81 ms·

Oppose the Earn IT Act

2229 points by joeyespo 6y ago

annoyingnoob 6y ago
We need to vote out the people pushing for backdoors. They seem to want backdoors at any cost, without any technical understanding of why its a terrible idea. Vote them out!
- cevn 6y ago
  Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) - vote for Jamie Harrison on Nov 3 in SC Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) - term ends in 2022* Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) - 2024 Dianne Feinstein (D-California) - 2024 as well... good luck with this one
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    Been working on that last one for years. At least I'm likely to out live her.
    - cevn 6y ago
      I believe you. I've never understood how she garners so much support in progressive Cali of all places.
      - granitDev 6y ago
        She's got money and power and a D in front of her name, she'll get voted in every time in California. Vote Blue no matter who, remember?
        coldpie 6y ago
        > Vote Blue no matter who, remember? I mean, yes. Feinstein is better than the alternative in the General. The Primaries are the way to get rid of her, I can't believe no one has booted her out yet.
        trsohmers 6y ago
        You don't seem to understand the California Jungle/Blanket primary system... All candidates from any/all parties run against each other in the primary, and the top two are the contenders for the general election. Recently this has led to two Democrats always being facing each other in the general election. In her 2018 race, Feinstein faced another Democrat, who lost by 10 points in the general with Feinstein winning the vast majority of the vote in densely populated areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_election_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...
        nuclear_eclipse 6y ago
        The most recent general election was Dem vs Dem (due to the unique way that CA primaries work). Feinstein still won a strong majority of the statewide vote. :|
      - jedberg 6y ago
        California is not as progressive as you might hope. The cities are full of progressives, but outside the cities is very conservative. You have to be fairly moderate to win statewide office. Newsom was a reaction to Trump, but sort of an aberration. More than half of our governors have been Republicans, including Regan, who went on be President and a paragon of the GOP. Since the 80s 14 out of 30 years has been Republicans, and Jerry Brown was 10 of the remaining 16 years, and he's pretty moderate as far as Democrats go.
        newen 6y ago
        Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco. I don't think you can call even the cities progressive.
        jedberg 6y ago
        Pelosi has power and will never be voted out no matter how far she strays from the people she represents.
        phendrenad2 6y ago
        Even the cities are full of people who are progressive right up until the point that it affects them. Just look at the NIMBY problem we have in SF.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  Just like we needed to vote out the people that voted for the bailouts and the Iraq war. Politics keeps moving on. I'm still on the Iraq war. I'm not interested on any other issue until we solve that one. Edit: s/bailouts of/bailouts and/
  - the-dude 6y ago
    What are "bailouts of the Iraq war" ?
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Maybe OP means both the bailouts in 2008 plus the Iraq war in 2003? Or the fact that the US is still actively involve militarily in predator bombing seven nations?
      - linuxftw 6y ago
        I meant "and" as you guessed (I think?). Everyone vowed to vote out the representatives that bailed out Wall Street and left home owners holding the bag. Then whatever came along and poof, that didn't matter. Same (and more importantly) with the Iraq war. IMO, you voted for it, you're out. Doesn't matter why, doesn't matter what you believed at the time, you're out. There's been zero accountability on death and destruction on the grandest scale this century, so I don't expect anyone to remotely lift a finger about some IT bill.
  - ipnon 6y ago
    If you give up, then the powers that be win by default.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  In American politics, voting really doesn't make a difference as much as just having opinions alighted with those of the top 10% of income earners[0]. Making noise and protests are more effective in some ways, but the sad reality is that most of senate/congress is not beholden to the selectorate of all voters, but rather the smaller selectorate of influences that control the advertising and narrative that allows them to continue to be re-elected. [0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-...
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    The video there talks about a study about how people feel about a policy and whether the policy gets passed or not. Then it goes on to extrapolate that to electing humans. The video is right that we have less influence over policy, policy that citizens do not vote on directly. We do directly vote for humans and those votes do count - electoral college is a special case. Also, I'd bet there are a lot of folks that read HN that are already in the top 10% of income earners. So maybe I'm speaking directly to some of the 10% now.
blintz 6y ago
I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.
  - wtn 6y ago
    Some of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020.
    - ancarda 6y ago
      Do you happen to know which ones?
      - hundchenkatze 6y ago
        I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...
        nitrogen 6y ago
        Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.
danboarder 6y ago
Where are my elected representatives that represent my privacy rights on bills like this? Maybe I need to run for office since I care about end2end encryption, free software, and the rights of free people and information to freely travel around the world...
- YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
  In Europe quite a few "pirate parties" popped up about a decade ago. None of them were too successful as far as I know, at least in The Netherlands they didn't mention to gain a single seat (out of 150).
- mikestew 6y ago
  You can run, and with that platform your opponent will conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the audience. Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT Act that one would reasonably think would be shot down immediately, but isn't.
  - sailfast 6y ago
    "My opponent supports the attorney general having access to your porn habits. I support your privacy" is a pretty straightforward simplified riposte to your above oversimplification.
    - hvis 6y ago
      Let's take it a step further: "My opponent supports giving all law enforcement officers unrestricted access to your children's chats, photos and calls."
      - emiliobumachar 6y ago
        A bit further: "The NSA can and does see your nudes and those of your family."
sailfast 6y ago
I reached out to my representatives on this when the Act was first proposed. I'm confused about the changes that have happened since that time and the post does not say anything about what has changed. What does "Advancing" mean in this case? If I have already contacted all of my legislators about strong encryption and opposition to this bill, what is the latest change that requires re-engaging?
- pfranz 6y ago
  I haven't followed the specifics, either, but it looks like it was introduced back in March. When I reached out to my Senators and Reps back then I got a reply from my House Rep (who I believe was supportive of the bill). The bill is currently in the Senate and only this week is getting "marked up" in the Judiciary Committee--I imagine if your Senator is on that committee it's more important to reach out. Sadly, I think issues need constant re-engaging since they pop up under different names and in different forms.
- suizi 6y ago
  The latest version now involves State law so if one State out of 50 decides encryption is bad for children they can go after any company in the U.S. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still-threatens-encryption-and-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still...
programmarchy 6y ago
Thankful for Mozilla and EFF, but have any tech elites spoken out against this or put money into defeating it? Thiel, Musk, Altman, Graham... hello? Should we assume SV is complicit?
- Klonoar 6y ago
  Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook (who this would presumably really hit at), etc. I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge the idea that you might just try to fight this as unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky given this administration (if not downright stupid).
  - foolfoolz 6y ago
    because apple, google, facebook already comply with this. they have built ways for the government to access their data. any company with an important enough set of information is going to get this request and you can’t say no
    - Klonoar 6y ago
      I know what you're saying, but where do you think you are? Please have enough common sense to assume I asked the question knowing how that works. The primary thing with this bill that the companies seem explicitly quiet on is the fact that the use case it opens up for the government (sidestepping user privacy/encryption) coupled with the level of power it more or less places in the Attorney General's hands. I can't in good faith assume that these companies are comfortable with this, and I'd like to know why they're not speaking up.
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      At least for Apple, they claim the iPhone (at least devices post-checkm8) has not been compromised. iCloud is required to comply with records requests, but the data isn’t in iCloud the feds can’t get it. Even with checkm8, the Secure Enclave still has not been compromised. If they were in bed with the feds, the FBI/NYPD wouldn’t keep asking them for keys that Apple doesn’t have.
