31 ms·

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

1363 points by grappler 5y ago

lawrenceyan 5y ago
Great power comes with great responsibility. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
HowardPlayzOA 5y ago
The EARN IT bill was not dangerous before this year; it was to hunt down some child predators in all platforms such as TikTok. I don’t know why they need to pass the bill, but the ways of living under this such a bill will be terrifying; such a thing would be spied like Mainland China when they are using a social credit technique for everyone who browses things online. In other words, we must protest the bill by sending some important details of why the bill must rip off from the checklists due to our own security and privacy. Even I am using ZOOM in my iPhone to chat with my friends, including Signal and Discord. Whenever this bill passed, we must be ready for the REVOLUTION to start. That’s all I have to say today.
neycoda 5y ago
I can't read the article on mobile, it's apparently formatted for an 85" ultra-widescreen 4K screen
prepend 5y ago
I wish they would address real problems like arbitrary enforcement of TOS that damages users with no recourse. There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Child abuse is serious, but not that common and this law will do little to change that. The lack of a UCC-style law for big tech platforms affects way more people. This seems like BS that will squelch small players that can’t afford to comply. And consolidate more power into a few small firms.
- ridaj 5y ago
  > There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Yes there is, per the trade regulations you're entitled to a refund . Wait I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you pay for anything over 100 Mb? Then held your email address hostage if you wanted to switch providers? Hell no. But I also don't think government should force anyone to provide services to me for free. Edit: downvotes without replies do not help me understand where this feeling of entitlement to a free service comes from; insight would be appreciated.
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    > I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you pay for anything over 100 Mb? Then held your email address hostage if you wanted to switch providers? Hell no. But I also don't think government should force anyone to provide services to me for free. I'm gonna argue that government shouldn't force anyone to provide services for free, but they should mandate that if you provide a service, you also take responsibility for the customer's property in context of that service, whether that service is free or not. If I take my car to be serviced and they accept it, they can't just tow it to a junkyard and tell me to bugger off when I come back for it. Why can Google effectively put my private correspondence through the shredder and tell me to bugger off? Likewise, offering to hold your grocery bag for a minute for free while you go to the restroom doesn't entitle me to destroy everything in the bag and throw it away.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    The service isn't free, you pay for it with your personal information. If they want to provide refunds by deleting our information, that seems like a fair trade.
  - umbauk 5y ago
    Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free. Those 2 companies are 2 of the most profitable, valuable companies in the world. If they are providing their services for free, how can that be? Our attention and information is what they profit from, and that should not be undervalued. They are certainly not providing these services to us out of the goodness of their hearts.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  Squelching small players is the intent. Large institutions are easy to exert political control over. It's hard to exert political control over masses of individuals. It benefits the Republican party when you get your news from FOX. It benefits the Democratic party when you get your news from CNN. It does not benefit the Democratic or Republican party when any individual can broadcast their views to millions of willing listeners on a platform like Youtube. This is why you only ever hear about "misinformation" coming from small time players. When CNN/FOX et al. do it (which is constantly), they get a free pass. Both parties share an interest in monopolizing information flow to their followers, which is why they both support this law.
  - cossatot 5y ago
    FOX and CNN are constantly accused of spreading misinformation by huge swaths of the populace (but not necessarily the same swath for both networks).
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      I'm talking about the specific swath of the populace that can get you banned from YouTube, FB, etc.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      Any examples of CNN misinformation? Not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just not aware of it. Meanwhile FOX misinformation is pretty well known.
      - pksebben 5y ago
        https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/02/iraq.weapons/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/02/iraq.weapons/inde...
      - fallingknife 5y ago
        Russiagate would be just one example. And of course when they said Joe Rogan was taking horse dewormer.
SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
These assholes just keep trying and trying until they get their way. At least it's good to see there's some actual pushback in the United States. Here in Australia, this sort of legislation has bipartisan support, it gets rubberstamped and passed on a Friday evening before a public holiday with the media staying silent. Keep fighting against these bills, or else you'll get a government that happily runs roughshod over your civil liberties like ours.
- Arubis 5y ago
  Of course they do. They know the equation: we have to win every time; they only have to win once.
- deleted 5y ago
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- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Yeah. Maybe there should be a law that makes it illegal to attempt to ban encryption.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    But what if they make it illegal to attempt to make it illegal to attempt to ban encryption?
  - nichos 5y ago
    Shouldn't it be covered under the 4th amendment?
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      There is historical precedent classifying encryption as munitions, so arguably the 2nd amendment would also apply, in addition to the 4th.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
cyberlurker 5y ago
