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Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that

Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago
You sound like you have something to hide.
saurik 6y ago
If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?
- ROARosen 6y ago
  Exactly. They are also basically saying you don't need to moderate most illicit activity (if it's an unmoderated format) but you essentially can't operate such a platform in a form where it is "unmoderateable"/untraceable because you should be liable for any unlawful content that goes up, and for the the fact that you facilitated it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- treis 6y ago
  The law provides them immunity from civil suits. Apple as a provider can say they comply with section 230 and avoid any legal liability from people that may be harmed by their actions. In other words, you can't sue Apple because someone used iCloud to distribute child porn of you. The essential bargain struck for 230 was that providers get immunity in exchange for policing their system and helping law enforcement. Apple et al removing their ability to police their systems breaks that bargain.
  - saurik 6y ago
    Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practicalities here, but will admit that with 90s era tech and under the premise of the specific model of website this seems reasonable to have believed and legislate for), and so wanted the ability to "have their cake and eat it too": to be able to decide almost on a whim to take down content--and thereby to have people active to looking at content to decide what to take down--but not to be responsible for those editorial decisions, as they wanted to do their supposedly-required moderation tasks with limited staff and "after the fact": and so, if they "decide" (quite likely by negligence) to leave something up that they should not have published, Section 230 grants them immunity with some provisions. It doesn't seem like a truly end-to-end encrypted service--such as iMessage or iCloud Keychain (but absolutely not iCloud Backup, which has a key escrow backdoor: it should be end-to-end encrypted, but explicitly isn't) needs this immunity, right?
    - treis 6y ago
      They may or may not. A victim of child pornography can argue that Apple is liable because they provide a secure platform to distribute the images. Or maybe a victim of a crime might sue because Apple refused to help. Section 230 prevented those types of lawsuits. Without it, who knows?
    - qball 6y ago
      That impression is correct; the precedent is here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.). A lot of people don't really seem to understand that about S. 230- services that exist basically to pass messages have never needed the protection and that won't change. The best example outside of messaging services is probably content delivery networks, and I'll pick on CloudFlare because they're a great example. As long as CloudFlare is fine with just taking money and serving content, no matter whose it is, they have the legal immunity as intended. As soon as they decide (on a whim) to deny service based on content, as they did a while back, that legal immunity vanishes. It would be catastrophic to their business to make that decision (especially considering everything else CloudFlare hosts), and that's the point. It's also very interesting considering that the changes also appear to affect Patreon (and similar) and, perhaps a bigger deal, PayPal, since it's an interactive computer service used to fund the creation of information (among other things). In fact, I think that's an even bigger deal, because it's not necessarily traditional platforms banning certain people that causes them to be denied a platform these days, it's the inability of them to get funding in a way that isn't "send cash to this PO Box".
ROARosen 6y ago
I wonder if it would be applicable to end-to-end "messengers" like Telegra/Signal/WhatsApp etc. Though I don't see any language there to suggest it is just for online "platforms" but not "messengers". Then again, could be this entire proposal to begin with is intended just for so-called "platforms" not messengers.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  > Such designs and operation put our society at risk by: (1) severely eroding a company’s ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity; (2) preventing or seriously inhibiting the timely identification of offenders, as well as the identification and rescue of victims; To me, that says if a company writes something that prevents or blocks illegal content from being accessed by law enforcement, any immunity or protection is removed.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    That’s a very narrow theory of it. I read it as saying “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal”. That is, E2E encryption, because it is impossible for someone to eavesdrop usefully by design, is intended to be made illegal.
    - inetsee 6y ago
      >> “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal” Does that mean that GEO-restricting content will be made illegal?
      - Spivak 6y ago
        No. What? This is entirely about law enforcement. If you want to design your system to that the only external viewers are police then w/e — that’s up to you. What the parent is saying is that you can’t use “the system is designed so that nobody can access it” as an excuse for why law enforcement can’t access it.
mbreese 6y ago
I’m not sure that I see why Apple would need Section 230 protection... why do you think they do?
shadowgovt 6y ago
I think it's written with 8chan in mind.
xfer 6y ago
More like messengers like Signal, rather than Apple. Which apple product is designed to be not able to identify their customer?