chejazi 6y ago
Obviously this sucks as a proposal but... how do we stop the child porn?
- manuelabeledo 6y ago
  This sounds like the start of a false dichotomy.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Not necessarily. These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to keep proposing bills to address these problems until something passes. By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be another bill from the same general set of people. Maybe the new one will address some of the issues in the prior ones but the chances are good that it won't address all of them. Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their approach to solving a problem instead of also offering up your own better solutions tends to not work well in the long run.
    - darkarmani 6y ago
      > to address serious real problems, like child porn Can you quantify the size of this problem? It sounds like military defense spending during the cold war. "You just have to take our word for it that child porn is a massive problem affecting 1 out of 4 children, so we need to crush the tech industry."
    - manuelabeledo 6y ago
      > Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their approach to solving a problem instead of also offering up your own better solutions tends to not work well in the long run. How would you think the introduction of a competing bill would fare, if it still needs the support of the first bill proponents? Wouldn't they believe that anything short than the original bill is not worth supporting? I don't think the issue is that there are no better ways to deal with, say, child porn. I do believe that many politicians, if not most, refuse to acknowledge that there are better solutions out there, and for that there are several factors.
freeqaz 6y ago
I took the opportunity to donate to Mozilla as well. I'd encourage you to do the same! They are one of the "good guys" on the internet and they need our support to stay alive.
ipnon 6y ago
The primary impediment to combating child sexual abuse material is the scarcity of law enforcement agents relative to the scale of offenders.[0] Law enforcement agencies are already at the limit of how many offenders they can prosecute because offenders are primarily detected by agents who are posing as offenders or by agents who are posing as victims. The solution proposed by the researchers in the referenced documentary is to create AI agents that can automate the work of posing as offenders or posing as victims. This solves the scaling problem of the law enforcement agencies. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCj1zNpKoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCj1zNpKoM
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- darkarmani 6y ago
  So, create some dog-and-ponies AI start-up for this in the districts of the most influential lawmakers, with stated job counts (for AI-mechanical turk work that hires lots of people). Tie the "correct" solution to their real political motivations and it will get done in a heartbeat. It has to be something they can sell to their base though.
  - ipnon 6y ago
    We don't need to be cynical. We can demand that our government guarantees our rights to safety and privacy because they are not mutually exclusive.
    - darkarmani 6y ago
      Well, it's being realistic. The politicians aren't choosing the best choice for us, they are choosing the choice that looks like the best choice for the hordes weighed against the interests of their powerful lobbyists. If privacy (as partially defined as crypto) looked important to the hordes of people and/or the lobbyists, we wouldn't have anything to worry about. Think about the children is a much easier platform to get elected for though.
- 6y ago
qppo 6y ago
To Californians, Dianne Feinstein is one of the cosponsors of the bill in the Senate. It really grinds my gears seeing our senior leadership from California take actions that directly harm our interests, both towards our peoples' freedom and our businesses. I feel vindicated for voting against her in 2018, because I thought she'd be out of touch with our interests as a state.
- choppaface 6y ago
  Send her an e-mail in 2 minutes telling her to stop supporting EARN-IT https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    I've done that many times over the years - she stopped responding and refuses to consider the opinion of encryption experts.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Been there, done that. Her office sends back a letter that boils down to, "We know better than you, please be quiet".
    - eindiran 6y ago
      I can confirm this, having been a recipient of such a letter from her office a few times.
  - hedora 6y ago
    Writing Feinstein is a total waste of time. She’ll send a smarmy response about how you’re clearly an idiot for thinking it has anything to do with encryption, and how she’s proud to be a co-sponsor. She’s been completely ignoring voter complaints for decades. Before open primaries, it was essentially impossible for her to lose an election, and she knew it. I’m extremely liberal, but if the “recall governor Newsom” crowd went after Feinstein instead, I’d sign on in a heartbeat.
president 6y ago
Has anyone considered that maybe there are actually people in this world that want to be able to catch criminals and terrorists? Even if the bill does result in adding backdoors (which is all based on speculation anyway), you don't think people and technology would recalibrate itself to overcome issues caused by backdoors? I find it insane that people think technology is so much more important than the potential for saving human lives.
- antepodius 6y ago
  It's Liberty vs. Security.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Alternately, we could recalibrate the methods used to catch criminals and terrorists so that we did _not_ have to yield up all of our information to the gov, as well as every script kiddie with an internet connection.
- pphysch 6y ago
  I'm all for _benevolent_ authoritarian governance. Problems start to arise when the government pretends they _are_ the former and pretends they _are_not_ the latter.
DudeInBasement 6y ago
Why does this matter? The US government can force you to give them your keys, and gag you so you can't say anything...
- gspr 6y ago
  Yes, but at least when they do that they don't have to fundamentally break crypto. Not that it's OK. I'm just saying.
- knodi123 6y ago
  Because what you're describing is a method for violating the rights of one person, and they know it's happening. What's described in the article is a method for violating the rights of anyone, and they won't even know.
chaostheory 6y ago
Doesn't this weaken security for everyone and not just consumers?
granitDev 6y ago
There's another good reason for term limits, how many of these VERY OLD people don't even understand what encryption is and couldn't possibly understand the concept that this is like passing a law demanding that you leave your house key at the local police station, unless you let them search your house every second Tuesday.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  Analogies to physical security are not helpful, because they're easily countered with "but you support someone getting into a house with a warrant, right?". Encryption is nothing like physical security. There is no analogue to busting down a door. Correctly built encryption has no way to get in without the key; anything else has fundamental, unfixable security flaws.
7ArcticSealz 6y ago
Many years ago, I read an article about some proposal to creating and using alternative dns root zones. Organizations certainly do this but how feasible would it be to maintain a 'separate' internet?
gonational 6y ago
The only true government is newly-formed. In the span of many decades, perhaps centuries, all manner of governments evolve into their final form: tyranny.
programmarchy 6y ago
Anyone have a template for opposing this bill? Needs elaboration, but I see two major points: 1. It puts our national security at risk. It opens up American cyber-security at large to nation states like China, Russia, and Iran, as well as more sophisticated terrorist groups. 2. It hampers innovation and competition in the tech industry. Compliance will increase costs, especially for startups, especially in a Covid19 environment, and the global market will not be able trust the cyber-security of American networks.
luc_ 6y ago
I trust the Mozilla foundation has good reason to oppose this, as likely do I, but I'm sad to not see a "learn more" button on this page to add your name to some opposition list. I'd certainly like to learn more about what I'm signing up against, and I can do that myself, but I feel as if they would also have a responsibility to further educate if they're asking for my support.
cpascal 6y ago
If this is passed, I'm waiting for the inevitable data breach of US elected officials' personal/private data.
surround 6y ago
“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993) > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through... > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will... > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...] https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html (I recommend reading the full parable.) ————— clock.org homepage (c. 1998) > Some agencies of the United States Government (notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), want to prevent the deployment of encryption technology. They want either encryption so weak that just about anyone can break it, or they want a copy of every key used with strong encryption. https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock.org:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock.... Sound familiar? ————— Mujahedeen Secrets (first release: 2007), Al-Queda’s own encrypted messaging software. Those developers aren’t going to respond to a US court order. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  The people who want a skeleton key to open all electronic doors are the same people who compiled a blackmail database on their own high-clearance employees and failed to keep it safe (the OPM data breach).