No matter your opinion on the issue, the firearm lobby would probably serve as an effective model for fighting legislation like this on a long term basis.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  The second amendment, like abortion, is a political wedge issue used by politicians to wield against their opponents. You’re not going to replicate that with issues requiring more nuance and that cannot be used as emotional cudgels.
  - umvi 5y ago
    The point though is that you can't afford minor losses here and there, because it's a war of attrition. Firearm lobby knows that the opposition's strategy is to just chip away at 2A rights slowly over the decades. Therefore, they can't afford to allow minor gun control victories here and there, or else a century later they are out of business and their supporters have no 2A rights anymore. Same with this. You can't allow minor anti-encryption victories here and there chipping away at privacy/mathematical rights or your great grandkids won't have those freedoms.
  - queuebert 5y ago
    I think the lack of nuance employed by both 1A and 2A communities has been a strength. Nuance allows compromise, and compromise allows incrementalism. It's a classic fascist play. It's also a classic politician play to get people lost in the details so that no one truly understands their intent, i.e. "never let a good crisis go to waste". I'm willing to be proven wrong, however.
    - icelancer 5y ago
      >> Nuance allows compromise, and compromise allows incrementalism. Correct. So-called "pragmatism" and constant compromise is how we got into a ton of the messes we are in right now.
    - protomyth 5y ago
jimbob45 5y ago
Graham (R-SC) Blumenthal (D-CT)* Durbin (D-IL) Grassley (R-IA)* Feinstein (D-CA) Cornyn (R-TX) Whitehouse (D-RI) Hawley (R-MO) Hirono (D-HI) Kennedy (D-LA)* Casey (D-PA) Blackburn (R-TN) Masto (D-NV)* Collins (R-ME) Hassan (D-NH)* Ernst (R-IA) Warner (D-VA) Hyde-Smith (R-MI) Murkowski (R-AK)* Portman (R-OH)* * are up for re-election this year. Bit of a pain to find this information really - couldn't find a single news outlet with a list of who introduced the bill. Kinda seems like they don't want to be known.
- yareally 5y ago
  > Portman (R-OH)* He's retiring this year. Candidates running for his spot in his party are likely to support it though
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  Feinstein really needs to go. CA can do so much better.
- loteck 5y ago
  By all means contact and organize on Senators, it's good practice. In my experience they are completely unresponsive to anything smaller than the largest and most funded groups. Still, making noise is only good. You may find your local house rep to be much more persuadable and willing to listen to your educated points of view. Getting their position stated publicly and on the record in either direction can be very meaningful.
- 1121redblackgo 5y ago
  Really surprised Warner is on this list, and very unsurprised by the inclusion of both remarkable senators from Iowa
- userbinator 5y ago
  Exactly 10 on each side --- that's about as non-partisan as it gets.
  - mrandish 5y ago
eikenberry 5y ago
This seems like it could have a significant upside if passed. That it would help promote federated and peer to peer free software systems with no centralized, commercial target to sue. Might even require some of the current giant social networks to pair back significantly to avoid liability. I'm not saying I want it to pass, just think the unintended consequences might be interesting and even beneficial in some ways.
- bo1024 5y ago
  Pretty sure the government won't view it that way. It'll be called a loophole and crushed if it gets mainstream. This is the country where sending an HTML GET and receiving response 200 can be prosecuted under the CFAA. We need a legal environment that explicitly protects encrypted communications, not one where they are are maybe tolerated on the fringe.
  - eikenberry 5y ago
    This is a different battle. The government has gone after general purpose encryption multiple times and has been beaten back so far. And while this would definitely be a win for that side of things it isn't the same battle and the Earn IT Act is not about encryption in general. It is about encryption in the context of commercial entities and their managed content.
    - dchftcs 5y ago
      With greater surveillance power and the precedence of passing this bill the government gains the ability to push a stronger one, including one that targets general encryption. Your intended effect is uncertain at best, I'm not even sure it's going to be a net benefit in the most ideal scenario (losing encryption in commercial setting is at the very least extremely inefficient), and there would certainly be high costs to the society until that materializes. At worst it would never materialize. You're effectively advocating to take a very high risk to liberty and privacy for some very wishful thinking.
      - 5y ago
mrandish 5y ago
While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection to most, I'd like to see more mainstream discussion about who this bill benefits and why. The legislation 'coincidentally' achieves exactly the agenda proposed by the "surveillance state" (ie CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, law enforcement lobby, state prosecutors, etc). While it doesn't specifically prohibit public access to encryption, it seeks to create nearly the same effect by making it legally risky for large social media and platform companies to offer end-to-end encryption as a default to law-abiding citizens. It's no accident that almost every version of the bill creates this exposure to essentially bottomless legal liability for platforms offering secure communications. Frankly, this scares the crap out of me. These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. While not explicitly outlawing untappable communications, it's much easier to identify who is choosing to use end-to-end encryption when it's not the typical default. This will ultimately put all of us who care about secure communications under default suspicion, whether our interest in private comms is a moral ideal, political principle or simply proper technical architecture and data hygiene. In today's multi-national environment of nation-state, criminal and privateer (NSO etc) threat actors, insecure communications over Internet infrastructure should only be seen as an ill-advised risky behavior or a technical bug.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  > While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.
  - jjulius 5y ago
uejfiweun 5y ago
It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  > It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments That doesn't follow. The worst laws passed (e.g. the Patriot Act) tend to have bipartisan support.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- uoaei 5y ago
