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The EARN-IT Act-Prepare for another attack on encryption in the U.S.

90 points by hourislate 7y ago

throwanem 7y ago
I wonder if anyone is really looking past the coronavirus pandemic at stuff like this. It seems like a great time to sneak unpopular legislation through without much outcry. I also wonder what continuity of government is like once DC gets locked down. Is the legislature prepared to operate remotely? Is it preparing? In 2020 I see no essential reason why physical presence should be required for lawmaking, but I haven't heard anything anywhere in the news, ever, about the infrastructure that'd be needed to support this kind of "remote work". Have I overlooked something?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  I'm not aware of any major Western parliament that has any kind of remote/MPs-under-quarantine contingency model other than varying emergency regulations. With parliaments routinely having hundreds of MPs I'm not even sure how to appropriately hold a debate, given that telco etiquette goes down the drain already with a dozen participants - and that's not to speak on how to do the audio mix, you'd need extremely expensive audio mixers that can keep up with hundreds of inputs simultaneously.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    The technology for keeping such large debates manageable predates electric lighting. Applying rules of order to a teleconference scenario would no doubt have its wrinkles, but overall I don't see why it couldn't be done. The "mixing desk" would be virtual. Probably the major cost would be provisioning backhaul, but who are we kidding, Verizon and Comcast would get the contract. Gouge like hell for it, too, in the best tradition of government contracting. But most of what happens in the process of legislating doesn't happen in the House and Senate chambers, and I do wonder how well that'd play out without anyone in physical proximity.
spacephysics 7y ago
We need a constitutional amendment to protect encryption. Such attacks will continue until enough rights have been eroded away. Sadly I think such reform won’t occur unless an unprecedented event occurs requiring such change, which I don’t see happening in the near future. The alternative being to inform the general public why this is important, which I see as even less probable.
- yummypaint 7y ago
  More fundamentally we need more explicit privacy protections. The "unreasonable" in the 4th amendment clearly isnt sufficient. The right to encrypt would then be a correlary.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
whatshisface 7y ago
Mods: why is this flagged as a dupe? I clicked on "past" and this was the only one that showed up.

90 points by hourislate 7y ago

I wonder if anyone is really looking past the coronavirus pandemic at stuff like this. It seems like a great time to sneak unpopular legislation through without much outcry. I also wonder what continuity of government is like once DC gets locked down. Is the legislature prepared to operate remotely? Is it preparing? In 2020 I see no essential reason why physical presence should be required for lawmaking, but I haven't heard anything anywhere in the news, ever, about the infrastructure that'd be needed to support this kind of "remote work". Have I overlooked something?

mschuster91 7y ago
I'm not aware of any major Western parliament that has any kind of remote/MPs-under-quarantine contingency model other than varying emergency regulations. With parliaments routinely having hundreds of MPs I'm not even sure how to appropriately hold a debate, given that telco etiquette goes down the drain already with a dozen participants - and that's not to speak on how to do the audio mix, you'd need extremely expensive audio mixers that can keep up with hundreds of inputs simultaneously.
- throwanem 7y ago
  The technology for keeping such large debates manageable predates electric lighting. Applying rules of order to a teleconference scenario would no doubt have its wrinkles, but overall I don't see why it couldn't be done. The "mixing desk" would be virtual. Probably the major cost would be provisioning backhaul, but who are we kidding, Verizon and Comcast would get the contract. Gouge like hell for it, too, in the best tradition of government contracting. But most of what happens in the process of legislating doesn't happen in the House and Senate chambers, and I do wonder how well that'd play out without anyone in physical proximity.

spacephysics 7y ago

We need a constitutional amendment to protect encryption. Such attacks will continue until enough rights have been eroded away. Sadly I think such reform won’t occur unless an unprecedented event occurs requiring such change, which I don’t see happening in the near future. The alternative being to inform the general public why this is important, which I see as even less probable.

yummypaint 7y ago
More fundamentally we need more explicit privacy protections. The "unreasonable" in the 4th amendment clearly isnt sufficient. The right to encrypt would then be a correlary.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

whatshisface 7y ago

Mods: why is this flagged as a dupe? I clicked on "past" and this was the only one that showed up.