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    My only question to this proposed act is how they're going to keep online banking and e-commerce working.. It's like shooting oneself in the foot before hiking.
- 6y ago
83afnpj 6y ago
It's just bad, real bad, only made worse by the LAED bill they've recently introduced. Rianna Pfefferkorn wrote a in-depth analysis about EARN IT which is really good to read: https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-ban-end-end-encryption-without-actually-banning-it https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-b... I also wrote a smaller high level article about it if you're interested in a briefer read: https://medium.com/@console.blog/action-tell-your-representative-to-oppose-earn-it-bbd4ea5ef267 https://medium.com/@console.blog/action-tell-your-representa...
alsetmusic 6y ago
One of the groups that signed on for updates on such laws sent me a link over SMS. It automated calling 22 senators to ask them to reject Earn IT. I spoke to staff or left messages with 20. Two had full voicemail. One of this was my local rep, Feinstein. Figures. http://noearnitact.org/call http://noearnitact.org/call
game_the0ry 6y ago
Earn It act is adorable little attempt at institutional police state policy. One would argue that terrorists will simply use other inventive ways to get around lack of main stream encrypted tech (and they will). Or that a back door for the govt is a back door for anyone (which is true). Both are logical points. I posit that this is known among backers of Earn It - they're not that dumb. Therefore, this isn't about child porn or terrorists, its about dissenters of established institutions (government, corporations, media, etc). That's the move - the "party of Davos" sees the populist wave from both left and right (AOC, Bernie, BLM, Trump, Bannon, etc) and this how they think they will stop it. The next AOC, BLM, or any populist movement will be labeled as threats to the established order, maybe as domestic terrorists. With Earn It, you can see who they organize with, when they meet, how they strategize, etc. This is COINTELPRO with smart phones [1]. Very slick, very effective. It's what I would do in their shoes. The only flaw is that it is poorly marketed. It's so transparent, it's cute. J Edgar Hoover is smiling somewhere in the after life. Do yourself a favor, treat your phone and email like CIA recording device. We'll be fine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%20(syllabic%20abbreviation%20derived%20from,and%20disrupting%20American%20political%20organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%....
slugiscool99 6y ago
Wish we could see how many people signed maybe paired with a goal for the number of signatures
google234123 6y ago
Warrant-proof encryption is not compatible with a society that accepts the principle that we are accountable to the law. There is nothing sacred about your cell phone.
- snazz 6y ago
  Encryption that can only be unlocked by the "good guys" is fundamentally not how encryption works. 'JoshTriplett explained it better than I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23704928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23704928
- darkarmani 6y ago
  That's a very bold claim. We already have warrant-proof toilets for flushing drugs down. Why do you think crypto should be illegal because old-technology warrants don't work very easily with it? We've had warrant-proof encryption for a long time now in our society (at least 20 years?).
lisper 6y ago
Does anyone where know where this bill is at in the legislative process? Should we be leaning on senators or congresscritters or both?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
einpoklum 6y ago
After years of ever-deepening privacy violations in the US, I'm surprised that this hasn't passed yet. I mean, the government already legally demands that all the large corporations make them a copy of all of your communications that pass through them. So why should it be legal for you to encrypt any of it without them being able to decrypt it? How are they supposed to spy on you effectively with just the meta-data, you know?
- suizi 6y ago
  The CIA kills people over metadata.
justinyan 6y ago
The act itself seems to revolve around limiting section 230 protections (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim) https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...) to those who pass a checklist of TBD requirements determined by a TBD bureaucracy. I've struggled a bit to find resources helping to describe what section 230 protections are actually for, however. Many of the examples explaining section 230 protections seem to revolve around things like defamation in Youtube comments or product reviews, but I'm having trouble making the leap from that to why messengers are so concerned about this bill. Why do tools like messengers need section 230 protections to begin with? AFAICT they still have to submit to things like national security letters, so what does section 230 buy, say, Whatsapp or Signal?
- jmole 6y ago
  not to mention that the TBD requirements have to be approved and voted on by congress to become law. that said, there is also some text that changes specific wording in other existing laws that may have an impact on future court cases, e.g.: “(2) CIVIL REMEDY FOR CERTAIN ACTIVITIES RELATING TO MATERIAL INVOLVING THE SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF MINORS.—Conduct by a provider of an interactive computer service (as defined in section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230)) that would violate section 2252 or section 2252A if that section were applied by substituting ‘recklessly’ for ‘knowingly’ each place that term appears shall be considered a violation of section 2252 or section 2252A for purposes of paragraph (1) of this subsection.”. We could be charitable about what 'recklessly' means, but given the tendency of pre-digital judges to misunderstand technology - I can understand why there is a pushback against this kind of language. "What do you mean you don't keep a history of your clients' internet activity? I would construe that as reckless behavior."
mkskm 6y ago
FFTF has a campaign on this now as well that routes a call to each representative: https://www.noearnitact.org https://www.noearnitact.org. The bill is voted on tomorrow, so today's the last day to get your voice heard.
apeace 6y ago
If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal. Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we should make changes to our society where having a private conversation is never allowed. This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is also great.
- cgrealy 6y ago
  If someone says they have nothing to hide, just say “cool, how much do you earn?” Or if you can do it with a straight face “when was the last time you masturbated?” :)
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    12 minutes ago, why do you ask? :P But income is definitely something that people love to hide. There's a lot of things that all people would love to keep quiet, mostly because their friends or loved ones would find out and may disown them
- sixhobbits 6y ago
  not sure who to attribute but I like the "privacy is not secrecy. You close the door to the toilet even though we all know what you're doing in there"
- cortic 6y ago
  My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney problems.. we don't know who are any of these things. So we should protect ourselves from all of them, in effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.
justin66 6y ago
In one sense, the anti-crypto forces are not yet being as crazy as they have been at certain times in the past. People often forget that the federal government wanted to put Phil Zimmerman in prison over PGP in the nineties. [1] In another sense, this is much crazier. There wasn't much at stake commercially in the nineties, but today, legislatively screwing up crypto could compromise trillions of dollars worth of commercial transactions if something goes wrong. https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html
- upofadown 6y ago
  It's more or less the same thing. PGP was used as an example of why the Clipper chip was pointless and futile. PGP is an example of why the Earn IT act is pointless and futile. The Earn IT act is just another instance of the sort of incomplete thinking that produced the Clipper chip.
  - justin66 6y ago
    The point I was getting at in my second paragraph is, the consequences of screwing up everyone's cryptography today include wrecking the modern economy. This wasn't true 30 years ago.
zelly 6y ago
This is the consequence of companies like Discord letting child predators run rampant on their platform and doing nothing about it. There are two sides to every story. You can imagine how the government would react after seeing hundreds and hundreds of cases coming out of Discord, Snap, even FB. Reading the actual bill[1] rather than sensational headlines, you can see this is mostly about creating a tip line and bureauracy for reporting CP. Ctrl+F "encrypt" 0 results. Me no care. Deal with it Discord. Pass it. [1] https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.pdf https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.pd...
- markkanof 6y ago
  I initially thought you couldn't possibly be right about this, but what you stated does seem to be the case. After skimming through the full text, the main point of this seems to be about setting up a committee that will come up with "best practices" that online service providers can follow to reduce/eliminate the exploitation of children on their platform. Can someone explain how this "creates a threat to strong encryption".
