45 ms·

The EARN IT Act: how to ban end-to-end encryption without banning it

613 points by liotier 7y ago

xvector 7y ago
I think we need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. At 60 years[1], the median age of the Senate is 20 years more than the median age of the US population[2] - if this isn't an example of how broken and entrenched our power structures are, I don't know what is. These issues are also also an artifact of a societal structure in which we use the winners of a rigged popularity contest to decide the future of our country rather than that of independent academics on a per-issue basis. Through the lens of E2EE legislation, we are seeing our democracy crumbling because we failed to enforce that our representatives actually knowing what they are talking about. [1]: https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d0f8e809.pdf https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d... [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-demographics/
- jawns 7y ago
  On the flip side, at 60 years, the median-aged Senator has about 40 years of working experience and (arguably) that many years of accumulated knowledge and expertise, as well as life experience and a sense of proportion that comes from having observed our nation's ebbs and flows over a longer period of time. Granted, it's possible to be 60 years old, foolhardy, and out-of-touch -- just as it's possible to be 30 years old, whip-smart, and tuned in. But in general, voters value experience, and you don't amass experience without aging. I agree with you, though, about term limits. They're a good way to balance voters' desire for experienced candidates with the need to inject new blood from both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, if there's one thing American voters stupidly fall for beyond incumbents, it's nepotism, so if term limits were in place, I predict we'd see more family dynasties in Congress.
  - wpasc 7y ago
    To play the devil's advocate with you and GP, term limits can often mean that congresspeople will be perpetual novices. Governing can be complex especially when seated on various committees like foreign affairs, CBO, etc. Older congresspeople who have accumulated years of experience have seen things go right, go wrong, and have learned a great deal about governing. I think in tech we can attest to how disruption does not always mean good and how move fast and break things can go wrong. To be clear, I don't disagree entirely with the idea of term limits or age limits, I just think the counter arguments deserve a fair amount of weight.
    - protanopia 7y ago
      Perhaps government should be made less complex.
      - jhayward 7y ago
        While you're accomplishing that I would like water to be less wet, and the value of Pi to be set to three as well, please. All proposals that I've ever seen to "simplify" government amount to abdicating large functions, usually justified by some ideology around "rugged individualism" or anarchism which are completely fatuous.
        mullingitover 7y ago
        I'm a big fan of the idea of abolishing states, having a US national government and then county/city level governments. The states were created when it was infeasible to manage large amounts of territory due to the difficulty of communicating across long distances. That's no longer the case. We could cede some state powers to local governments and some to the federal level. The idea would get pushback from those in smaller states who enjoy a disproportionate voice in national politics, but I feel that those voices don't deserve to be amplified over anyone else's just because they have a bunch of empty land backing them.
        7y ago
- puffyredchair 7y ago
  So blatant ageism?
- slg 7y ago
  Term and age limits would do more to empower lobbyist than it would do anything to fix the government. You want politicians to know what they are talking about, but running a government is like almost every other job out there, you gain experience and expertise as you do it. That experience generally leads to a more productive and effective government. If you kick all those experienced people out, that knowledge shifts to lobbyist. Political officials will be even more dependent on them for guidance on governing and to learn the issues.
  - xvector 7y ago
    Good point, this is a perspective I had not considered.
  - sgk284 7y ago
    I'd argue the opposite. By having no term limits, lobbyists are able to build up connections over years and take advantage of them. It also means any dirt, corruption, or bribery has an unbounded time for leverage. Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse. I don't see why they wouldn't work well for Congress. And forcing lobbyists to reestablish rapport, dig up dirt, etc... with new congresspeople every few years would do wonders. There's a reason financial institutions force people to take holidays. It's good for rooting out theft.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse. This certainly isn't obvious.
      - lidHanteyk 7y ago
        Compare and contrast with monarchs, as the Framers did. Edit: While I'd like to build out the analogy further, there's only one data point that I can find in the missing quadrant: The Philippines have a limited number and duration of terms for their legislators. One data point is not enough to even identify a single confounding factor, and there's too many ways in which the USA and the Philippines differ.
- svnpenn 7y ago
  I want you to know that in general, I strongly agree with you. However you must be careful, as these arbitrary rules could cause some collateral damage. Namely: Bernie Sanders (78)
  - syshum 7y ago
    I don't see that as Collateral Damage. :)
- Jaygles 7y ago
  We might just be in a weird transition period where the modern technology us youngins are used to is still a relatively new thing in the long term. The fix might just be to wait until the older people in charge retire or die out and the new older people in charge are those who grew up with these modern technologies.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but modern technology is painfully simple compared to what the older people in charge used growing up. People who are in their 40s now grew up having to assign IRQs in their modem to download porn. Today, young people use iPads and have no idea how computers work.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > The fix might just be to wait until the older people in charge retire or die out and the new older people in charge are those who grew up with these modern technologies. I don't think so. I'm an older person, and I've been immersed in these technologies for almost my entire life (since I was 12). There is nothing old hat to the younger crowd that isn't old hat to me as well. Age is not a reliable indicator of these things.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  I'm not personally a huge fan of taking away choices just because you're afraid someone will make the wrong choice. If you don't like older politicians, then make your voice be known. Claiming that you know better than everyone and that your view needs to be the rule of law seems a bit heavy-handed, though. Same goes for censorship.
- veeralpatel979 7y ago
  I like term limits. But how would you respond to those who say elections are term limits?
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Very simple: just look at the percentage of incumbents who face a primary challenger (low), and the percentage of general elections won by incumbents (high). Elections are frequently won by incumbents on name recognition. Some ballots indicate which is the incumbent candidate, and a lot of people will just automatically vote for them. I’m sure there’s research out there that demonstrates the first 2 points. I’m less sure about the second two, but I’d bet there’s a paper out there that covers at least one of them.
    - wpasc 7y ago
      >Elections are frequently won by incumbents on name recognition. Doesn't that imply that voters don't know better? arguments like that don't fare well in my opinion.
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        In your opinion? I don't understand your point. Do you think I'm underestimating the ignorance of the average voter? Also, it's "fare," not "fair" in this context, FYI.
        wpasc 7y ago
        TY for the spelling correction. My point only is: Given that many incumbents win re-election on name recognition alone, doesn't refute the above post mentioning that elections can serve as term limits. To say to a voter, "we're instituting term limits because you voters don't learn about challengers to incumbents". This proposition would not be popular amongst voters even if it is true that people are ignorant and stupid when it comes to voting. Just because voters may not take full advantage of elections' ability to oust a politician may not suffice as reason to alter who the voters want. Voters voting on name recognition vs. actually liking a rep kinda have to be treated equally. If not, a rule curbing that may be interpreted as limiting people's choice. Again, I'm not disagreeing with you! just trying to state how a new rule like term limits could be perceived and the difficulty such a perception would create.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  Would you ban Ken Thompson or Brian Kernighan from holding office? Age is a lazy argument, there are extremely ignorant young people too. America should just stop electing know-it-all, greedy people.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    They're probably too smart to want to run...
    - lukifer 7y ago
      Given the old joke about wanting the job being a disqualification for having it, maybe it's time we started electing people who don't want the job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        Sortition has lots of upsides. Given the US doesn't really have an obvious source for a Monarch (which is the definitively best way option), using Sortition to fill the Figurehead role would be a good solution. The other half of the job currently named "President of the United States of America", heading the Executive function, would naturally make more sense as a route for either state leaders (e.g. Governor -> President) or the legislature (House and Senate leaders -> President) It should definitely be prohibited for one person to have both jobs as is done today. Donald Trump would make a perfectly good figurehead. The world would say yup, that's what we thought, a fat idiot who flashes his money and talks crap, America. Meanwhile the executive leader would negotiate say, tweaks to agricultural tariffs and that'd go largely unnoticed because e.g. now the buffoon is pretending "everybody" thinks Belgium is in Africa because he refuses to own up to mistakes and that's way funnier than China reducing some agricultural tariffs. The US would need to do a LOT of paperwork to make this happen though and a remarkable, disappointing fraction of Americans believe that their existing paperwork is sort of holy and mustn't be changed even though it was written in an era which is unrecognisable socially and technologically. So you're probably screwed.
- ryandvm 7y ago
  > We really need age limits. That's a pretty regressive suggestion. What's next? Revoking voting rights by race or gender?
- rayiner 7y ago