  > It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes I don't see how the conclusion follows from the premise. It doesn't seem appropriate to assume that politicians are acting in good faith dialectical fashion, based on literally every observation we've ever made of their actions vs their rhetoric.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Issues like this are difficult as there are conflicting needs and people wearing blinders on the issue. There’s really no correct answer, but there are at least 4-5 camps of true believers. Recall the HN community going apeshit over Apple’s proposed methodology to address this issue. That solution was engineered to benefit Apple and was imperfect, but fundamentally addressed CSAM risk with a proven methodology and preserved strong crypto. That visceral, apeshit reaction was incited by a poorly written EFF article that blurred the lines between a parental control and CSAM. So yay, we won. Now broken encryption is back and may well pass, as both law and order moderates and batshit crazy conservatives can find common ground.
- loteck 5y ago
loteck 5y ago
The 3 Techdirt links in the article are especially helpful for catching up. EARN IT is another skirmish in the 30+ year old Crypto Wars. For those who care about defending privacy and encryption, exhaustion is not an option. Power-hungry governments must be viewed similarly to an APT in this context. They are following their very nature, and they will never stop inventing new approaches. There is no other option except to stay organized and always ready to engage.
- bsder 5y ago
  > For those who care about defending privacy and encryption, exhaustion is not an option. For those who care about democracy, exhaustion is not an option. This is why people who believe that they can be "neutral" or "in the middle" make me so angry. "Two sides" doesn't hold when one side is actively trying to sabotage you.
- snarf21 5y ago
  While I agree with you, I think the last 5 years have shown that exhaustion wins. It is just a matter of time. People won't stay vigilant. They just want to provide a life for their family. Life is hard enough without having to stop clueless and bribed politicians from ending freedom on a weekly basis.
  - loteck 5y ago
    I think the last 30 years of failed government efforts to effectively end the use of secure encryption contradict your opinion. Those battles were won by vigilant defenders. You can and should join them if it's important to you.
    - icelancer 5y ago
      The other way to look at your statement is that secure encryption is inherently unbeatable by its very nature, and attempts to legislate against it are like trying to say that 1+1=3 for very large values of 1. I believe in writing lawmakers and spreading awareness, but people who are skeptical of the legislative/voting path have a point: Building things that are ungovernable plays a critical role in this process. Likely we need to do both.
kweingar 5y ago
The main concern I have is the technological/administrative burden put on smaller platforms, which would cause further consolidation of the web. What obligations this would impose on an operator of a small web forum?
shitpost 5y ago
charcircuit 5y ago
We should design cryptosystems that include functionality that support warrants as opposed to being antiencryption and removing encryption.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  then that's not encryption ... if it has a back door....
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    I'm not talking about a backdoor. I am talking about it being a part of the actual system design.
    - notfed 5y ago
      It's unclear what you're talking about then; edit and clarify. Even the most generous interpretation sounds like a backdoor.
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        You could imagine it as every chat having additional participant which is a person who has a valid warrant. There is nothing secretive about this, nor is it bypassing the cryptographic system somehow. If I send you an encrypted message, is it a backdoor if you are able to decrypt it? No, because that's how it's indented to work.
        emkoemko 5y ago
        if the service can get your conversations then it is a backdoor simple...
- seanw444 5y ago
  Sounds like junk crypto.
thrown_22 5y ago
urthor 5y ago
I feel like there's two big issues at war with this one. 1) The Web 2.0 war over how much legal liability internet platforms have to bear. This is the big one to me, ever since the DMCA this is the pivotal issues about the internet. 2) The ongoing war against E2E encryption. This is a nonissue, the attempts of the authorities to restrict digital encryption are pointless and futile. I'm a big fan of reform in #1. The big internet platforms like Facebook absolutely need to face far more legal liability for their actions. But conflating the thing into one big bill that pushes forward E2E encryption restrictions is one of the issues with democracy in America. There is so much horse trading involved in Washington required to do anything, because of lobbyist vetos, the fact all these issues have to end up in an omnibus bill is ridiculous.
thrown_22 5y ago
lstroud 5y ago
Will all government agencies be required to comply? I would think that would be an issue.
NewMountain 5y ago
For those living in California: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me A copy of my note if you would like a template: ``` Dear Senator Feinstein, I am deeply disappointed with your support of the EARN IT act and am expressing my deep concern and disapproval of such a bill. Congruent with the recent report released by Stanford, I am expressing my deep disappointment in your sponsorship of the EARN IT act. I believe it represents a fundamental undermining of citizens right to privacy through strong encryption under the extremely divisive framing of "protecting the children". As a Father of two children myself, I do not believe that whatever incremental improvement to their safety, if any at all, justifies the undermining of encryption of ordinary citizens. In my opinion, this law actively undermines the fourth amendment in the digital realm and I must state that if you believe this is in my best interest, you have lost both my vote and my trust. ```
- bsder 5y ago
  Sadly, Feinstein doesn't give one iota of damn ... unless she is being wiretapped. And, at this point, I'm not sure that she actually even knows what she is doing. However, too many people are on the gravy train that are preventing her from resigning.
  - tagoregrtst 5y ago
    Feinstein is the senator I dislike the most. Even after she complained like a baby that the FBI had surveilled her (what did she expect?) it didn't affect her political positions one bit. She cant loose the elections because shes a Dem from CA. She cant get primaried because shes in the hands of the SV
    - bsder 5y ago