  - kinghajj 6y ago
    If they determine that "best practice" no longer includes secure end-to-end encryption that a service provider can't decrypt independently of the user, they'll use that as political leverage. "See, our self-selected panel of experts said that this isn't a best practice, yet Apple and Facebook are still doing it anyway!"
    - phendrenad2 6y ago
      I suspect that Apple and Facebook will control said committee. They just need to donate more money to the campaign funds of people lucky enough to be on that committee.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    The bill also offers legal protections for companies that follow those best practices. It’s not hard to imagine that 1. The best practices include not using strong encryption, 2. An environment with lots of lawsuits directed at companies not following those practices .
rammy1234 6y ago
"Earn IT" is going to help someone. Dont ask why, but ask who. Who is going to benefit out of this? Ask more Why's. What was the missing piece that they are trying to put together by passing this ACT. How we were at disadvantage so long that now passing this ACT is going to empower us.
eindiran 6y ago
I am not sure if someone else already posted this in the comments here or not, but the EFF has a form letter available, as well as a way of finding your representatives/senators: https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-breaks-encryption https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-b... Just enter an address in the box on the right and it will find your representatives/senators for you, select the right options for contacting them and then present you an editable form letter for sending to them. Note that your senators and representatives may abuse your email address and phone number if you provide it: after having sent letters to Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris' offices this way, I've received a lot more political spam calls and emails.
jimiljojo 6y ago
Privacy aside, even if they "ban" it, people cannot just stop using it the next day. Almost every company has encrypted information, like passwords etc. This is what I LOVE about technology. They cannot stop it unless they want to bring entire systems down - some of which run govt business (like aws). So how are they really going to stop / enforce it? It has been used encryptions and ciphers have been used for a long time, you cannot stop people from using a math function. It's like DO NOT USE multiplication from now on.
zxzvxczv2c_xcm 6y ago
Maybe it would be a fair deal if all members of the government equally open all their communication, including all their private matters to the entire world. Equal monks, equal hoods. They are honest people that have nothing to hide, not? I mean, exemplary people should be an example to the people.
ppierald 6y ago
There is a fantastic book that covers all of these topics and goes straight to the heart of the "nothing to hide" arguments both pro and con. In fact, the book is titled "Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security" by Daniel J. Solove. I would highly recommend for those who are security and privacy conscious.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I've been impressed by the insight, or occasionally, lack, of awareness of the potential perils of comprehensive data archives by pioneers within the data field. Paul Baran, co-inventer of packet-based networking, wrote "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy" (https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html) in 1968, some 51 years ago. In it he remarked on both the risks, and industry attitudes: There are many amongst us who would not hesitate to build equipment to compromise the privacy of any given individual provided the price is right. These are the whores of industry. They would not hesitate building systems and devices contrary to the public interest; their only concern is the buck. The full paper, and in fact, all of Baran's RAND publications, are online in full-text, following my request to RAND. I remain grateful to them for this. Baran was also interviewed for a 1966 BBC documentary: "Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . . I've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold. The video is, unfortunately, no longer online, though it was previously at: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s Internet Archive reveals that the programme was "BBC Panorama - California 2000" (1966) (https://web.archive.org/web/20180526090012/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk https://web.archive.org/web/20180526090012/https://www.youtu...). But does now seem. to be on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/170324749 https://vimeo.com/170324749 Quoted sequence begins at 31m. Another view was expressed by AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate (economics) Herbert Simon: "The privacy issue has been raised most insistently with respect to the creation and maintenance of longitudinal data files that assemble information about persons from a multitude of sources. Files of this kind would be highly valueable for many kinds of economic and social research, but they are bought at too high a price if they endanger human freedom or seriously enhance the opportunities of blackmailers. While such dangers should not be ignored, it should be noted that the lack of comprehensive data files has never been the limiting barrier to the suppression of human freedom. The Watergate criminals made extensive, if unskillful, use of electronics, but no computer played a role in their conspiracy. The Nazis operated with horrifying effectiveness and thoroughness without the benefits of any kind of mechanized data processing." https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7dc4b8c3e00849ae.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7d... There is, of course, one slight problem with Simon's argument: The Nazis did make heavy use of mechanised data processing, provided and supported by IBM. Edwin Black documents this meticulously in his book IBM and the Holocaust: https://ibmandtheholocaust.com https://ibmandtheholocaust.com
pochamago 6y ago
I don't really understand what about the bill is distinctly bad for encryption. Reading the Library of Congress summary, it's mostly just creating a body to draft guidelines. It seems like it's mostly just Congress punting the issue over to the executive branch, so there aren't any actual guidelines to oppose yet.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  The problem in this case is allowing the executive to draft “guidelines” with the force of law. If the whims of the executive decide what laws we abide by, it’ll be an ever-changing landscape used to harass political opponents, various racial groups, and whomever are the current administration’s less-desirables.
jojobas 6y ago
A backup solution: don't rely on encryption provided by companies. Use self-hosted software you can trust (be it Matrix, GPG or whatever else).
blackflame7000 6y ago
Doesn’t free speech protect my right to speak in code?
Mauricio20 6y ago
By accepted legal........oppose the earn
hristov 6y ago
It is interesting how this dovetails with the trade war with China. When the media got all hot and heavy about evil Huawei and how the would use their communication equipment to spy on America, my response was simple. They can't spy on us if we encrypt everything. If they want to give us cheap subsidized telecom equipment, let them, we will just use encryption for everything. Then the government decided to ban encryption and then things started to get clearer.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > They can't spy on us if we encrypt everything. Well, they can if it gets onto their hardware before being encrypted or after being decrypted, such as if it is encrypted or decrypted on their hardware, and since Huawei makes a lot of consumer gear...
deleted 6y ago
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wwwwewwww 6y ago
It looks like all the different attempts of analogies overwhelm real discussion of of the effects of the bill. Why do we need all these analogies? Why not discuss real-life repercussions and pros cons of the choices before us, and based on that, decide what society we would rather live in?
andy_ppp 6y ago
Just from a technical point of view can these sort of encryption back doors ever actually work, I can’t think of a scheme where it does. I mean people should have a right to know who has had access to this information and why, right? Surely the constitution says something about illegal searches?
bsza 6y ago
By the same logic, I would like to see every senator's crotch streamed live 24/7 please. Just to make sure there are no child abusers among them. Why stop at Senate, do the same to every law enforcement officer as well please. I'm sure that they, of all people, have nothing to hide.
williesleg 6y ago
Just text joe to biden.com.sys 33498832. sniff sniff.
jeegsy 6y ago
Can someone please point out the smoking gun in the EARN IT law that suggests that encryption is under threat?
deevolution 6y ago
Would this make https illegal??
gcbw3 6y ago
I call it the "EAR 'N I.T." act. works much better.
charliebrownau 6y ago
Seems a bit ironic that Mozilla that hires and support Anti Freedom Anti WHITE Anti MERIT and goes out of its way to hire and support Feminism Marxists Diversity which are all tools of the Global LEFT along with making a untrusted browser now crying against a leftist that hates encyption (barr)
deleted 6y ago
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suizi 6y ago
Relevant: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still-threatens-encryption-and-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still... New version of EARN IT.