  > We really need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. I’m not sure I agree. I think millennials’ commitment to freedom of speech and information is lower than that of the older generation. (“Speech as violence” and whatnot. Young people today adopt a lot of the same modes of reasoning we ridiculed Tipper Gore for 25 years ago. It’s just directed to different perceived evils.) I’m also not sure that “people just don’t understand how the Internet works” is actually anybody’s problem. It should be remembered that Section 230 actually originated in the Communications Decency Act in 1996, a sweeping attempt to regulate the Internet. A panel of three federal judges, who were then in their 50s and 60s, in Philadelphia struck down almost the entire law, leaving only the Section 230 safe harbor. Two points are illuminating. One, the decision was widely praised for its cogent articulation of how the Internet works. It was impressive in its technical detail. For example, it describes routing packets: https://cyber.harvard.edu/stjohns/aclu-findings.html https://cyber.harvard.edu/stjohns/aclu-findings.html > Messages between computers on the Internet do not necessarily travel entirely along the same path. The Internet uses "packet switching" communication protocols that allow individual messages to be subdivided into smaller "packets" that are then sent independently to the destination, and are then automatically reassembled by the receiving computer. While all packets of a given message often travel along the same path to the destination, if computers along the route become overloaded, then packets can be re-routed to less loaded computers It also described how USENET works: > For unmoderated newsgroups, when an individual user with access to a USENET server posts a message to a newsgroup, the message is automatically forwarded to all adjacent USENET servers that furnish access to the newsgroup, and it is then propagated to the servers adjacent to those servers, etc. The messages are temporarily stored on each receiving server, where they are available for review and response by individual users. The messages are automatically and periodically purged from each system after a time to make room for new messages. Responses to messages, like the original messages, are automatically distributed to all other computers receiving the newsgroup or forwarded to a moderator in the case of a moderated newsgroup. The dissemination of messages to USENET servers around the world is an automated process that does not require direct human intervention or review. The other point is that it was a radically pro-First Amendment decision: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0613cda.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we... > We were surprised at how sweeping the ruling was," said Cathleen A. Cleaver, director of legal studies for the Family Research Council of Washington, a supporter of the law. > "They went far beyond where they needed to go," she said. "Not only did the court strike down the law against the display of pornography, but also the parts that made it illegal to transmit pornography directly to specific children. It's very radical." Finally, as a nit picky aside: of course the median age of the senate is higher than the median age of the whole population. The median age of the population includes children. Senators are, however, required by the Constitution to be at least 30. So the relevant point of comparison is the median age of people who are over 30.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Repeal the 17th Amendment?
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  Ageism is wrong in both directions. The notion that older people are less technical is ageist an just as unacceptable as thinking young people are too idealistic.
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    Well that's just a deformed way of thinking about stuff. What matters is whether it's true, not whether somebody will call it ageist.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. This is not a function of age. It's a function of whether or not people are engaging in continuing education. There are many young people who are simply not equipped to handle today's problems too, after all, and there are many older people who are fully up to date.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. While I agree that the age skew in politics is curious, and perhaps incorrect, the other side of this is, "We cannot let people with 30 years less experience, knowledge, and history decide the fate of our country as it goes into the future." Automatically associating youth with intelligence and "progress" and stereotyping people with years of accrued wisdom to being "old fogies" is textbook ageism. It's something most of the rest of society grows out of by the time they hit college, but also a thing that persists within the SV bubble and what is now called "bro" culture. Fortunately, it's also illegal in many arenas.
  - dathinab 7y ago
    But when I look at the decisions today's politicians do wrt. IT, I would argue that many 30year old ex-IT students have _far_ more experience wrt. IT topics than our current politicans. The problem is that the tech landscape moved to fast and all the wisdom and experience often just doesn't apply anymore but, to make it worse, sometimes it seems that you can bend technology to make it apply but that a very dangerous fallacy. One I have seen politicans step into frequently.
    - hobofan 7y ago
      How many ex-IT students become politicians? Old politicians with no IT experience are being replaced with young politicians with no IT experience. Age limits don't improve anything here.
      - jvalencia 7y ago
        I'm also not sure that having IT-savvy politicians will change policy. The government has certain safety goals (eg trafficking) that it will still have to deal with. These might be a driver regardless of tech savvy-ness. There's an assumption that if only they knew enough -- but perhaps it's not them who don't know enough.
        7y ago
- trilliumbaker 7y ago
  > I think we need age limits. Ageism is not an acceptable solution. We complain about this in tech all the time. Why would we find it acceptable in politics?
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Well for one we know plenty of technically competent older workers who get passed over in tech and it isn't a zero sum game - in a functioning system there is room for young and old workers and overall success inproving with more workers can make more room. Elected officials are finite and zero sum so the situation isn't comparable even if principles are. There are also the throughly mixed messages sent. Ageism is enshrined into law even past the threshold of 18. It is just defined with maximum hypocrisy such that a 20 year old is too incapable of drinking while a senile nonegarian year old with Alzheimers severe enough to have the mental capacity of a child is. Now there are obvious dangers to sunsetting rights but that double standard both normalizes the reverse and both equality and spite make "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" viscerally tempting to those who were disadvantaged. Not the best of mentalities but it is easy to see how someone who couldn't rent a car until recently would be less than sympathetic.
- maverick2007 7y ago
  I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not know what they're talking about or do they know who's paying for their reelection and governing accordingly? I would hope and think that they have the self awareness to know what they're not experts in and surround themselves with people who are experts in what they're weak at (maybe IT). I just worry that they have that but they know if they stop voting according to party line/special interest, their reelection coffers will be much lighter.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not know what they're talking about or do they know who's paying for their reelection and governing accordingly Why is that the dichotomy? How about, they know what they’re talking about, and simply care about different things than you do?
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      How about, they know what they’re talking about An extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
- Reason077 7y ago
  > ”the median age of the Senate is 20 years more than the median age of the US population“ Has the mean age of politicians increased faster than that of the general population over time, or has it always been this way? Do politicians become older, on average, as democracies mature and power structures become more entrenched?
- mjevans 7y ago
  How about we require our legislators to become educated enough on a topic to understand the broad view of how it works before the regulate any given thing. In the case of regulating websites, they might need to understand (at a high level) what an IP address is, generally what DHCP and DNS do, how a web-page is like a mix of recipe and content for dynamically constructing a publication. How a database might provide some of that content and the difference between static and dynamic content. I think if there are any particular boogeymen they're after, those examples should be deconstructed and contrasted against similar publications that they find OK. Maybe the Library of Congress should have a Congressional Education sub-office dedicated to providing such instruction, and if not state colleges should definitely file briefings for congress.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    That brings to mind subdividing Congressional seats into domains to allow for specialization. The devil as usual is in the details. Issues include: * Defining expertises to not become outdated or too general to give any specialization advantage. * Handling border cases and deciding when every domain may vote on it. * While allowing specializations would the subdivisions actually be more expert in practice? We have already seen how "sabotour boards" assemble as those who are most interested in it are those who oppose it. I have already taken it as a given that qualification gatekeeping would take Goodheart's Law to new levels as refusing to recognize reality gives more concrete power. Still it is an interesting concept.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    You've just suggested a poll test/literacy test for politicians. That definitely has obvious problems based on who gets to choose the "right" answers. The question that will be on the revenue committee exam: "do tax cuts pay for themselves"? (I mean, I know the answer, but which one is going to be "correct"?) It's much simpler to realize that the majority of the people above a certain age can no longer stay current with technological developments. Yes, some of them can, but the vast majority are starting to lose it and certainly aren't absorbing anywhere near as much as they used to. Just like the minimum age limits also throw away a certain number of potentially qualified younger candidates who do have enough life experience to make good decisions, it's OK that upper age limits would exclude a certain number of older candidates who could still keep up with things.
- MadWombat 7y ago
  Have you seen this movie? :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets
t223 7y ago
What a great write up. The bill is rather dangerous, and I’m immediately suspicious of anything claiming to help children in the context of legislation. FOSTA/SESTA is a horrible law and it has done a lot of damage.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  FOSTA/SESTA was intended to cause lots of damage.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    True, but arguably it wasn’t intended to cause the specific types of damage it caused, and its actual targets suffered less than expected.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      A cynical person would say that this is because the stated targets weren't actually the targets, just like with this act. (Stated targets: sex traffickers, real targets: tech companies offering e2e encryption)
      - xvector 7y ago