      > She cant loose the elections because shes a Dem from CA. She cant get primaried because shes in the hands of the SV It sounds like you need to do some research about California politics. Feinstein is by no means untouchable. And more of her support comes from Hollywood and old media than from SV. However, she does have a core in San Francisco given that's where she wound up as mayor stemming from the Moscone–Milk assassinations. California has jungle primaries so winning the primary isn't enough. In 2018, this meant that the main election was between two Democrats--Feinstein (54.2%) and de León(45.8%). This was actually a pretty solid result given that Feinstein is a strongly entrenched, party supported incumbent. And it was actually the closest election since her first. And 2018 was just the start of the progressive wing of the Democratic party getting started (that was the year that AOC got elected and surprised everybody), so a highly liberal challenger simply wasn't in the cards, yet. She will have a much tougher road in 2024, but I will be highly surprised if she even runs.
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beebmam 5y ago
All it is going to take is one big violent event organized using end-to-end encryption and that's it, this bill (or something like it) will pass. So you should probably prepare for that political battle if this is an issue you care about
- ipnon 5y ago
  What violent conspiracy hasn't incorporated encryption? Can you read in plaintext every email that cross the Web? I can't even access HN over HTTP. Encryption is the default for modern communication. That's the rub: it's a mass surveillance bill masquerading as an encryption bill.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    The bill isn’t about encryption despite the messaging. It’s about the design of communications systems that are “unwiretappable.”
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mrobot 5y ago
What we need is positive privacy rights that are very well thought out and firm in preventing legislation such as this from even ever surfacing, as what's proposed in this policy should just be illegal in the first place. These privacy rights would go against what both Silicon Valley and NSA/CIA/Pentagon want, so we need a movement to fight it. I don't think i believe anyone with any power (including Silicon Valley big wigs) are actually opposed to any of this garbage. Anyway, I'm sick of just being reactive to this anti-human garbage. People need to get clued in and slay the demons instead of building stuff for them.
dmje 5y ago
I know it's wildly off-topic but can someone please explain to me why there are still sites like this that are clearly well funded and professional that fail to have spent - what - 2-3 designer hours time ($150?!) on a simple mobile stylesheet? They almost definitely get 50%+ mobile traffic. What gives?
- deleted 5y ago
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- aspenmayer 5y ago
  I think they’re hiring, if it’s any consolation. I’m sure that HN staff does actually have work besides moderation. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/7D3drHl-product-engineer https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/7D3d...
ghoward 5y ago
If anyone needs a link to point politicians to, you can use [1]. Suggestions welcome for improvements. [1]: https://everyoneneedsencryption.gavinhoward.com/ https://everyoneneedsencryption.gavinhoward.com/
javajosh 5y ago
We have to give them something for CSAM, or they'll keep coming at free speech in general using CSAM as cover. I strongly recommend considering the invention of a sticky, client-side program that scans all images passing through your network interfaces. It is also allowed to send red flagged images to a jury that will be a first hurdle to doing anything: determining it's really a CSAM matter. I've proposed this before, and got shouted down. Partly because its client side and can be theoretically disabled. But I think it can be made as difficult as black box baseband firmware to undermine. I do not believe the argument that consumers are sophisticated enough to disable this scan, if implemented well. We have demonstrated the ability to force-run processes at every level of abstraction for general compute hardware. Our best hope is to implement something that has a reasonable chance of catching actual CSAM without generating false positives and without being exploited to prosecute people deemed problematic for arbitrary reasons. Otherwise we get what is probably happening now, which is the secretive scanning of all messages, prosecution limited only by the cost of parallel construction.
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Couldnt it be easily broken by masquerading a jpg as a txt file? Or actual people who pass such images use some kind of masking techniques. I will tell you what, any thing can be broken if it’s on software. DRM is broken by design because it failed to stop shit its only a hurdle to actual users.
  - javajosh 5y ago
    That doesn't sound like an argument against my proposal. Or, if it is, it's like arguing against using locks because any lock can be picked. Any counter-measure, even the most invasive and draconian, can be foiled by simply doing your CSAM offline, using photocopiers and the postal service. That would be a big improvement, I'd argue.
    - anaganisk 5y ago
      So whats your big improvement then? Locks are there to prevent random joes from entering your house, no one expects a lock to work against thieves that would be foolish because it never stopped em. Your argument is otherwise, you expect your “lock” to work on culprits. Also your offline scanning tech requires an update to hashes all the time, whats stopping any jury/govt from injecting hashes that aren’t CSAM, expecting governments and as an extension judiciary to operate in good faith is more foolish to assume. Im not even talking about breaking into the scanning software, defeating the scan is as easy as not sending them as image simple.
friendlydog 5y ago
Instead of just getting these shutdown how about an opposing act which puts penalties for lobbyists and politicians who back this kind of thing? I don't want to keep fighting zombie bills like these, because we will eventually miss one.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > penalties for lobbyists and politicians who back this kind of thing You want to make it illegal for people to propose and vote for policies that you don't like? What if they beat you to it and pass a law that stops you from getting your law passed?
  - friendlydog 5y ago