2229 points by joeyespo 6y ago

We need to vote out the people pushing for backdoors. They seem to want backdoors at any cost, without any technical understanding of why its a terrible idea. Vote them out!

cevn 6y ago
Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) - vote for Jamie Harrison on Nov 3 in SC Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) - term ends in 2022* Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) - 2024 Dianne Feinstein (D-California) - 2024 as well... good luck with this one
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  Been working on that last one for years. At least I'm likely to out live her.
  - cevn 6y ago
    I believe you. I've never understood how she garners so much support in progressive Cali of all places.
    - granitDev 6y ago
      She's got money and power and a D in front of her name, she'll get voted in every time in California. Vote Blue no matter who, remember?
      - coldpie 6y ago
        > Vote Blue no matter who, remember? I mean, yes. Feinstein is better than the alternative in the General. The Primaries are the way to get rid of her, I can't believe no one has booted her out yet.
        trsohmers 6y ago
        You don't seem to understand the California Jungle/Blanket primary system... All candidates from any/all parties run against each other in the primary, and the top two are the contenders for the general election. Recently this has led to two Democrats always being facing each other in the general election. In her 2018 race, Feinstein faced another Democrat, who lost by 10 points in the general with Feinstein winning the vast majority of the vote in densely populated areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_election_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...
        nuclear_eclipse 6y ago
        The most recent general election was Dem vs Dem (due to the unique way that CA primaries work). Feinstein still won a strong majority of the statewide vote. :|
    - jedberg 6y ago
      California is not as progressive as you might hope. The cities are full of progressives, but outside the cities is very conservative. You have to be fairly moderate to win statewide office. Newsom was a reaction to Trump, but sort of an aberration. More than half of our governors have been Republicans, including Regan, who went on be President and a paragon of the GOP. Since the 80s 14 out of 30 years has been Republicans, and Jerry Brown was 10 of the remaining 16 years, and he's pretty moderate as far as Democrats go.
      - newen 6y ago
        Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco. I don't think you can call even the cities progressive.
        jedberg 6y ago
        Pelosi has power and will never be voted out no matter how far she strays from the people she represents.
      - phendrenad2 6y ago
        Even the cities are full of people who are progressive right up until the point that it affects them. Just look at the NIMBY problem we have in SF.
linuxftw 6y ago
Just like we needed to vote out the people that voted for the bailouts and the Iraq war. Politics keeps moving on. I'm still on the Iraq war. I'm not interested on any other issue until we solve that one. Edit: s/bailouts of/bailouts and/
- the-dude 6y ago
  What are "bailouts of the Iraq war" ?
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Maybe OP means both the bailouts in 2008 plus the Iraq war in 2003? Or the fact that the US is still actively involve militarily in predator bombing seven nations?
    - linuxftw 6y ago
      I meant "and" as you guessed (I think?). Everyone vowed to vote out the representatives that bailed out Wall Street and left home owners holding the bag. Then whatever came along and poof, that didn't matter. Same (and more importantly) with the Iraq war. IMO, you voted for it, you're out. Doesn't matter why, doesn't matter what you believed at the time, you're out. There's been zero accountability on death and destruction on the grandest scale this century, so I don't expect anyone to remotely lift a finger about some IT bill.
- ipnon 6y ago
  If you give up, then the powers that be win by default.
djsumdog 6y ago
In American politics, voting really doesn't make a difference as much as just having opinions alighted with those of the top 10% of income earners[0]. Making noise and protests are more effective in some ways, but the sad reality is that most of senate/congress is not beholden to the selectorate of all voters, but rather the smaller selectorate of influences that control the advertising and narrative that allows them to continue to be re-elected. [0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-difference/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-...
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  The video there talks about a study about how people feel about a policy and whether the policy gets passed or not. Then it goes on to extrapolate that to electing humans. The video is right that we have less influence over policy, policy that citizens do not vote on directly. We do directly vote for humans and those votes do count - electoral college is a special case. Also, I'd bet there are a lot of folks that read HN that are already in the top 10% of income earners. So maybe I'm speaking directly to some of the 10% now.

blintz 6y ago

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.
- wtn 6y ago
  Some of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020.
  - ancarda 6y ago
    Do you happen to know which ones?
    - hundchenkatze 6y ago
      I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.

danboarder 6y ago

Where are my elected representatives that represent my privacy rights on bills like this? Maybe I need to run for office since I care about end2end encryption, free software, and the rights of free people and information to freely travel around the world...

YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
In Europe quite a few "pirate parties" popped up about a decade ago. None of them were too successful as far as I know, at least in The Netherlands they didn't mention to gain a single seat (out of 150).
mikestew 6y ago
You can run, and with that platform your opponent will conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the audience. Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT Act that one would reasonably think would be shot down immediately, but isn't.
- sailfast 6y ago
  "My opponent supports the attorney general having access to your porn habits. I support your privacy" is a pretty straightforward simplified riposte to your above oversimplification.
  - hvis 6y ago
    Let's take it a step further: "My opponent supports giving all law enforcement officers unrestricted access to your children's chats, photos and calls."
    - emiliobumachar 6y ago
      A bit further: "The NSA can and does see your nudes and those of your family."

sailfast 6y ago

I reached out to my representatives on this when the Act was first proposed. I'm confused about the changes that have happened since that time and the post does not say anything about what has changed. What does "Advancing" mean in this case? If I have already contacted all of my legislators about strong encryption and opposition to this bill, what is the latest change that requires re-engaging?

pfranz 6y ago
I haven't followed the specifics, either, but it looks like it was introduced back in March. When I reached out to my Senators and Reps back then I got a reply from my House Rep (who I believe was supportive of the bill). The bill is currently in the Senate and only this week is getting "marked up" in the Judiciary Committee--I imagine if your Senator is on that committee it's more important to reach out. Sadly, I think issues need constant re-engaging since they pop up under different names and in different forms.
suizi 6y ago
The latest version now involves State law so if one State out of 50 decides encryption is bad for children they can go after any company in the U.S. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still-threatens-encryption-and-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still...

programmarchy 6y ago

Thankful for Mozilla and EFF, but have any tech elites spoken out against this or put money into defeating it? Thiel, Musk, Altman, Graham... hello? Should we assume SV is complicit?