        Yes, IMO FOSTA/SESTA were deliberately malicious and yet another successful attempt to force puritanical ideals upon our citizens, regardless of the damage it would cause. The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They knew exactly how it would play out.
        chimeracoder 7y ago
        > The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They knew exactly how it would play out. Blumenthal (who wrote SESTA and also this bill) was waging a war against consensual sex work for years, long before he was elected to the Senate. The fallout from SESTA was not accidental; it was by design.
syshum 7y ago
I can not wait for all the people to tell me if I do not support this law then I want children to be abused. At this point any law that has position of "protecting the children" it almost universally bad for society, Children are being used a political tools for Authoritarians to remove individual rights and liberties
- novok 7y ago
  You need creepy catholic sex abusing priest cartoons (with the senators & the AG as the priests) saying it's for the children while they act like peeping toms to really get the point across.
  - lanternslight 7y ago
    Or school teachers.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  I like owning firearms so I'm regularly told that I love dead children. Welcome to the club.
  - sarakayakomzin 7y ago
    I fucking love when nuts like you jump in to try and compare ones and zeros to lethal weapons.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  AG Barr basically said as much in a speech at the White House Human Trafficking Summit this morning. Decried "military-grade encryption (lol) being marketed on consumer devices" and made all the same old for-the-children excuses. Naturally no mention of how his own DoJ botching and slow-walking the Epstein case may be helping some of the worst and most prolific traffickers in the country escape justice. It takes real gall for him to complain about how difficult encryption is making it for investigators to gather evidence of human trafficking, when the FBI still hasn't raided Epstein's New Mexico ranch. https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1223320056257376256 https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1223320056257376256
microcolonel 7y ago
Write Congress to say that if something like this is passed, it must be actual legislation, and not this "whatever the regulator approves" nonsense.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Sadly that horse has long left the barn, fled thousands of miles, died and been eaten by vuktures. Its grandchildren are feral and flee at the sight or scent of humans. I suspect there are only two ways to fix that issue both unlikely. Game theory and sloth favor buck passing to agencies let alone the logistical scale involved with a mytgical ideal Congress of honest actors. The first is an amendment limiting the delegation abilities of congression to departments and agencies to be essentially programatically explicit or else be unconstitutionally vague. The second is a precedent and jurisprudence shift as judges strike down such delegation as unconstitutional.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Well, the way you put it, we should be taking up arms right now. If we're not there yet, then there's politics to do.
iamatworknow 7y ago
I do find it interesting that Lindsay Graham is one of the main sponsors of this legislation. From the linked article, >The idea is to make providers “earn” Section 230 immunity for CSAM claims, by complying with a set of guidelines that would be developed by an unelected commission and could be modified unilaterally by the Attorney General, but which are not actually binding law or rules set through any legislative or agency rulemaking process. The structure and powers of this agency sound kind of like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau setup by the Obama administration. The CFPB was an unelected commission that could create rules financial institutions had to abide by, and dole out punishment in terms of fines, without going through a legislative or rule making process. What were Lindsay Graham's thoughts on the CFPB? >Graham, however, called the agency the "most out-of-control, unaccountable federal agency" in Washington. >"Really no oversight at all," he said. "They can get into everybody's business. I don't think they added much at all to the consumer protection. They sure add a lot to increasing costs for midsize banks throughout the country that had nothing to do with the financial collapse." https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/graham-durbin-consumer-protection-agency-259969?tab=most-read https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/graham-durbin-cons...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sailfast 7y ago
  Pedantic but for clarity: CFPB is directed by a single person who serves for five years and cannot be terminated by the President except for cause, which is one of the reasons unaccountability is brought up. Folks often indicate they want a "commission" (similar to SEC or FDIC) instead of an agency with a single director. All that said, yes, this panel of people making "recommendations" that are not laws but have the effect of law seems like a great recipe for selective enforcement based how large or small a company is and what they do, which is not going to do much to solve the bigger issue. Congress is not going to move at the speed of the internet / technology. I'm not sure if that's a named "rule" yet, but it should be. Illegal communities will move. And similarly, conditional "safe harbor" to operate a website should not be a thing. These regs are easily avoided by operating in other countries which will just make the US even less involved and competitive in this space.
post_below 7y ago
I love the hitchhiker's reference. The post was well written and covered what I think are the important points. There's only one thing I think deserves more attention than she gave it: The economics. The US' place in the tech world is largely a result of limited barriers to innovation in tech. The kinds of "duties" proposed by this bill would be bad for big tech (a huge part of the economy) but worse than that they would be prohibitive for new innovators. New social media services which attempt to serve the increasing demographic of people disillusioned with big tech aren't even going to try to get into a market with draconian requirements amd potential legal obligations like those proposed (or those that logically follow from the proposals). Which means those services will be built elsewhere or not at all. And of course there are the innovations we haven't imagined yet which won't be allowed to happen.
Mindless2112 7y ago
> Without the immunity provided by Section 230, there might very well be no Twitter, or Facebook, or dating apps, or basically any website with a comments section. Going on that description, a bit of me wishes for Section 230 to be repealed. Of course there would be no GitHub either, which wouldn't be so great.
- manfredo 7y ago
  I don't think you fully understand the scope of what section 230 protects against. Even running an email server could put people at risk of being held liable for crimes, if users were to use that server to coordinate criminal acts. Revoking section 230 essentially mandates total surveillance of user activity.
  - Mindless2112 7y ago
    So you would have to run your own email server or be given access to one by someone who trusts you, which would be a better situation in some ways than the Gmail monoculture we have today. Google likely has your mail on one end or the other; you're already under surveillance; Section 230 hasn't saved you.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      And that email server has to be in a datacenter you own, because AWS doesn't exist. (What is AWS if not hosting user-generated content?) And if you run a tor node, then you're liable for anything someone does with tor. And if you host a blockchain mirror. And...
      - dimensi0nal 7y ago
        There's already child pornography in the Bitcoin blockchain, right?
        DuskStar 7y ago
        Yep!
manfredo 7y ago
So in short: * EARN IT creates a committee that is set out to define "best practices" for preventing child sex abuse. * Companies that don't adhere to these best practices lose liability protections for user-generated content. * The attorney general can unilaterally edit these best practices as he sees fit. * The current attorney general has repeatedly made statements that he wishes to eliminate the ability for companies to offer end-to-end encryption - he wants all communications to be vulnerable to wiretapping. This effectively gives the attorney general the power to compel tech companies to do whatever he wants (so long as he can argue that it's preventing sex abuse) by threatening to revoke section 230 protections, and it's likely that this would be used to revoke protections from companies that offer end to end encryption.
- diroussel 7y ago
  So what will happen? Facebook will lose ability to deploy encryption and move servers overseas? Unlikely to affect non US internet users, unless my phone suddenly looses ability to use encryption.
  - diroussel 7y ago
    Sorry if this seemed flippant. Of course there will be massive impact. But I was asking people if they though they knew what the impact will be? Will it only affect social platforms that need moderation?
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  The article does mention that companies could argue they took "reasonable steps" if they refuse to follow the best practices. If they choose that route and win whatever court battle that follows, it'd essentially neuter this law. So there would at least a way out but it's risky.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Lets think of what "reasonable steps" a service provider of encrypted messaging could take to prevent child porn on their service... * They could put up a big message saying 'no child porn'. I don't think that would be considered sufficient by a court. * They could put a 'report' button. Again - insufficient. * They could make client-side automated content scanners. Might be accepted by a court, but if you provide the scanner to the user, the government could argue it is easy to make images which bypass the scanner, which it would be. * They could break encryption on some percentage of chats. A court would likely be looking at a particular case, and would consider the service provider not to have done their duty if the particular case at hand hadn't been checked. I don't really see any reasonable steps which would stand up, other than breaking e2e and doing server-side scanning.
__jal 7y ago
Don't fall for the trap that this is about "big tech". It isn't. It is about your freedom of speech and ability to protect yourself.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  It is about big tech: WhatsApp doesn't need section 230 immunity if it isn't part of Facebook.
  - elpool2 7y ago
    Can you explain how? The article lists WhatsApp as an example of an interactive computer service that is covered by section 230 immunity. Is it because WhatsApp is purely a messaging service without curation or moderation and so the law wouldn't consider WhatsApp to be a publisher anyway?
    - OldHand2018 7y ago
      I don't use WhatsApp, but my understanding is that they are in the business of providing private communication between parties. Section 230 protects the likes of Facebook, where people can post things for all the world to see, including things that are slanderous or illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
      - ryukafalz 7y ago