    Some parts of government should be immutable, and putting safeguards to ensure constants are constant makes a lot of sense to me.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      The idea that a part of the government could be unchangeable even if 100% of the people in the country oppose it, seems not just dystopian but philosophically absurd. As a compromise, though, how about having some rules about which laws the government is allowed to make, and requiring something like a two-thirds majority to be able to change those rules. Then you could have a rule saying that the government can't make any laws that cause the people to not be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. Actually you're right, maybe that won't be sufficient.
      - friendlydog 5y ago
        Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but the facts on the ground are that the constitution is broken all the time without anyone being punished enough to stop them from doing it again. Unless you outline penalties or protections such as qualified immunity for defending the constitution it becomes meaningless.
tehwebguy 5y ago
It’s not just this specific legislation, there is no reason to give police any additional power and all the reason in the world to dial back the extraordinary power they already have.
boppo1 5y ago
I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only way this ends with the preservation of encryption as a standard is a bipartisan fappening-style leak of CEOs, politicians, lawyers, etc. Not just sexual content, but intimate content of any and all kinds: financial records, healthcare visits, everyday texts, etc.
- spacexsucks 5y ago
  This is the only way.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  I'm in agreement, but how sad a commentary on the state of politics and 'the best governance society has developed so far'? All I hear from the people at the top is: Me, me, fucking me! (Would I be any better in a position of power? I don't know, but I'd like to think so).
- swinglock 5y ago
  They would find a way to misinterpret the situation and double down, to fight the criminals at fault who did this to them.
ryeights 5y ago
Politicians are malignant tumors on free, democratic society. IMO anyone who would choose to run for a political office in today’s society should be banned from ever holding a position of power.
yakorevivan 5y ago
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iopq 5y ago
Only Rand Paul and Ron Wyden voted against FOSTA/SESTA, the legislation passing 97 to 2
OGforces 5y ago
natsup123490 5y ago
If this bill passes, it will only weaken America's position as leader in the Internet space. The world will eventually benefit from that weakening. We will route around America.
grammers 5y ago
Man that's bad. I wish if a bill was off the table once, it can't be simply brought back again and again. It feels like constantly treading water, no wonder people are frustrated with politics.
jmconfuzeus 5y ago
The return of Gestapo.
shmerl 5y ago
Using encryption should be considered a right, this way such kind of bills will become impossible.
totorovirus 5y ago
wow I am just utterly surprised how the politicians in US are trying to pass the bill via CSAM just like the politicians in korea. Korea already has a DNS surveilance on porn related websites because it may contain sexually abusive material that may harm teenagers' mental health (it is called children and teenangers act). They even passed a bill to monitor the videos shared in online chatroom because people may share sexually abusive material via messengers. They have a very strong ethical reason in that they are trying to protect children and teenagers, and it is difficult to overcome that by making a case for privacy protection.
dsign 5y ago
Here is where we are going: https://dsignrandom.tumblr.com/post/675431677522329600/not-so-futuristic-concept-of-a-market-street-each https://dsignrandom.tumblr.com/post/675431677522329600/not-s... I think that these bills will have not only a chilling effect over free speech, but also reduce the overall safety of citizens, both of which are truly bad things. And make no mistake, many countries will follow the lead of USA, UK and Australia in taking these steps. On the plus side, moving free speech outside the moderation of big tech and, by extension, big-government, is a good thing. And that will happen the moment people realize that they are liable for CSAM crimes for posting photos of bread and having a stupid AI flag them, or referring to their cat as "my kid" in a tweet. People with a strong political opinion on bread or otherwise will need to find high-effort platforms to publish those opinions, i.e. magazines, books, and (eventually) face-to-face meetups. My perhaps over-optimistic hope is that this will attenuate the rage-by-tweet phenomenon, we will get back to thinking before publicly expressing something, and people will only get mobilized after informing themselves properly on a subject. Even if this is a "count your blessings" attitude.
jeegsy 5y ago
I'm not sure why a law is needed. These big tech companies do the government's bidding all the time.
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MatekCopatek 5y ago
To start, I absolutely don't think this bill is good, BUT I think there might be potential for some interesting silver lining. Let's say it's passed and big platforms such as FB need to start heavily policing their users because they become responsible for all published content. This level of moderation is nearly impossible to achieve, so they are forced to heavily limit participation (you can only post a limited amount, posts need to be confirmed before becoming public, AI filters auto-reject various topics etc.). Users are pissed and move to platforms with "more freedom", but nothing lasts - as soon as they grow, they all hit those same issues. Because all the responsibility is on the publisher, the only realistic solutions are smaller and more distributed communities. You can self publish your blog or create an invite-only forum/chatroom/Mastodon instance for your friends/family/neighbourhood. Because now everyone is doing this, hosting providers, ISPs and software publishers adapt by improving UX and reducing technical barrier to entry. It's basically a reneissance of oldschool internet. Whaddya say, too optimistic?
- bagacrap 5y ago
  whatever "self publish your blog" means, but if it's sufficiently easy for non technical users to figure out, no doubt it's a platform that can be subjected to this law. If it's not an easy-to-use platform it will deplatform and disengage the less sophisticated internet users. The old-school internet was mostly a few eccentrics no one paid attention to.
  - MatekCopatek 5y ago
    Disagree - you could take the exact registration flow of any existing platform (e.g. Blogger) and adjust it so that instead of creating an account in their database (and consequently on their platform), it provisions a hosting account in your name and installs some blogging software there.
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tomjonesey 5y ago