Klonoar 6y ago
Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook (who this would presumably really hit at), etc. I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge the idea that you might just try to fight this as unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky given this administration (if not downright stupid).
- foolfoolz 6y ago
  because apple, google, facebook already comply with this. they have built ways for the government to access their data. any company with an important enough set of information is going to get this request and you can’t say no
  - Klonoar 6y ago
    I know what you're saying, but where do you think you are? Please have enough common sense to assume I asked the question knowing how that works. The primary thing with this bill that the companies seem explicitly quiet on is the fact that the use case it opens up for the government (sidestepping user privacy/encryption) coupled with the level of power it more or less places in the Attorney General's hands. I can't in good faith assume that these companies are comfortable with this, and I'd like to know why they're not speaking up.
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    At least for Apple, they claim the iPhone (at least devices post-checkm8) has not been compromised. iCloud is required to comply with records requests, but the data isn’t in iCloud the feds can’t get it. Even with checkm8, the Secure Enclave still has not been compromised. If they were in bed with the feds, the FBI/NYPD wouldn’t keep asking them for keys that Apple doesn’t have.

chejazi 6y ago

Obviously this sucks as a proposal but... how do we stop the child porn?

manuelabeledo 6y ago
This sounds like the start of a false dichotomy.
- tzs 6y ago
  Not necessarily. These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to keep proposing bills to address these problems until something passes. By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be another bill from the same general set of people. Maybe the new one will address some of the issues in the prior ones but the chances are good that it won't address all of them. Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their approach to solving a problem instead of also offering up your own better solutions tends to not work well in the long run.
  - darkarmani 6y ago
    > to address serious real problems, like child porn Can you quantify the size of this problem? It sounds like military defense spending during the cold war. "You just have to take our word for it that child porn is a massive problem affecting 1 out of 4 children, so we need to crush the tech industry."
  - manuelabeledo 6y ago
    > Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their approach to solving a problem instead of also offering up your own better solutions tends to not work well in the long run. How would you think the introduction of a competing bill would fare, if it still needs the support of the first bill proponents? Wouldn't they believe that anything short than the original bill is not worth supporting? I don't think the issue is that there are no better ways to deal with, say, child porn. I do believe that many politicians, if not most, refuse to acknowledge that there are better solutions out there, and for that there are several factors.

freeqaz 6y ago

I took the opportunity to donate to Mozilla as well. I'd encourage you to do the same! They are one of the "good guys" on the internet and they need our support to stay alive.

ipnon 6y ago

The primary impediment to combating child sexual abuse material is the scarcity of law enforcement agents relative to the scale of offenders.[0] Law enforcement agencies are already at the limit of how many offenders they can prosecute because offenders are primarily detected by agents who are posing as offenders or by agents who are posing as victims. The solution proposed by the researchers in the referenced documentary is to create AI agents that can automate the work of posing as offenders or posing as victims. This solves the scaling problem of the law enforcement agencies. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCj1zNpKoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCj1zNpKoM

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
darkarmani 6y ago
So, create some dog-and-ponies AI start-up for this in the districts of the most influential lawmakers, with stated job counts (for AI-mechanical turk work that hires lots of people). Tie the "correct" solution to their real political motivations and it will get done in a heartbeat. It has to be something they can sell to their base though.
- ipnon 6y ago
  We don't need to be cynical. We can demand that our government guarantees our rights to safety and privacy because they are not mutually exclusive.
  - darkarmani 6y ago
    Well, it's being realistic. The politicians aren't choosing the best choice for us, they are choosing the choice that looks like the best choice for the hordes weighed against the interests of their powerful lobbyists. If privacy (as partially defined as crypto) looked important to the hordes of people and/or the lobbyists, we wouldn't have anything to worry about. Think about the children is a much easier platform to get elected for though.
6y ago

qppo 6y ago

To Californians, Dianne Feinstein is one of the cosponsors of the bill in the Senate. It really grinds my gears seeing our senior leadership from California take actions that directly harm our interests, both towards our peoples' freedom and our businesses. I feel vindicated for voting against her in 2018, because I thought she'd be out of touch with our interests as a state.

choppaface 6y ago
Send her an e-mail in 2 minutes telling her to stop supporting EARN-IT https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  I've done that many times over the years - she stopped responding and refuses to consider the opinion of encryption experts.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Been there, done that. Her office sends back a letter that boils down to, "We know better than you, please be quiet".
  - eindiran 6y ago
    I can confirm this, having been a recipient of such a letter from her office a few times.
- hedora 6y ago
  Writing Feinstein is a total waste of time. She’ll send a smarmy response about how you’re clearly an idiot for thinking it has anything to do with encryption, and how she’s proud to be a co-sponsor. She’s been completely ignoring voter complaints for decades. Before open primaries, it was essentially impossible for her to lose an election, and she knew it. I’m extremely liberal, but if the “recall governor Newsom” crowd went after Feinstein instead, I’d sign on in a heartbeat.

president 6y ago

Has anyone considered that maybe there are actually people in this world that want to be able to catch criminals and terrorists? Even if the bill does result in adding backdoors (which is all based on speculation anyway), you don't think people and technology would recalibrate itself to overcome issues caused by backdoors? I find it insane that people think technology is so much more important than the potential for saving human lives.

antepodius 6y ago
It's Liberty vs. Security.
Shared404 6y ago
Alternately, we could recalibrate the methods used to catch criminals and terrorists so that we did _not_ have to yield up all of our information to the gov, as well as every script kiddie with an internet connection.
pphysch 6y ago
I'm all for _benevolent_ authoritarian governance. Problems start to arise when the government pretends they _are_ the former and pretends they _are_not_ the latter.

DudeInBasement 6y ago

Why does this matter? The US government can force you to give them your keys, and gag you so you can't say anything...

gspr 6y ago
Yes, but at least when they do that they don't have to fundamentally break crypto. Not that it's OK. I'm just saying.
knodi123 6y ago
Because what you're describing is a method for violating the rights of one person, and they know it's happening. What's described in the article is a method for violating the rights of anyone, and they won't even know.

chaostheory 6y ago

Doesn't this weaken security for everyone and not just consumers?

granitDev 6y ago

There's another good reason for term limits, how many of these VERY OLD people don't even understand what encryption is and couldn't possibly understand the concept that this is like passing a law demanding that you leave your house key at the local police station, unless you let them search your house every second Tuesday.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
Analogies to physical security are not helpful, because they're easily countered with "but you support someone getting into a house with a warrant, right?". Encryption is nothing like physical security. There is no analogue to busting down a door. Correctly built encryption has no way to get in without the key; anything else has fundamental, unfixable security flaws.

7ArcticSealz 6y ago

Many years ago, I read an article about some proposal to creating and using alternative dns root zones. Organizations certainly do this but how feasible would it be to maintain a 'separate' internet?

gonational 6y ago

The only true government is newly-formed. In the span of many decades, perhaps centuries, all manner of governments evolve into their final form: tyranny.

programmarchy 6y ago

Anyone have a template for opposing this bill? Needs elaboration, but I see two major points: 1. It puts our national security at risk. It opens up American cyber-security at large to nation states like China, Russia, and Iran, as well as more sophisticated terrorist groups. 2. It hampers innovation and competition in the tech industry. Compliance will increase costs, especially for startups, especially in a Covid19 environment, and the global market will not be able trust the cyber-security of American networks.

luc_ 6y ago

I trust the Mozilla foundation has good reason to oppose this, as likely do I, but I'm sad to not see a "learn more" button on this page to add your name to some opposition list. I'd certainly like to learn more about what I'm signing up against, and I can do that myself, but I feel as if they would also have a responsibility to further educate if they're asking for my support.

cpascal 6y ago

If this is passed, I'm waiting for the inevitable data breach of US elected officials' personal/private data.

surround 6y ago

“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993) > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through... > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will... > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...] https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html (I recommend reading the full parable.) ————— clock.org homepage (c. 1998) > Some agencies of the United States Government (notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), want to prevent the deployment of encryption technology. They want either encryption so weak that just about anyone can break it, or they want a copy of every key used with strong encryption. https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock.org:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock.... Sound familiar? ————— Mujahedeen Secrets (first release: 2007), Al-Queda’s own encrypted messaging software. Those developers aren’t going to respond to a US court order. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets

jjoonathan 6y ago
The people who want a skeleton key to open all electronic doors are the same people who compiled a blackmail database on their own high-clearance employees and failed to keep it safe (the OPM data breach).
- Aperocky 6y ago
  My only question to this proposed act is how they're going to keep online banking and e-commerce working.. It's like shooting oneself in the foot before hiking.
6y ago