        Yes, section 230 protects Facebook for public conversations. But as far as I'm aware it also protects providers of private communication, because as a user of the provider you could potentially receive illegal content from them. The provider, should they choose to moderate content by e.g. having report buttons and moderation teams, could still be treated as a publisher.
  - nullspace 7y ago
    I’m confused? What’s WhatsApp being part of a big tech company got to do with 230 immunity?
msp_yc 7y ago
How many people here think of encryption as a second amendment right? If you find yourself arguing that it is - what happens when you are largely, if not wholly, dependent on a third party to be able to exercise that right? We've decided that corporations get first amendment rights independent of their members - do they also get second amendment rights? Are these just silly arguments? It's late Friday afternoon...
- noident 7y ago
  Encrypted data is more like speech than a weapon. The analogy to guns just doesn't work.
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    The US Govt considers encryption a form of weapons tech so that it falls under Munitions Exports Controls (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...). But the proposed law doesn't outlaw private use of encryption, only potentially outlawing corporations from offering it, so I don't know the 2nd Amendment would really apply.
    - msp_yc 7y ago
      If encryption is considered a form of arms, it does appear that there is case law that grants sellers of arms some constitutional protections - quick article at https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/04/does-the-second-amendment-protect-firearms-commerce/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/04/does-the-second-amendme.... I think, at this point, one could successfully argue that the proposed law follows 'reasonable regulation' and so protections aren't afforded. But it would be an interesting discussion.
    - dependenttypes 7y ago
      The US courts seem to agree that encryption software are protected under the 1st amendment. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
morpheuskafka 7y ago
This is exactly analogous to DMCA in its structure--except that instead of the procedures being part of the law, the will be subject to constant change by the executive branch of government.
dchyrdvh 7y ago
Who am I to say that these two senators don't understand big politics, but here's my theory why the other 98 senators won't support the idea. Laws is a barrier between those who rule and those who obey. When the latter complain, the laws barrier diffuses their anger. The two senators find it too difficult to play this game and want to break this wall to rule the internet directly.
tomc1985 7y ago
Sexual abuse is terrible but I am so tired of it being used as the handle of the billyclub used to beat technology down
- numpad0 7y ago
  Maybe internet needs to learn how to paint politicians bringing up child porn regulation as molesters
  - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
    Given some of the news that's come to light in recent years, there's a non-zero chance that they are
- api 7y ago
  Look into some of the people who have set up fake CP sites on the dark web or who have posed as young girls on public social media. It's incredibly easy to create a honey pot to ensnare sexual predators. There are many articles on such experiments and they are highly effective. They don't need back doors or hacker hanky panky to catch sex pests, just creative but conventional police work. This is an issue that gets dragged out to scare the public but the authorities really don't care much about it. Reports of sex abuse from real victims are often ignored and sexual predators get shorter sentences than people convicted of minor drug possession or other stupid crap.
  - choward 7y ago
    Exactly, they need to actually do their jobs instead of trying to cheat by taking away everyone's privacy and other rights.
- Veedrac 7y ago
  One of them has to give. You can't effectively police what's perfectly anonymous.
  - skinkestek 7y ago
tantalor 7y ago
This sums it up: "This bill takes popular rage at social media companies’ immunity under Section 230 for public speech on their platforms, and twists it into a backhanded way of punishing messaging service providers’ use of encryption for private conversations." (emphasis original)
- nimbius 7y ago
  seems sort of pointless when players like Cloudflare have already twice voluntarily censored content on their networks they personally deemed too provocative. Not to mention this does nothing in the event a service provider with end-to-end crypto is implicated in some dastardly deed. The mathematics of crypto still win. the Signal protocol used on platforms like Whatsapp provides confidentiality, integrity, authentication, participant consistency, destination validation, forward secrecy, post-compromise security (aka future secrecy), causality preservation, message unlinkability, message repudiation, participation repudiation, and asynchronicity. Using the protocol on something like TAILS OS basically turns the conversations participants into living ghosts. Prosecutors would have one hell of a time proving a provider did anything, and if it started to seem like this could bite "providers" in court or jeopardize their 230 status, they could just release the entire thing under the GPL and patch it to use blockchain or TOR mesh networking after the fact. The name of the program is still tangentially associated with the brand and people on your social network will still talk about it and advocate its use.
  - wizzwizz4 7y ago
    To name one thing wrong with this comment: WhatsApp doesn't use Signal. This is just technobabble with sentiment; an attempt to sway, not to communicate.
    - Jayschwa 7y ago
      https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
- incompatible 7y ago
dropoutcoder 7y ago
This may be an unpopular opinion, but this is a great idea. Huge tech companies now worth trillions facilitate criminal activity at scale and wash their hands of any responsibility. E2EE at scale is problematic for maintaining sanctity in society, as people are terrible. Giving common folks easily accessible tools to engage in global secure comms has been a recipe for disaster. LE’s job has been made more difficult, and the tech companies should bear responsibility for policing their pipes.
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  "Facilitate criminal activity at scale" is an argument to ban roads, too. All infrastructure gets used by everyone.
  - dropoutcoder 7y ago
    Roads can be monitored and policed.
- argomo 7y ago
  Law enforcement has more tools for mass surveillance than ever before. The Stazi could only dream of what we have built. But it's not the job of tech companies to make policing easy, and it's not in the best interest of a free people to give their government too much power. Please look at the history of the FBI for examples.
  - dropoutcoder 7y ago
    Sorry for delay in responding. The issue is that there’s a huge proliferation of inaccessible comms which creates a growing sea of unchecked globally enabled online activity. This isn’t the same as allowing people to congregate in person and in private. The abstraction of privacy expanding on a virtual global scale presents unique challenges to law enforcement. This is independent from the proliferation of surveillance mechanisms at hand, and isn’t a valid counterbalance. The tech companies assume power and disclaim responsibility. It is their job to police their pipes, so respectfully and urgently I disagree. Concerns about historical corruption within three letter agencies is best addressed by working towards technical solutions that enable proper checks and balances amongst involved players: governments, tech oligarchies, and commoners. The current trend is towards a growing sea of entropy without checks and balances, and this is unacceptable to governments motivated to maintain/increase order and reduce suffering. Resistance via deployment of technical libertarian mechanisms at scale isn’t a solid long term solution. The federal government isn’t aiming to ban math, encryption, pgp, one time pads, steanography, etc. Instead the goal is to prevent the proliferation of unbreakable encryption at scale, as that growing void enables criminal activity at scale, despite the growing surveillance apparatus.
craftinator 7y ago
Are there any stats available for child sex abuse using end to end encryption? It is used widely, along with "terrorism!" as a reason to ban e2eE, so I'd like to see some stats that show that it's actually an issue. Does regular mail post have this problem, or random websites? Not sure that e2eE is exploited more for this than those other platforms ...
nine_k 7y ago
* E2E encryption is incompatible with eavesdropping. * Forbidding content, like child porn, hate speech, etc in private communication requires eavesdropping. * Courts are used to communication channels that are easy to eavesdrop, like paper or analog phone, and keep requiring disclosure from communication providers using court orders. * Same as with guns, law enforcement wants to ban e2e encryption so that criminals could not use it, but criminals break the law anyway, so effectively the ban is for law-abiding citizens first and foremost. Unless you can compel general public that having communication services with unbreakable encryption is more important than law enforcement, e2e encryption will stay effectively banned for non-technical users. That is, for almost all, including most criminals, too.
- procombo 7y ago
  Wonderfully put. This exactly.
jejei992o 7y ago
This is great. We can all run private Kubernetes pods and share over Wireguard. This will only ever apply to corporations right?
- james-imitative 7y ago
  Sounds like a really good solution to the problem described.
danShumway 7y ago
Other people have mentioned this already, but in light of bills like this I am starting to get a little annoyed at people like Moxie and at people more broadly who seem to be purely interested in punching down on efforts to build sustainable, censorship-resistant encrypted platforms. People who want to argue that decentralized systems are pointless need to start offering feasible, multi-country legislative solutions alongside their criticism, or else I do not care about what they have to say. Everything going on right now indicates to me that the UX problem is easier to solve than the legal problem. No, decentralized systems aren't perfect, they have significant challenges. But they are a way more promising field than anything Moxie is proposing, specifically because of bills like this. We have been fighting this battle for so long, and we have barely managed to stay on the winning side. But these bills are not going to go away, and in light of that I just do not believe that centralized Open platforms are sustainable. There is no world where governments give up trying to gain control over a centralized communication platform. So we just have to suck it up and figure out how to build good decentralized systems that ordinary people can use. We don't have an alternative. Yes, that's a very difficult challenge. But deal with it -- unless you have a better way to build an uncensorable Internet.
swiley 7y ago
How does this work for services in other countries? Do they also have to get liscenced in the US for handling user generated content? If so that’s pretty crappy, I’m reasonably sure a worldwide legal monoculture will hurt the poorest people of the world including children.
hatenberg 7y ago
So if the encryption moved into the mobile is layer instead. Lets say for images and blogs of text... Note: I don't think technology can actually beat a government that doesn't feel bound by the constitution or above the law.