1363 points by grappler 5y ago

Great power comes with great responsibility. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The EARN IT bill was not dangerous before this year; it was to hunt down some child predators in all platforms such as TikTok. I don’t know why they need to pass the bill, but the ways of living under this such a bill will be terrifying; such a thing would be spied like Mainland China when they are using a social credit technique for everyone who browses things online. In other words, we must protest the bill by sending some important details of why the bill must rip off from the checklists due to our own security and privacy. Even I am using ZOOM in my iPhone to chat with my friends, including Signal and Discord. Whenever this bill passed, we must be ready for the REVOLUTION to start. That’s all I have to say today.

neycoda 5y ago

I can't read the article on mobile, it's apparently formatted for an 85" ultra-widescreen 4K screen

prepend 5y ago

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

ridaj 5y ago
> There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Yes there is, per the trade regulations you're entitled to a refund . Wait I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you pay for anything over 100 Mb? Then held your email address hostage if you wanted to switch providers? Hell no. But I also don't think government should force anyone to provide services to me for free. Edit: downvotes without replies do not help me understand where this feeling of entitlement to a free service comes from; insight would be appreciated.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you pay for anything over 100 Mb? Then held your email address hostage if you wanted to switch providers? Hell no. But I also don't think government should force anyone to provide services to me for free. I'm gonna argue that government shouldn't force anyone to provide services for free, but they should mandate that if you provide a service, you also take responsibility for the customer's property in context of that service, whether that service is free or not. If I take my car to be serviced and they accept it, they can't just tow it to a junkyard and tell me to bugger off when I come back for it. Why can Google effectively put my private correspondence through the shredder and tell me to bugger off? Likewise, offering to hold your grocery bag for a minute for free while you go to the restroom doesn't entitle me to destroy everything in the bag and throw it away.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  The service isn't free, you pay for it with your personal information. If they want to provide refunds by deleting our information, that seems like a fair trade.
- umbauk 5y ago
  Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free. Those 2 companies are 2 of the most profitable, valuable companies in the world. If they are providing their services for free, how can that be? Our attention and information is what they profit from, and that should not be undervalued. They are certainly not providing these services to us out of the goodness of their hearts.
fallingknife 5y ago
Squelching small players is the intent. Large institutions are easy to exert political control over. It's hard to exert political control over masses of individuals. It benefits the Republican party when you get your news from FOX. It benefits the Democratic party when you get your news from CNN. It does not benefit the Democratic or Republican party when any individual can broadcast their views to millions of willing listeners on a platform like Youtube. This is why you only ever hear about "misinformation" coming from small time players. When CNN/FOX et al. do it (which is constantly), they get a free pass. Both parties share an interest in monopolizing information flow to their followers, which is why they both support this law.
- cossatot 5y ago
  FOX and CNN are constantly accused of spreading misinformation by huge swaths of the populace (but not necessarily the same swath for both networks).
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    I'm talking about the specific swath of the populace that can get you banned from YouTube, FB, etc.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    Any examples of CNN misinformation? Not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just not aware of it. Meanwhile FOX misinformation is pretty well known.
    - pksebben 5y ago
      https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/02/iraq.weapons/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/02/iraq.weapons/inde...
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Russiagate would be just one example. And of course when they said Joe Rogan was taking horse dewormer.

SturgeonsLaw 5y ago

These assholes just keep trying and trying until they get their way. At least it's good to see there's some actual pushback in the United States. Here in Australia, this sort of legislation has bipartisan support, it gets rubberstamped and passed on a Friday evening before a public holiday with the media staying silent. Keep fighting against these bills, or else you'll get a government that happily runs roughshod over your civil liberties like ours.

Arubis 5y ago
Of course they do. They know the equation: we have to win every time; they only have to win once.
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matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yeah. Maybe there should be a law that makes it illegal to attempt to ban encryption.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  But what if they make it illegal to attempt to make it illegal to attempt to ban encryption?
- nichos 5y ago
  Shouldn't it be covered under the 4th amendment?
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    There is historical precedent classifying encryption as munitions, so arguably the 2nd amendment would also apply, in addition to the 4th.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago

cyberlurker 5y ago

No matter your opinion on the issue, the firearm lobby would probably serve as an effective model for fighting legislation like this on a long term basis.

KerrAvon 5y ago
The second amendment, like abortion, is a political wedge issue used by politicians to wield against their opponents. You’re not going to replicate that with issues requiring more nuance and that cannot be used as emotional cudgels.
- umvi 5y ago
  The point though is that you can't afford minor losses here and there, because it's a war of attrition. Firearm lobby knows that the opposition's strategy is to just chip away at 2A rights slowly over the decades. Therefore, they can't afford to allow minor gun control victories here and there, or else a century later they are out of business and their supporters have no 2A rights anymore. Same with this. You can't allow minor anti-encryption victories here and there chipping away at privacy/mathematical rights or your great grandkids won't have those freedoms.
- queuebert 5y ago
  I think the lack of nuance employed by both 1A and 2A communities has been a strength. Nuance allows compromise, and compromise allows incrementalism. It's a classic fascist play. It's also a classic politician play to get people lost in the details so that no one truly understands their intent, i.e. "never let a good crisis go to waste". I'm willing to be proven wrong, however.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    >> Nuance allows compromise, and compromise allows incrementalism. Correct. So-called "pragmatism" and constant compromise is how we got into a ton of the messes we are in right now.
  - protomyth 5y ago

jimbob45 5y ago

Graham (R-SC) Blumenthal (D-CT)* Durbin (D-IL) Grassley (R-IA)* Feinstein (D-CA) Cornyn (R-TX) Whitehouse (D-RI) Hawley (R-MO) Hirono (D-HI) Kennedy (D-LA)* Casey (D-PA) Blackburn (R-TN) Masto (D-NV)* Collins (R-ME) Hassan (D-NH)* Ernst (R-IA) Warner (D-VA) Hyde-Smith (R-MI) Murkowski (R-AK)* Portman (R-OH)* * are up for re-election this year. Bit of a pain to find this information really - couldn't find a single news outlet with a list of who introduced the bill. Kinda seems like they don't want to be known.