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

You sound like you have something to hide.

saurik 6y ago

If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?

ROARosen 6y ago
Exactly. They are also basically saying you don't need to moderate most illicit activity (if it's an unmoderated format) but you essentially can't operate such a platform in a form where it is "unmoderateable"/untraceable because you should be liable for any unlawful content that goes up, and for the the fact that you facilitated it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
treis 6y ago
The law provides them immunity from civil suits. Apple as a provider can say they comply with section 230 and avoid any legal liability from people that may be harmed by their actions. In other words, you can't sue Apple because someone used iCloud to distribute child porn of you. The essential bargain struck for 230 was that providers get immunity in exchange for policing their system and helping law enforcement. Apple et al removing their ability to police their systems breaks that bargain.
- saurik 6y ago
  Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practicalities here, but will admit that with 90s era tech and under the premise of the specific model of website this seems reasonable to have believed and legislate for), and so wanted the ability to "have their cake and eat it too": to be able to decide almost on a whim to take down content--and thereby to have people active to looking at content to decide what to take down--but not to be responsible for those editorial decisions, as they wanted to do their supposedly-required moderation tasks with limited staff and "after the fact": and so, if they "decide" (quite likely by negligence) to leave something up that they should not have published, Section 230 grants them immunity with some provisions. It doesn't seem like a truly end-to-end encrypted service--such as iMessage or iCloud Keychain (but absolutely not iCloud Backup, which has a key escrow backdoor: it should be end-to-end encrypted, but explicitly isn't) needs this immunity, right?
  - treis 6y ago
    They may or may not. A victim of child pornography can argue that Apple is liable because they provide a secure platform to distribute the images. Or maybe a victim of a crime might sue because Apple refused to help. Section 230 prevented those types of lawsuits. Without it, who knows?
  - qball 6y ago
    That impression is correct; the precedent is here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.). A lot of people don't really seem to understand that about S. 230- services that exist basically to pass messages have never needed the protection and that won't change. The best example outside of messaging services is probably content delivery networks, and I'll pick on CloudFlare because they're a great example. As long as CloudFlare is fine with just taking money and serving content, no matter whose it is, they have the legal immunity as intended. As soon as they decide (on a whim) to deny service based on content, as they did a while back, that legal immunity vanishes. It would be catastrophic to their business to make that decision (especially considering everything else CloudFlare hosts), and that's the point. It's also very interesting considering that the changes also appear to affect Patreon (and similar) and, perhaps a bigger deal, PayPal, since it's an interactive computer service used to fund the creation of information (among other things). In fact, I think that's an even bigger deal, because it's not necessarily traditional platforms banning certain people that causes them to be denied a platform these days, it's the inability of them to get funding in a way that isn't "send cash to this PO Box".

ROARosen 6y ago

I wonder if it would be applicable to end-to-end "messengers" like Telegra/Signal/WhatsApp etc. Though I don't see any language there to suggest it is just for online "platforms" but not "messengers". Then again, could be this entire proposal to begin with is intended just for so-called "platforms" not messengers.

kordlessagain 6y ago
> Such designs and operation put our society at risk by: (1) severely eroding a company’s ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity; (2) preventing or seriously inhibiting the timely identification of offenders, as well as the identification and rescue of victims; To me, that says if a company writes something that prevents or blocks illegal content from being accessed by law enforcement, any immunity or protection is removed.
- t-writescode 6y ago
  That’s a very narrow theory of it. I read it as saying “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal”. That is, E2E encryption, because it is impossible for someone to eavesdrop usefully by design, is intended to be made illegal.
  - inetsee 6y ago
    >> “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal” Does that mean that GEO-restricting content will be made illegal?
    - Spivak 6y ago
      No. What? This is entirely about law enforcement. If you want to design your system to that the only external viewers are police then w/e — that’s up to you. What the parent is saying is that you can’t use “the system is designed so that nobody can access it” as an excuse for why law enforcement can’t access it.

mbreese 6y ago

I’m not sure that I see why Apple would need Section 230 protection... why do you think they do?

shadowgovt 6y ago

I think it's written with 8chan in mind.

xfer 6y ago

More like messengers like Signal, rather than Apple. Which apple product is designed to be not able to identify their customer?