613 points by liotier 7y ago

I think we need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. At 60 years[1], the median age of the Senate is 20 years more than the median age of the US population[2] - if this isn't an example of how broken and entrenched our power structures are, I don't know what is. These issues are also also an artifact of a societal structure in which we use the winners of a rigged popularity contest to decide the future of our country rather than that of independent academics on a per-issue basis. Through the lens of E2EE legislation, we are seeing our democracy crumbling because we failed to enforce that our representatives actually knowing what they are talking about. [1]: https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d0f8e809.pdf https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d... [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-demographics/

jawns 7y ago
On the flip side, at 60 years, the median-aged Senator has about 40 years of working experience and (arguably) that many years of accumulated knowledge and expertise, as well as life experience and a sense of proportion that comes from having observed our nation's ebbs and flows over a longer period of time. Granted, it's possible to be 60 years old, foolhardy, and out-of-touch -- just as it's possible to be 30 years old, whip-smart, and tuned in. But in general, voters value experience, and you don't amass experience without aging. I agree with you, though, about term limits. They're a good way to balance voters' desire for experienced candidates with the need to inject new blood from both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, if there's one thing American voters stupidly fall for beyond incumbents, it's nepotism, so if term limits were in place, I predict we'd see more family dynasties in Congress.
- wpasc 7y ago
  To play the devil's advocate with you and GP, term limits can often mean that congresspeople will be perpetual novices. Governing can be complex especially when seated on various committees like foreign affairs, CBO, etc. Older congresspeople who have accumulated years of experience have seen things go right, go wrong, and have learned a great deal about governing. I think in tech we can attest to how disruption does not always mean good and how move fast and break things can go wrong. To be clear, I don't disagree entirely with the idea of term limits or age limits, I just think the counter arguments deserve a fair amount of weight.
  - protanopia 7y ago
    Perhaps government should be made less complex.
    - jhayward 7y ago
      While you're accomplishing that I would like water to be less wet, and the value of Pi to be set to three as well, please. All proposals that I've ever seen to "simplify" government amount to abdicating large functions, usually justified by some ideology around "rugged individualism" or anarchism which are completely fatuous.
      - mullingitover 7y ago
        I'm a big fan of the idea of abolishing states, having a US national government and then county/city level governments. The states were created when it was infeasible to manage large amounts of territory due to the difficulty of communicating across long distances. That's no longer the case. We could cede some state powers to local governments and some to the federal level. The idea would get pushback from those in smaller states who enjoy a disproportionate voice in national politics, but I feel that those voices don't deserve to be amplified over anyone else's just because they have a bunch of empty land backing them.
        7y ago
puffyredchair 7y ago
So blatant ageism?
slg 7y ago
Term and age limits would do more to empower lobbyist than it would do anything to fix the government. You want politicians to know what they are talking about, but running a government is like almost every other job out there, you gain experience and expertise as you do it. That experience generally leads to a more productive and effective government. If you kick all those experienced people out, that knowledge shifts to lobbyist. Political officials will be even more dependent on them for guidance on governing and to learn the issues.
- xvector 7y ago
  Good point, this is a perspective I had not considered.
- sgk284 7y ago
  I'd argue the opposite. By having no term limits, lobbyists are able to build up connections over years and take advantage of them. It also means any dirt, corruption, or bribery has an unbounded time for leverage. Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse. I don't see why they wouldn't work well for Congress. And forcing lobbyists to reestablish rapport, dig up dirt, etc... with new congresspeople every few years would do wonders. There's a reason financial institutions force people to take holidays. It's good for rooting out theft.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse. This certainly isn't obvious.
    - lidHanteyk 7y ago
      Compare and contrast with monarchs, as the Framers did. Edit: While I'd like to build out the analogy further, there's only one data point that I can find in the missing quadrant: The Philippines have a limited number and duration of terms for their legislators. One data point is not enough to even identify a single confounding factor, and there's too many ways in which the USA and the Philippines differ.
svnpenn 7y ago
I want you to know that in general, I strongly agree with you. However you must be careful, as these arbitrary rules could cause some collateral damage. Namely: Bernie Sanders (78)
- syshum 7y ago
  I don't see that as Collateral Damage. :)
Jaygles 7y ago
We might just be in a weird transition period where the modern technology us youngins are used to is still a relatively new thing in the long term. The fix might just be to wait until the older people in charge retire or die out and the new older people in charge are those who grew up with these modern technologies.
- rayiner 7y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but modern technology is painfully simple compared to what the older people in charge used growing up. People who are in their 40s now grew up having to assign IRQs in their modem to download porn. Today, young people use iPads and have no idea how computers work.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > The fix might just be to wait until the older people in charge retire or die out and the new older people in charge are those who grew up with these modern technologies. I don't think so. I'm an older person, and I've been immersed in these technologies for almost my entire life (since I was 12). There is nothing old hat to the younger crowd that isn't old hat to me as well. Age is not a reliable indicator of these things.
jimbob45 7y ago
I'm not personally a huge fan of taking away choices just because you're afraid someone will make the wrong choice. If you don't like older politicians, then make your voice be known. Claiming that you know better than everyone and that your view needs to be the rule of law seems a bit heavy-handed, though. Same goes for censorship.
veeralpatel979 7y ago
I like term limits. But how would you respond to those who say elections are term limits?
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Very simple: just look at the percentage of incumbents who face a primary challenger (low), and the percentage of general elections won by incumbents (high). Elections are frequently won by incumbents on name recognition. Some ballots indicate which is the incumbent candidate, and a lot of people will just automatically vote for them. I’m sure there’s research out there that demonstrates the first 2 points. I’m less sure about the second two, but I’d bet there’s a paper out there that covers at least one of them.
  - wpasc 7y ago
    >Elections are frequently won by incumbents on name recognition. Doesn't that imply that voters don't know better? arguments like that don't fare well in my opinion.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      In your opinion? I don't understand your point. Do you think I'm underestimating the ignorance of the average voter? Also, it's "fare," not "fair" in this context, FYI.
      - wpasc 7y ago
        TY for the spelling correction. My point only is: Given that many incumbents win re-election on name recognition alone, doesn't refute the above post mentioning that elections can serve as term limits. To say to a voter, "we're instituting term limits because you voters don't learn about challengers to incumbents". This proposition would not be popular amongst voters even if it is true that people are ignorant and stupid when it comes to voting. Just because voters may not take full advantage of elections' ability to oust a politician may not suffice as reason to alter who the voters want. Voters voting on name recognition vs. actually liking a rep kinda have to be treated equally. If not, a rule curbing that may be interpreted as limiting people's choice. Again, I'm not disagreeing with you! just trying to state how a new rule like term limits could be perceived and the difficulty such a perception would create.
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
Would you ban Ken Thompson or Brian Kernighan from holding office? Age is a lazy argument, there are extremely ignorant young people too. America should just stop electing know-it-all, greedy people.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  They're probably too smart to want to run...
  - lukifer 7y ago
    Given the old joke about wanting the job being a disqualification for having it, maybe it's time we started electing people who don't want the job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Sortition has lots of upsides. Given the US doesn't really have an obvious source for a Monarch (which is the definitively best way option), using Sortition to fill the Figurehead role would be a good solution. The other half of the job currently named "President of the United States of America", heading the Executive function, would naturally make more sense as a route for either state leaders (e.g. Governor -> President) or the legislature (House and Senate leaders -> President) It should definitely be prohibited for one person to have both jobs as is done today. Donald Trump would make a perfectly good figurehead. The world would say yup, that's what we thought, a fat idiot who flashes his money and talks crap, America. Meanwhile the executive leader would negotiate say, tweaks to agricultural tariffs and that'd go largely unnoticed because e.g. now the buffoon is pretending "everybody" thinks Belgium is in Africa because he refuses to own up to mistakes and that's way funnier than China reducing some agricultural tariffs. The US would need to do a LOT of paperwork to make this happen though and a remarkable, disappointing fraction of Americans believe that their existing paperwork is sort of holy and mustn't be changed even though it was written in an era which is unrecognisable socially and technologically. So you're probably screwed.
ryandvm 7y ago
> We really need age limits. That's a pretty regressive suggestion. What's next? Revoking voting rights by race or gender?
rayiner 7y ago