83afnpj 6y ago

It's just bad, real bad, only made worse by the LAED bill they've recently introduced. Rianna Pfefferkorn wrote a in-depth analysis about EARN IT which is really good to read: https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-ban-end-end-encryption-without-actually-banning-it https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-b... I also wrote a smaller high level article about it if you're interested in a briefer read: https://medium.com/@console.blog/action-tell-your-representative-to-oppose-earn-it-bbd4ea5ef267 https://medium.com/@console.blog/action-tell-your-representa...

alsetmusic 6y ago

One of the groups that signed on for updates on such laws sent me a link over SMS. It automated calling 22 senators to ask them to reject Earn IT. I spoke to staff or left messages with 20. Two had full voicemail. One of this was my local rep, Feinstein. Figures. http://noearnitact.org/call http://noearnitact.org/call

game_the0ry 6y ago

Earn It act is adorable little attempt at institutional police state policy. One would argue that terrorists will simply use other inventive ways to get around lack of main stream encrypted tech (and they will). Or that a back door for the govt is a back door for anyone (which is true). Both are logical points. I posit that this is known among backers of Earn It - they're not that dumb. Therefore, this isn't about child porn or terrorists, its about dissenters of established institutions (government, corporations, media, etc). That's the move - the "party of Davos" sees the populist wave from both left and right (AOC, Bernie, BLM, Trump, Bannon, etc) and this how they think they will stop it. The next AOC, BLM, or any populist movement will be labeled as threats to the established order, maybe as domestic terrorists. With Earn It, you can see who they organize with, when they meet, how they strategize, etc. This is COINTELPRO with smart phones [1]. Very slick, very effective. It's what I would do in their shoes. The only flaw is that it is poorly marketed. It's so transparent, it's cute. J Edgar Hoover is smiling somewhere in the after life. Do yourself a favor, treat your phone and email like CIA recording device. We'll be fine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%20(syllabic%20abbreviation%20derived%20from,and%20disrupting%20American%20political%20organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%....

slugiscool99 6y ago

Wish we could see how many people signed maybe paired with a goal for the number of signatures

google234123 6y ago

Warrant-proof encryption is not compatible with a society that accepts the principle that we are accountable to the law. There is nothing sacred about your cell phone.

snazz 6y ago
Encryption that can only be unlocked by the "good guys" is fundamentally not how encryption works. 'JoshTriplett explained it better than I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23704928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23704928
darkarmani 6y ago
That's a very bold claim. We already have warrant-proof toilets for flushing drugs down. Why do you think crypto should be illegal because old-technology warrants don't work very easily with it? We've had warrant-proof encryption for a long time now in our society (at least 20 years?).

lisper 6y ago

Does anyone where know where this bill is at in the legislative process? Should we be leaning on senators or congresscritters or both?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

einpoklum 6y ago

After years of ever-deepening privacy violations in the US, I'm surprised that this hasn't passed yet. I mean, the government already legally demands that all the large corporations make them a copy of all of your communications that pass through them. So why should it be legal for you to encrypt any of it without them being able to decrypt it? How are they supposed to spy on you effectively with just the meta-data, you know?

suizi 6y ago
The CIA kills people over metadata.

justinyan 6y ago

The act itself seems to revolve around limiting section 230 protections (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim) https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...) to those who pass a checklist of TBD requirements determined by a TBD bureaucracy. I've struggled a bit to find resources helping to describe what section 230 protections are actually for, however. Many of the examples explaining section 230 protections seem to revolve around things like defamation in Youtube comments or product reviews, but I'm having trouble making the leap from that to why messengers are so concerned about this bill. Why do tools like messengers need section 230 protections to begin with? AFAICT they still have to submit to things like national security letters, so what does section 230 buy, say, Whatsapp or Signal?

jmole 6y ago
not to mention that the TBD requirements have to be approved and voted on by congress to become law. that said, there is also some text that changes specific wording in other existing laws that may have an impact on future court cases, e.g.: “(2) CIVIL REMEDY FOR CERTAIN ACTIVITIES RELATING TO MATERIAL INVOLVING THE SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF MINORS.—Conduct by a provider of an interactive computer service (as defined in section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230)) that would violate section 2252 or section 2252A if that section were applied by substituting ‘recklessly’ for ‘knowingly’ each place that term appears shall be considered a violation of section 2252 or section 2252A for purposes of paragraph (1) of this subsection.”. We could be charitable about what 'recklessly' means, but given the tendency of pre-digital judges to misunderstand technology - I can understand why there is a pushback against this kind of language. "What do you mean you don't keep a history of your clients' internet activity? I would construe that as reckless behavior."

mkskm 6y ago

FFTF has a campaign on this now as well that routes a call to each representative: https://www.noearnitact.org https://www.noearnitact.org. The bill is voted on tomorrow, so today's the last day to get your voice heard.

apeace 6y ago

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal. Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we should make changes to our society where having a private conversation is never allowed. This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is also great.

cgrealy 6y ago
If someone says they have nothing to hide, just say “cool, how much do you earn?” Or if you can do it with a straight face “when was the last time you masturbated?” :)
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  12 minutes ago, why do you ask? :P But income is definitely something that people love to hide. There's a lot of things that all people would love to keep quiet, mostly because their friends or loved ones would find out and may disown them
sixhobbits 6y ago
not sure who to attribute but I like the "privacy is not secrecy. You close the door to the toilet even though we all know what you're doing in there"
cortic 6y ago
My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney problems.. we don't know who are any of these things. So we should protect ourselves from all of them, in effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.

justin66 6y ago

In one sense, the anti-crypto forces are not yet being as crazy as they have been at certain times in the past. People often forget that the federal government wanted to put Phil Zimmerman in prison over PGP in the nineties. [1] In another sense, this is much crazier. There wasn't much at stake commercially in the nineties, but today, legislatively screwing up crypto could compromise trillions of dollars worth of commercial transactions if something goes wrong. https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html

upofadown 6y ago
It's more or less the same thing. PGP was used as an example of why the Clipper chip was pointless and futile. PGP is an example of why the Earn IT act is pointless and futile. The Earn IT act is just another instance of the sort of incomplete thinking that produced the Clipper chip.
- justin66 6y ago
  The point I was getting at in my second paragraph is, the consequences of screwing up everyone's cryptography today include wrecking the modern economy. This wasn't true 30 years ago.

zelly 6y ago

This is the consequence of companies like Discord letting child predators run rampant on their platform and doing nothing about it. There are two sides to every story. You can imagine how the government would react after seeing hundreds and hundreds of cases coming out of Discord, Snap, even FB. Reading the actual bill[1] rather than sensational headlines, you can see this is mostly about creating a tip line and bureauracy for reporting CP. Ctrl+F "encrypt" 0 results. Me no care. Deal with it Discord. Pass it. [1] https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.pdf https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.pd...

