clock to silence the voice of the people so that, once again, only the voice of the bourgeoisie can be heard.

I believe that the period you refer to had local newspapers, tv stations, and radio stations that were largely independent from this handful of corporations (ABC, CBS, NBC?). During this period, there was limited opportunity to perform population-wide surveillance on the discussion of this coverage. In those days your TV tended not to be equipped with technology that could report what you watched.

In those local markets you had reporters who were friends with those in power and very little got reported.

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

#209

Post by Spivak »

ipnon wrote: post #142
beebmam wrote: post #124

All it is going to take is one big violent event organized using end-to-end encryption and that's it, this bill (or something like it) will pass. So you should probably prepare for that political battle if this is an issue you care about

What violent conspiracy hasn't incorporated encryption? Can you read in plaintext every email that cross the Web? I can't even access HN over HTTP. Encryption is the default for modern communication. That's the rub: it's a mass surveillance bill masquerading as an encryption bill.

The bill isn’t about encryption despite the messaging. It’s about the design of communications systems that are “unwiretappable.”

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

#210

Post by charcircuit »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #166
charcircuit wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want encryption so criminals who would have otherwise been hung to be able to evade the law? It is pretty clear to me how a government may not approve of encryption for this usage.

Yes. The state has no right to hang anyone. The state has no right to take a life. When you take away encryption, The Innocent and the Guilty are punished, the innocent disproportionately. That’s the beautiful thing: we don’t have to care what the government thinks. We are 30y into the encryption wars, and they cannot put the genie back in the bottle. It just is.

>The state has no right to take a life.

Some states have the death penalty.

>When you take away encryption, The Innocent and the Guilty are punished, the innocent disproportionately.

More information allows people to make a more informed decision. Punishing innocent people is a different problem separate from encryption.

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