> We really need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. I’m not sure I agree. I think millennials’ commitment to freedom of speech and information is lower than that of the older generation. (“Speech as violence” and whatnot. Young people today adopt a lot of the same modes of reasoning we ridiculed Tipper Gore for 25 years ago. It’s just directed to different perceived evils.) I’m also not sure that “people just don’t understand how the Internet works” is actually anybody’s problem. It should be remembered that Section 230 actually originated in the Communications Decency Act in 1996, a sweeping attempt to regulate the Internet. A panel of three federal judges, who were then in their 50s and 60s, in Philadelphia struck down almost the entire law, leaving only the Section 230 safe harbor. Two points are illuminating. One, the decision was widely praised for its cogent articulation of how the Internet works. It was impressive in its technical detail. For example, it describes routing packets: https://cyber.harvard.edu/stjohns/aclu-findings.html https://cyber.harvard.edu/stjohns/aclu-findings.html > Messages between computers on the Internet do not necessarily travel entirely along the same path. The Internet uses "packet switching" communication protocols that allow individual messages to be subdivided into smaller "packets" that are then sent independently to the destination, and are then automatically reassembled by the receiving computer. While all packets of a given message often travel along the same path to the destination, if computers along the route become overloaded, then packets can be re-routed to less loaded computers It also described how USENET works: > For unmoderated newsgroups, when an individual user with access to a USENET server posts a message to a newsgroup, the message is automatically forwarded to all adjacent USENET servers that furnish access to the newsgroup, and it is then propagated to the servers adjacent to those servers, etc. The messages are temporarily stored on each receiving server, where they are available for review and response by individual users. The messages are automatically and periodically purged from each system after a time to make room for new messages. Responses to messages, like the original messages, are automatically distributed to all other computers receiving the newsgroup or forwarded to a moderator in the case of a moderated newsgroup. The dissemination of messages to USENET servers around the world is an automated process that does not require direct human intervention or review. The other point is that it was a radically pro-First Amendment decision: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0613cda.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we... > We were surprised at how sweeping the ruling was," said Cathleen A. Cleaver, director of legal studies for the Family Research Council of Washington, a supporter of the law. > "They went far beyond where they needed to go," she said. "Not only did the court strike down the law against the display of pornography, but also the parts that made it illegal to transmit pornography directly to specific children. It's very radical." Finally, as a nit picky aside: of course the median age of the senate is higher than the median age of the whole population. The median age of the population includes children. Senators are, however, required by the Constitution to be at least 30. So the relevant point of comparison is the median age of people who are over 30.
dillonmckay 7y ago
Repeal the 17th Amendment?
galangalalgol 7y ago
Ageism is wrong in both directions. The notion that older people are less technical is ageist an just as unacceptable as thinking young people are too idealistic.
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  Well that's just a deformed way of thinking about stuff. What matters is whether it's true, not whether somebody will call it ageist.
JohnFen 7y ago
> We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. This is not a function of age. It's a function of whether or not people are engaging in continuing education. There are many young people who are simply not equipped to handle today's problems too, after all, and there are many older people who are fully up to date.
reaperducer 7y ago
We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our country as it goes into the future. While I agree that the age skew in politics is curious, and perhaps incorrect, the other side of this is, "We cannot let people with 30 years less experience, knowledge, and history decide the fate of our country as it goes into the future." Automatically associating youth with intelligence and "progress" and stereotyping people with years of accrued wisdom to being "old fogies" is textbook ageism. It's something most of the rest of society grows out of by the time they hit college, but also a thing that persists within the SV bubble and what is now called "bro" culture. Fortunately, it's also illegal in many arenas.
- dathinab 7y ago
  But when I look at the decisions today's politicians do wrt. IT, I would argue that many 30year old ex-IT students have _far_ more experience wrt. IT topics than our current politicans. The problem is that the tech landscape moved to fast and all the wisdom and experience often just doesn't apply anymore but, to make it worse, sometimes it seems that you can bend technology to make it apply but that a very dangerous fallacy. One I have seen politicans step into frequently.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    How many ex-IT students become politicians? Old politicians with no IT experience are being replaced with young politicians with no IT experience. Age limits don't improve anything here.
    - jvalencia 7y ago
      I'm also not sure that having IT-savvy politicians will change policy. The government has certain safety goals (eg trafficking) that it will still have to deal with. These might be a driver regardless of tech savvy-ness. There's an assumption that if only they knew enough -- but perhaps it's not them who don't know enough.
      - 7y ago
trilliumbaker 7y ago
> I think we need age limits. Ageism is not an acceptable solution. We complain about this in tech all the time. Why would we find it acceptable in politics?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Well for one we know plenty of technically competent older workers who get passed over in tech and it isn't a zero sum game - in a functioning system there is room for young and old workers and overall success inproving with more workers can make more room. Elected officials are finite and zero sum so the situation isn't comparable even if principles are. There are also the throughly mixed messages sent. Ageism is enshrined into law even past the threshold of 18. It is just defined with maximum hypocrisy such that a 20 year old is too incapable of drinking while a senile nonegarian year old with Alzheimers severe enough to have the mental capacity of a child is. Now there are obvious dangers to sunsetting rights but that double standard both normalizes the reverse and both equality and spite make "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" viscerally tempting to those who were disadvantaged. Not the best of mentalities but it is easy to see how someone who couldn't rent a car until recently would be less than sympathetic.
maverick2007 7y ago
I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not know what they're talking about or do they know who's paying for their reelection and governing accordingly? I would hope and think that they have the self awareness to know what they're not experts in and surround themselves with people who are experts in what they're weak at (maybe IT). I just worry that they have that but they know if they stop voting according to party line/special interest, their reelection coffers will be much lighter.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not know what they're talking about or do they know who's paying for their reelection and governing accordingly Why is that the dichotomy? How about, they know what they’re talking about, and simply care about different things than you do?
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    How about, they know what they’re talking about An extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
Reason077 7y ago
> ”the median age of the Senate is 20 years more than the median age of the US population“ Has the mean age of politicians increased faster than that of the general population over time, or has it always been this way? Do politicians become older, on average, as democracies mature and power structures become more entrenched?
mjevans 7y ago
How about we require our legislators to become educated enough on a topic to understand the broad view of how it works before the regulate any given thing. In the case of regulating websites, they might need to understand (at a high level) what an IP address is, generally what DHCP and DNS do, how a web-page is like a mix of recipe and content for dynamically constructing a publication. How a database might provide some of that content and the difference between static and dynamic content. I think if there are any particular boogeymen they're after, those examples should be deconstructed and contrasted against similar publications that they find OK. Maybe the Library of Congress should have a Congressional Education sub-office dedicated to providing such instruction, and if not state colleges should definitely file briefings for congress.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That brings to mind subdividing Congressional seats into domains to allow for specialization. The devil as usual is in the details. Issues include: * Defining expertises to not become outdated or too general to give any specialization advantage. * Handling border cases and deciding when every domain may vote on it. * While allowing specializations would the subdivisions actually be more expert in practice? We have already seen how "sabotour boards" assemble as those who are most interested in it are those who oppose it. I have already taken it as a given that qualification gatekeeping would take Goodheart's Law to new levels as refusing to recognize reality gives more concrete power. Still it is an interesting concept.
- paulmd 7y ago
  You've just suggested a poll test/literacy test for politicians. That definitely has obvious problems based on who gets to choose the "right" answers. The question that will be on the revenue committee exam: "do tax cuts pay for themselves"? (I mean, I know the answer, but which one is going to be "correct"?) It's much simpler to realize that the majority of the people above a certain age can no longer stay current with technological developments. Yes, some of them can, but the vast majority are starting to lose it and certainly aren't absorbing anywhere near as much as they used to. Just like the minimum age limits also throw away a certain number of potentially qualified younger candidates who do have enough life experience to make good decisions, it's OK that upper age limits would exclude a certain number of older candidates who could still keep up with things.
MadWombat 7y ago
Have you seen this movie? :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets

t223 7y ago

What a great write up. The bill is rather dangerous, and I’m immediately suspicious of anything claiming to help children in the context of legislation. FOSTA/SESTA is a horrible law and it has done a lot of damage.

mschuster91 7y ago
FOSTA/SESTA was intended to cause lots of damage.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  True, but arguably it wasn’t intended to cause the specific types of damage it caused, and its actual targets suffered less than expected.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    A cynical person would say that this is because the stated targets weren't actually the targets, just like with this act. (Stated targets: sex traffickers, real targets: tech companies offering e2e encryption)
    - xvector 7y ago
      Yes, IMO FOSTA/SESTA were deliberately malicious and yet another successful attempt to force puritanical ideals upon our citizens, regardless of the damage it would cause. The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They knew exactly how it would play out.
      - chimeracoder 7y ago
        > The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They knew exactly how it would play out. Blumenthal (who wrote SESTA and also this bill) was waging a war against consensual sex work for years, long before he was elected to the Senate. The fallout from SESTA was not accidental; it was by design.

syshum 7y ago

I can not wait for all the people to tell me if I do not support this law then I want children to be abused. At this point any law that has position of "protecting the children" it almost universally bad for society, Children are being used a political tools for Authoritarians to remove individual rights and liberties

novok 7y ago
You need creepy catholic sex abusing priest cartoons (with the senators & the AG as the priests) saying it's for the children while they act like peeping toms to really get the point across.
- lanternslight 7y ago
  Or school teachers.
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I like owning firearms so I'm regularly told that I love dead children. Welcome to the club.
- sarakayakomzin 7y ago
  I fucking love when nuts like you jump in to try and compare ones and zeros to lethal weapons.
AndrewBissell 7y ago
AG Barr basically said as much in a speech at the White House Human Trafficking Summit this morning. Decried "military-grade encryption (lol) being marketed on consumer devices" and made all the same old for-the-children excuses. Naturally no mention of how his own DoJ botching and slow-walking the Epstein case may be helping some of the worst and most prolific traffickers in the country escape justice. It takes real gall for him to complain about how difficult encryption is making it for investigators to gather evidence of human trafficking, when the FBI still hasn't raided Epstein's New Mexico ranch. https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1223320056257376256 https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1223320056257376256

microcolonel 7y ago

Write Congress to say that if something like this is passed, it must be actual legislation, and not this "whatever the regulator approves" nonsense.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Sadly that horse has long left the barn, fled thousands of miles, died and been eaten by vuktures. Its grandchildren are feral and flee at the sight or scent of humans. I suspect there are only two ways to fix that issue both unlikely. Game theory and sloth favor buck passing to agencies let alone the logistical scale involved with a mytgical ideal Congress of honest actors. The first is an amendment limiting the delegation abilities of congression to departments and agencies to be essentially programatically explicit or else be unconstitutionally vague. The second is a precedent and jurisprudence shift as judges strike down such delegation as unconstitutional.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Well, the way you put it, we should be taking up arms right now. If we're not there yet, then there's politics to do.

iamatworknow 7y ago

I do find it interesting that Lindsay Graham is one of the main sponsors of this legislation. From the linked article, >The idea is to make providers “earn” Section 230 immunity for CSAM claims, by complying with a set of guidelines that would be developed by an unelected commission and could be modified unilaterally by the Attorney General, but which are not actually binding law or rules set through any legislative or agency rulemaking process. The structure and powers of this agency sound kind of like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau setup by the Obama administration. The CFPB was an unelected commission that could create rules financial institutions had to abide by, and dole out punishment in terms of fines, without going through a legislative or rule making process. What were Lindsay Graham's thoughts on the CFPB? >Graham, however, called the agency the "most out-of-control, unaccountable federal agency" in Washington. >"Really no oversight at all," he said. "They can get into everybody's business. I don't think they added much at all to the consumer protection. They sure add a lot to increasing costs for midsize banks throughout the country that had nothing to do with the financial collapse." https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/graham-durbin-consumer-protection-agency-259969?tab=most-read https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/graham-durbin-cons...

deleted 7y ago
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sailfast 7y ago
Pedantic but for clarity: CFPB is directed by a single person who serves for five years and cannot be terminated by the President except for cause, which is one of the reasons unaccountability is brought up. Folks often indicate they want a "commission" (similar to SEC or FDIC) instead of an agency with a single director. All that said, yes, this panel of people making "recommendations" that are not laws but have the effect of law seems like a great recipe for selective enforcement based how large or small a company is and what they do, which is not going to do much to solve the bigger issue. Congress is not going to move at the speed of the internet / technology. I'm not sure if that's a named "rule" yet, but it should be. Illegal communities will move. And similarly, conditional "safe harbor" to operate a website should not be a thing. These regs are easily avoided by operating in other countries which will just make the US even less involved and competitive in this space.

post_below 7y ago

I love the hitchhiker's reference. The post was well written and covered what I think are the important points. There's only one thing I think deserves more attention than she gave it: The economics. The US' place in the tech world is largely a result of limited barriers to innovation in tech. The kinds of "duties" proposed by this bill would be bad for big tech (a huge part of the economy) but worse than that they would be prohibitive for new innovators. New social media services which attempt to serve the increasing demographic of people disillusioned with big tech aren't even going to try to get into a market with draconian requirements amd potential legal obligations like those proposed (or those that logically follow from the proposals). Which means those services will be built elsewhere or not at all. And of course there are the innovations we haven't imagined yet which won't be allowed to happen.

Mindless2112 7y ago

> Without the immunity provided by Section 230, there might very well be no Twitter, or Facebook, or dating apps, or basically any website with a comments section. Going on that description, a bit of me wishes for Section 230 to be repealed. Of course there would be no GitHub either, which wouldn't be so great.

manfredo 7y ago
I don't think you fully understand the scope of what section 230 protects against. Even running an email server could put people at risk of being held liable for crimes, if users were to use that server to coordinate criminal acts. Revoking section 230 essentially mandates total surveillance of user activity.
- Mindless2112 7y ago
  So you would have to run your own email server or be given access to one by someone who trusts you, which would be a better situation in some ways than the Gmail monoculture we have today. Google likely has your mail on one end or the other; you're already under surveillance; Section 230 hasn't saved you.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    And that email server has to be in a datacenter you own, because AWS doesn't exist. (What is AWS if not hosting user-generated content?) And if you run a tor node, then you're liable for anything someone does with tor. And if you host a blockchain mirror. And...
    - dimensi0nal 7y ago
      There's already child pornography in the Bitcoin blockchain, right?
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        Yep!

manfredo 7y ago

So in short: * EARN IT creates a committee that is set out to define "best practices" for preventing child sex abuse. * Companies that don't adhere to these best practices lose liability protections for user-generated content. * The attorney general can unilaterally edit these best practices as he sees fit. * The current attorney general has repeatedly made statements that he wishes to eliminate the ability for companies to offer end-to-end encryption - he wants all communications to be vulnerable to wiretapping. This effectively gives the attorney general the power to compel tech companies to do whatever he wants (so long as he can argue that it's preventing sex abuse) by threatening to revoke section 230 protections, and it's likely that this would be used to revoke protections from companies that offer end to end encryption.

diroussel 7y ago
So what will happen? Facebook will lose ability to deploy encryption and move servers overseas? Unlikely to affect non US internet users, unless my phone suddenly looses ability to use encryption.
- diroussel 7y ago
  Sorry if this seemed flippant. Of course there will be massive impact. But I was asking people if they though they knew what the impact will be? Will it only affect social platforms that need moderation?
henryfjordan 7y ago
The article does mention that companies could argue they took "reasonable steps" if they refuse to follow the best practices. If they choose that route and win whatever court battle that follows, it'd essentially neuter this law. So there would at least a way out but it's risky.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Lets think of what "reasonable steps" a service provider of encrypted messaging could take to prevent child porn on their service... * They could put up a big message saying 'no child porn'. I don't think that would be considered sufficient by a court. * They could put a 'report' button. Again - insufficient. * They could make client-side automated content scanners. Might be accepted by a court, but if you provide the scanner to the user, the government could argue it is easy to make images which bypass the scanner, which it would be. * They could break encryption on some percentage of chats. A court would likely be looking at a particular case, and would consider the service provider not to have done their duty if the particular case at hand hadn't been checked. I don't really see any reasonable steps which would stand up, other than breaking e2e and doing server-side scanning.

__jal 7y ago

Don't fall for the trap that this is about "big tech". It isn't. It is about your freedom of speech and ability to protect yourself.