markkanof 6y ago
I initially thought you couldn't possibly be right about this, but what you stated does seem to be the case. After skimming through the full text, the main point of this seems to be about setting up a committee that will come up with "best practices" that online service providers can follow to reduce/eliminate the exploitation of children on their platform. Can someone explain how this "creates a threat to strong encryption".
- kinghajj 6y ago
  If they determine that "best practice" no longer includes secure end-to-end encryption that a service provider can't decrypt independently of the user, they'll use that as political leverage. "See, our self-selected panel of experts said that this isn't a best practice, yet Apple and Facebook are still doing it anyway!"
  - phendrenad2 6y ago
    I suspect that Apple and Facebook will control said committee. They just need to donate more money to the campaign funds of people lucky enough to be on that committee.
- sgillen 6y ago
  The bill also offers legal protections for companies that follow those best practices. It’s not hard to imagine that 1. The best practices include not using strong encryption, 2. An environment with lots of lawsuits directed at companies not following those practices .

rammy1234 6y ago

"Earn IT" is going to help someone. Dont ask why, but ask who. Who is going to benefit out of this? Ask more Why's. What was the missing piece that they are trying to put together by passing this ACT. How we were at disadvantage so long that now passing this ACT is going to empower us.

eindiran 6y ago

I am not sure if someone else already posted this in the comments here or not, but the EFF has a form letter available, as well as a way of finding your representatives/senators: https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-breaks-encryption https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-b... Just enter an address in the box on the right and it will find your representatives/senators for you, select the right options for contacting them and then present you an editable form letter for sending to them. Note that your senators and representatives may abuse your email address and phone number if you provide it: after having sent letters to Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris' offices this way, I've received a lot more political spam calls and emails.

jimiljojo 6y ago

Privacy aside, even if they "ban" it, people cannot just stop using it the next day. Almost every company has encrypted information, like passwords etc. This is what I LOVE about technology. They cannot stop it unless they want to bring entire systems down - some of which run govt business (like aws). So how are they really going to stop / enforce it? It has been used encryptions and ciphers have been used for a long time, you cannot stop people from using a math function. It's like DO NOT USE multiplication from now on.

zxzvxczv2c_xcm 6y ago

Maybe it would be a fair deal if all members of the government equally open all their communication, including all their private matters to the entire world. Equal monks, equal hoods. They are honest people that have nothing to hide, not? I mean, exemplary people should be an example to the people.

ppierald 6y ago

There is a fantastic book that covers all of these topics and goes straight to the heart of the "nothing to hide" arguments both pro and con. In fact, the book is titled "Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security" by Daniel J. Solove. I would highly recommend for those who are security and privacy conscious.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I've been impressed by the insight, or occasionally, lack, of awareness of the potential perils of comprehensive data archives by pioneers within the data field. Paul Baran, co-inventer of packet-based networking, wrote "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy" (https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html) in 1968, some 51 years ago. In it he remarked on both the risks, and industry attitudes: There are many amongst us who would not hesitate to build equipment to compromise the privacy of any given individual provided the price is right. These are the whores of industry. They would not hesitate building systems and devices contrary to the public interest; their only concern is the buck. The full paper, and in fact, all of Baran's RAND publications, are online in full-text, following my request to RAND. I remain grateful to them for this. Baran was also interviewed for a 1966 BBC documentary: "Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . . I've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold. The video is, unfortunately, no longer online, though it was previously at: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s Internet Archive reveals that the programme was "BBC Panorama - California 2000" (1966) (https://web.archive.org/web/20180526090012/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk https://web.archive.org/web/20180526090012/https://www.youtu...). But does now seem. to be on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/170324749 https://vimeo.com/170324749 Quoted sequence begins at 31m. Another view was expressed by AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate (economics) Herbert Simon: "The privacy issue has been raised most insistently with respect to the creation and maintenance of longitudinal data files that assemble information about persons from a multitude of sources. Files of this kind would be highly valueable for many kinds of economic and social research, but they are bought at too high a price if they endanger human freedom or seriously enhance the opportunities of blackmailers. While such dangers should not be ignored, it should be noted that the lack of comprehensive data files has never been the limiting barrier to the suppression of human freedom. The Watergate criminals made extensive, if unskillful, use of electronics, but no computer played a role in their conspiracy. The Nazis operated with horrifying effectiveness and thoroughness without the benefits of any kind of mechanized data processing." https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7dc4b8c3e00849ae.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7d... There is, of course, one slight problem with Simon's argument: The Nazis did make heavy use of mechanised data processing, provided and supported by IBM. Edwin Black documents this meticulously in his book IBM and the Holocaust: https://ibmandtheholocaust.com https://ibmandtheholocaust.com

pochamago 6y ago

I don't really understand what about the bill is distinctly bad for encryption. Reading the Library of Congress summary, it's mostly just creating a body to draft guidelines. It seems like it's mostly just Congress punting the issue over to the executive branch, so there aren't any actual guidelines to oppose yet.

jagged-chisel 6y ago
The problem in this case is allowing the executive to draft “guidelines” with the force of law. If the whims of the executive decide what laws we abide by, it’ll be an ever-changing landscape used to harass political opponents, various racial groups, and whomever are the current administration’s less-desirables.

jojobas 6y ago

A backup solution: don't rely on encryption provided by companies. Use self-hosted software you can trust (be it Matrix, GPG or whatever else).

blackflame7000 6y ago

Doesn’t free speech protect my right to speak in code?

Mauricio20 6y ago

By accepted legal........oppose the earn

hristov 6y ago

It is interesting how this dovetails with the trade war with China. When the media got all hot and heavy about evil Huawei and how the would use their communication equipment to spy on America, my response was simple. They can't spy on us if we encrypt everything. If they want to give us cheap subsidized telecom equipment, let them, we will just use encryption for everything. Then the government decided to ban encryption and then things started to get clearer.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> They can't spy on us if we encrypt everything. Well, they can if it gets onto their hardware before being encrypted or after being decrypted, such as if it is encrypted or decrypted on their hardware, and since Huawei makes a lot of consumer gear...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wwwwewwww 6y ago

It looks like all the different attempts of analogies overwhelm real discussion of of the effects of the bill. Why do we need all these analogies? Why not discuss real-life repercussions and pros cons of the choices before us, and based on that, decide what society we would rather live in?

andy_ppp 6y ago

Just from a technical point of view can these sort of encryption back doors ever actually work, I can’t think of a scheme where it does. I mean people should have a right to know who has had access to this information and why, right? Surely the constitution says something about illegal searches?

bsza 6y ago

By the same logic, I would like to see every senator's crotch streamed live 24/7 please. Just to make sure there are no child abusers among them. Why stop at Senate, do the same to every law enforcement officer as well please. I'm sure that they, of all people, have nothing to hide.

williesleg 6y ago

Just text joe to biden.com.sys 33498832. sniff sniff.

jeegsy 6y ago

Can someone please point out the smoking gun in the EARN IT law that suggests that encryption is under threat?

deevolution 6y ago

Would this make https illegal??

gcbw3 6y ago

I call it the "EAR 'N I.T." act. works much better.

charliebrownau 6y ago

Seems a bit ironic that Mozilla that hires and support Anti Freedom Anti WHITE Anti MERIT and goes out of its way to hire and support Feminism Marxists Diversity which are all tools of the Global LEFT along with making a untrusted browser now crying against a leftist that hates encyption (barr)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

suizi 6y ago

Relevant: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still-threatens-encryption-and-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still... New version of EARN IT.