yareally 5y ago
> Portman (R-OH)* He's retiring this year. Candidates running for his spot in his party are likely to support it though
KerrAvon 5y ago
Feinstein really needs to go. CA can do so much better.
loteck 5y ago
By all means contact and organize on Senators, it's good practice. In my experience they are completely unresponsive to anything smaller than the largest and most funded groups. Still, making noise is only good. You may find your local house rep to be much more persuadable and willing to listen to your educated points of view. Getting their position stated publicly and on the record in either direction can be very meaningful.
1121redblackgo 5y ago
Really surprised Warner is on this list, and very unsurprised by the inclusion of both remarkable senators from Iowa
userbinator 5y ago
Exactly 10 on each side --- that's about as non-partisan as it gets.
- mrandish 5y ago

eikenberry 5y ago

This seems like it could have a significant upside if passed. That it would help promote federated and peer to peer free software systems with no centralized, commercial target to sue. Might even require some of the current giant social networks to pair back significantly to avoid liability. I'm not saying I want it to pass, just think the unintended consequences might be interesting and even beneficial in some ways.

bo1024 5y ago
Pretty sure the government won't view it that way. It'll be called a loophole and crushed if it gets mainstream. This is the country where sending an HTML GET and receiving response 200 can be prosecuted under the CFAA. We need a legal environment that explicitly protects encrypted communications, not one where they are are maybe tolerated on the fringe.
- eikenberry 5y ago
  This is a different battle. The government has gone after general purpose encryption multiple times and has been beaten back so far. And while this would definitely be a win for that side of things it isn't the same battle and the Earn IT Act is not about encryption in general. It is about encryption in the context of commercial entities and their managed content.
  - dchftcs 5y ago
    With greater surveillance power and the precedence of passing this bill the government gains the ability to push a stronger one, including one that targets general encryption. Your intended effect is uncertain at best, I'm not even sure it's going to be a net benefit in the most ideal scenario (losing encryption in commercial setting is at the very least extremely inefficient), and there would certainly be high costs to the society until that materializes. At worst it would never materialize. You're effectively advocating to take a very high risk to liberty and privacy for some very wishful thinking.
    - 5y ago

mrandish 5y ago

While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection to most, I'd like to see more mainstream discussion about who this bill benefits and why. The legislation 'coincidentally' achieves exactly the agenda proposed by the "surveillance state" (ie CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, law enforcement lobby, state prosecutors, etc). While it doesn't specifically prohibit public access to encryption, it seeks to create nearly the same effect by making it legally risky for large social media and platform companies to offer end-to-end encryption as a default to law-abiding citizens. It's no accident that almost every version of the bill creates this exposure to essentially bottomless legal liability for platforms offering secure communications. Frankly, this scares the crap out of me. These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. While not explicitly outlawing untappable communications, it's much easier to identify who is choosing to use end-to-end encryption when it's not the typical default. This will ultimately put all of us who care about secure communications under default suspicion, whether our interest in private comms is a moral ideal, political principle or simply proper technical architecture and data hygiene. In today's multi-national environment of nation-state, criminal and privateer (NSO etc) threat actors, insecure communications over Internet infrastructure should only be seen as an ill-advised risky behavior or a technical bug.

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ocdtrekkie 5y ago
> While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.
- jjulius 5y ago

uejfiweun 5y ago

It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.

fallingknife 5y ago
> It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments That doesn't follow. The worst laws passed (e.g. the Patriot Act) tend to have bipartisan support.
- deleted 5y ago
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uoaei 5y ago
> It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes I don't see how the conclusion follows from the premise. It doesn't seem appropriate to assume that politicians are acting in good faith dialectical fashion, based on literally every observation we've ever made of their actions vs their rhetoric.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Issues like this are difficult as there are conflicting needs and people wearing blinders on the issue. There’s really no correct answer, but there are at least 4-5 camps of true believers. Recall the HN community going apeshit over Apple’s proposed methodology to address this issue. That solution was engineered to benefit Apple and was imperfect, but fundamentally addressed CSAM risk with a proven methodology and preserved strong crypto. That visceral, apeshit reaction was incited by a poorly written EFF article that blurred the lines between a parental control and CSAM. So yay, we won. Now broken encryption is back and may well pass, as both law and order moderates and batshit crazy conservatives can find common ground.
loteck 5y ago

loteck 5y ago

The 3 Techdirt links in the article are especially helpful for catching up. EARN IT is another skirmish in the 30+ year old Crypto Wars. For those who care about defending privacy and encryption, exhaustion is not an option. Power-hungry governments must be viewed similarly to an APT in this context. They are following their very nature, and they will never stop inventing new approaches. There is no other option except to stay organized and always ready to engage.

bsder 5y ago
> For those who care about defending privacy and encryption, exhaustion is not an option. For those who care about democracy, exhaustion is not an option. This is why people who believe that they can be "neutral" or "in the middle" make me so angry. "Two sides" doesn't hold when one side is actively trying to sabotage you.
snarf21 5y ago
While I agree with you, I think the last 5 years have shown that exhaustion wins. It is just a matter of time. People won't stay vigilant. They just want to provide a life for their family. Life is hard enough without having to stop clueless and bribed politicians from ending freedom on a weekly basis.
- loteck 5y ago
  I think the last 30 years of failed government efforts to effectively end the use of secure encryption contradict your opinion. Those battles were won by vigilant defenders. You can and should join them if it's important to you.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    The other way to look at your statement is that secure encryption is inherently unbeatable by its very nature, and attempts to legislate against it are like trying to say that 1+1=3 for very large values of 1. I believe in writing lawmakers and spreading awareness, but people who are skeptical of the legislative/voting path have a point: Building things that are ungovernable plays a critical role in this process. Likely we need to do both.