OrangeMango 7y ago
It is about big tech: WhatsApp doesn't need section 230 immunity if it isn't part of Facebook.
- elpool2 7y ago
  Can you explain how? The article lists WhatsApp as an example of an interactive computer service that is covered by section 230 immunity. Is it because WhatsApp is purely a messaging service without curation or moderation and so the law wouldn't consider WhatsApp to be a publisher anyway?
  - OldHand2018 7y ago
    I don't use WhatsApp, but my understanding is that they are in the business of providing private communication between parties. Section 230 protects the likes of Facebook, where people can post things for all the world to see, including things that are slanderous or illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
    - ryukafalz 7y ago
      Yes, section 230 protects Facebook for public conversations. But as far as I'm aware it also protects providers of private communication, because as a user of the provider you could potentially receive illegal content from them. The provider, should they choose to moderate content by e.g. having report buttons and moderation teams, could still be treated as a publisher.
- nullspace 7y ago
  I’m confused? What’s WhatsApp being part of a big tech company got to do with 230 immunity?

msp_yc 7y ago

How many people here think of encryption as a second amendment right? If you find yourself arguing that it is - what happens when you are largely, if not wholly, dependent on a third party to be able to exercise that right? We've decided that corporations get first amendment rights independent of their members - do they also get second amendment rights? Are these just silly arguments? It's late Friday afternoon...

noident 7y ago
Encrypted data is more like speech than a weapon. The analogy to guns just doesn't work.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  The US Govt considers encryption a form of weapons tech so that it falls under Munitions Exports Controls (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...). But the proposed law doesn't outlaw private use of encryption, only potentially outlawing corporations from offering it, so I don't know the 2nd Amendment would really apply.
  - msp_yc 7y ago
    If encryption is considered a form of arms, it does appear that there is case law that grants sellers of arms some constitutional protections - quick article at https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/04/does-the-second-amendment-protect-firearms-commerce/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/04/does-the-second-amendme.... I think, at this point, one could successfully argue that the proposed law follows 'reasonable regulation' and so protections aren't afforded. But it would be an interesting discussion.
  - dependenttypes 7y ago
    The US courts seem to agree that encryption software are protected under the 1st amendment. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

morpheuskafka 7y ago

This is exactly analogous to DMCA in its structure--except that instead of the procedures being part of the law, the will be subject to constant change by the executive branch of government.

dchyrdvh 7y ago

Who am I to say that these two senators don't understand big politics, but here's my theory why the other 98 senators won't support the idea. Laws is a barrier between those who rule and those who obey. When the latter complain, the laws barrier diffuses their anger. The two senators find it too difficult to play this game and want to break this wall to rule the internet directly.

tomc1985 7y ago

Sexual abuse is terrible but I am so tired of it being used as the handle of the billyclub used to beat technology down

numpad0 7y ago
Maybe internet needs to learn how to paint politicians bringing up child porn regulation as molesters
- SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
  Given some of the news that's come to light in recent years, there's a non-zero chance that they are
api 7y ago
Look into some of the people who have set up fake CP sites on the dark web or who have posed as young girls on public social media. It's incredibly easy to create a honey pot to ensnare sexual predators. There are many articles on such experiments and they are highly effective. They don't need back doors or hacker hanky panky to catch sex pests, just creative but conventional police work. This is an issue that gets dragged out to scare the public but the authorities really don't care much about it. Reports of sex abuse from real victims are often ignored and sexual predators get shorter sentences than people convicted of minor drug possession or other stupid crap.
- choward 7y ago
  Exactly, they need to actually do their jobs instead of trying to cheat by taking away everyone's privacy and other rights.
Veedrac 7y ago
One of them has to give. You can't effectively police what's perfectly anonymous.
- skinkestek 7y ago

tantalor 7y ago

This sums it up: "This bill takes popular rage at social media companies’ immunity under Section 230 for public speech on their platforms, and twists it into a backhanded way of punishing messaging service providers’ use of encryption for private conversations." (emphasis original)

nimbius 7y ago
seems sort of pointless when players like Cloudflare have already twice voluntarily censored content on their networks they personally deemed too provocative. Not to mention this does nothing in the event a service provider with end-to-end crypto is implicated in some dastardly deed. The mathematics of crypto still win. the Signal protocol used on platforms like Whatsapp provides confidentiality, integrity, authentication, participant consistency, destination validation, forward secrecy, post-compromise security (aka future secrecy), causality preservation, message unlinkability, message repudiation, participation repudiation, and asynchronicity. Using the protocol on something like TAILS OS basically turns the conversations participants into living ghosts. Prosecutors would have one hell of a time proving a provider did anything, and if it started to seem like this could bite "providers" in court or jeopardize their 230 status, they could just release the entire thing under the GPL and patch it to use blockchain or TOR mesh networking after the fact. The name of the program is still tangentially associated with the brand and people on your social network will still talk about it and advocate its use.
- wizzwizz4 7y ago
  To name one thing wrong with this comment: WhatsApp doesn't use Signal. This is just technobabble with sentiment; an attempt to sway, not to communicate.
  - Jayschwa 7y ago
    https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
incompatible 7y ago

dropoutcoder 7y ago

This may be an unpopular opinion, but this is a great idea. Huge tech companies now worth trillions facilitate criminal activity at scale and wash their hands of any responsibility. E2EE at scale is problematic for maintaining sanctity in society, as people are terrible. Giving common folks easily accessible tools to engage in global secure comms has been a recipe for disaster. LE’s job has been made more difficult, and the tech companies should bear responsibility for policing their pipes.

ThrustVectoring 7y ago
"Facilitate criminal activity at scale" is an argument to ban roads, too. All infrastructure gets used by everyone.
- dropoutcoder 7y ago
  Roads can be monitored and policed.
argomo 7y ago
Law enforcement has more tools for mass surveillance than ever before. The Stazi could only dream of what we have built. But it's not the job of tech companies to make policing easy, and it's not in the best interest of a free people to give their government too much power. Please look at the history of the FBI for examples.
- dropoutcoder 7y ago
  Sorry for delay in responding. The issue is that there’s a huge proliferation of inaccessible comms which creates a growing sea of unchecked globally enabled online activity. This isn’t the same as allowing people to congregate in person and in private. The abstraction of privacy expanding on a virtual global scale presents unique challenges to law enforcement. This is independent from the proliferation of surveillance mechanisms at hand, and isn’t a valid counterbalance. The tech companies assume power and disclaim responsibility. It is their job to police their pipes, so respectfully and urgently I disagree. Concerns about historical corruption within three letter agencies is best addressed by working towards technical solutions that enable proper checks and balances amongst involved players: governments, tech oligarchies, and commoners. The current trend is towards a growing sea of entropy without checks and balances, and this is unacceptable to governments motivated to maintain/increase order and reduce suffering. Resistance via deployment of technical libertarian mechanisms at scale isn’t a solid long term solution. The federal government isn’t aiming to ban math, encryption, pgp, one time pads, steanography, etc. Instead the goal is to prevent the proliferation of unbreakable encryption at scale, as that growing void enables criminal activity at scale, despite the growing surveillance apparatus.

craftinator 7y ago

Are there any stats available for child sex abuse using end to end encryption? It is used widely, along with "terrorism!" as a reason to ban e2eE, so I'd like to see some stats that show that it's actually an issue. Does regular mail post have this problem, or random websites? Not sure that e2eE is exploited more for this than those other platforms ...

nine_k 7y ago

* E2E encryption is incompatible with eavesdropping. * Forbidding content, like child porn, hate speech, etc in private communication requires eavesdropping. * Courts are used to communication channels that are easy to eavesdrop, like paper or analog phone, and keep requiring disclosure from communication providers using court orders. * Same as with guns, law enforcement wants to ban e2e encryption so that criminals could not use it, but criminals break the law anyway, so effectively the ban is for law-abiding citizens first and foremost. Unless you can compel general public that having communication services with unbreakable encryption is more important than law enforcement, e2e encryption will stay effectively banned for non-technical users. That is, for almost all, including most criminals, too.

procombo 7y ago
Wonderfully put. This exactly.

jejei992o 7y ago

This is great. We can all run private Kubernetes pods and share over Wireguard. This will only ever apply to corporations right?

james-imitative 7y ago
Sounds like a really good solution to the problem described.

danShumway 7y ago

Other people have mentioned this already, but in light of bills like this I am starting to get a little annoyed at people like Moxie and at people more broadly who seem to be purely interested in punching down on efforts to build sustainable, censorship-resistant encrypted platforms. People who want to argue that decentralized systems are pointless need to start offering feasible, multi-country legislative solutions alongside their criticism, or else I do not care about what they have to say. Everything going on right now indicates to me that the UX problem is easier to solve than the legal problem. No, decentralized systems aren't perfect, they have significant challenges. But they are a way more promising field than anything Moxie is proposing, specifically because of bills like this. We have been fighting this battle for so long, and we have barely managed to stay on the winning side. But these bills are not going to go away, and in light of that I just do not believe that centralized Open platforms are sustainable. There is no world where governments give up trying to gain control over a centralized communication platform. So we just have to suck it up and figure out how to build good decentralized systems that ordinary people can use. We don't have an alternative. Yes, that's a very difficult challenge. But deal with it -- unless you have a better way to build an uncensorable Internet.

swiley 7y ago

How does this work for services in other countries? Do they also have to get liscenced in the US for handling user generated content? If so that’s pretty crappy, I’m reasonably sure a worldwide legal monoculture will hurt the poorest people of the world including children.

hatenberg 7y ago

So if the encryption moved into the mobile is layer instead. Lets say for images and blogs of text... Note: I don't think technology can actually beat a government that doesn't feel bound by the constitution or above the law.