kweingar 5y ago

The main concern I have is the technological/administrative burden put on smaller platforms, which would cause further consolidation of the web. What obligations this would impose on an operator of a small web forum?

shitpost 5y ago

charcircuit 5y ago

We should design cryptosystems that include functionality that support warrants as opposed to being antiencryption and removing encryption.

emkoemko 5y ago
then that's not encryption ... if it has a back door....
- charcircuit 5y ago
  I'm not talking about a backdoor. I am talking about it being a part of the actual system design.
  - notfed 5y ago
    It's unclear what you're talking about then; edit and clarify. Even the most generous interpretation sounds like a backdoor.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      You could imagine it as every chat having additional participant which is a person who has a valid warrant. There is nothing secretive about this, nor is it bypassing the cryptographic system somehow. If I send you an encrypted message, is it a backdoor if you are able to decrypt it? No, because that's how it's indented to work.
      - emkoemko 5y ago
        if the service can get your conversations then it is a backdoor simple...
seanw444 5y ago
Sounds like junk crypto.

thrown_22 5y ago

urthor 5y ago

I feel like there's two big issues at war with this one. 1) The Web 2.0 war over how much legal liability internet platforms have to bear. This is the big one to me, ever since the DMCA this is the pivotal issues about the internet. 2) The ongoing war against E2E encryption. This is a nonissue, the attempts of the authorities to restrict digital encryption are pointless and futile. I'm a big fan of reform in #1. The big internet platforms like Facebook absolutely need to face far more legal liability for their actions. But conflating the thing into one big bill that pushes forward E2E encryption restrictions is one of the issues with democracy in America. There is so much horse trading involved in Washington required to do anything, because of lobbyist vetos, the fact all these issues have to end up in an omnibus bill is ridiculous.

thrown_22 5y ago

lstroud 5y ago

Will all government agencies be required to comply? I would think that would be an issue.

NewMountain 5y ago

For those living in California: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me A copy of my note if you would like a template: ``` Dear Senator Feinstein, I am deeply disappointed with your support of the EARN IT act and am expressing my deep concern and disapproval of such a bill. Congruent with the recent report released by Stanford, I am expressing my deep disappointment in your sponsorship of the EARN IT act. I believe it represents a fundamental undermining of citizens right to privacy through strong encryption under the extremely divisive framing of "protecting the children". As a Father of two children myself, I do not believe that whatever incremental improvement to their safety, if any at all, justifies the undermining of encryption of ordinary citizens. In my opinion, this law actively undermines the fourth amendment in the digital realm and I must state that if you believe this is in my best interest, you have lost both my vote and my trust. ```

bsder 5y ago
Sadly, Feinstein doesn't give one iota of damn ... unless she is being wiretapped. And, at this point, I'm not sure that she actually even knows what she is doing. However, too many people are on the gravy train that are preventing her from resigning.
- tagoregrtst 5y ago
  Feinstein is the senator I dislike the most. Even after she complained like a baby that the FBI had surveilled her (what did she expect?) it didn't affect her political positions one bit. She cant loose the elections because shes a Dem from CA. She cant get primaried because shes in the hands of the SV
  - bsder 5y ago
    > She cant loose the elections because shes a Dem from CA. She cant get primaried because shes in the hands of the SV It sounds like you need to do some research about California politics. Feinstein is by no means untouchable. And more of her support comes from Hollywood and old media than from SV. However, she does have a core in San Francisco given that's where she wound up as mayor stemming from the Moscone–Milk assassinations. California has jungle primaries so winning the primary isn't enough. In 2018, this meant that the main election was between two Democrats--Feinstein (54.2%) and de León(45.8%). This was actually a pretty solid result given that Feinstein is a strongly entrenched, party supported incumbent. And it was actually the closest election since her first. And 2018 was just the start of the progressive wing of the Democratic party getting started (that was the year that AOC got elected and surprised everybody), so a highly liberal challenger simply wasn't in the cards, yet. She will have a much tougher road in 2024, but I will be highly surprised if she even runs.

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beebmam 5y ago

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

ipnon 5y ago
What violent conspiracy hasn't incorporated encryption? Can you read in plaintext every email that cross the Web? I can't even access HN over HTTP. Encryption is the default for modern communication. That's the rub: it's a mass surveillance bill masquerading as an encryption bill.
- Spivak 5y ago
  The bill isn’t about encryption despite the messaging. It’s about the design of communications systems that are “unwiretappable.”

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mrobot 5y ago

What we need is positive privacy rights that are very well thought out and firm in preventing legislation such as this from even ever surfacing, as what's proposed in this policy should just be illegal in the first place. These privacy rights would go against what both Silicon Valley and NSA/CIA/Pentagon want, so we need a movement to fight it. I don't think i believe anyone with any power (including Silicon Valley big wigs) are actually opposed to any of this garbage. Anyway, I'm sick of just being reactive to this anti-human garbage. People need to get clued in and slay the demons instead of building stuff for them.

dmje 5y ago

I know it's wildly off-topic but can someone please explain to me why there are still sites like this that are clearly well funded and professional that fail to have spent - what - 2-3 designer hours time ($150?!) on a simple mobile stylesheet? They almost definitely get 50%+ mobile traffic. What gives?

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aspenmayer 5y ago
I think they’re hiring, if it’s any consolation. I’m sure that HN staff does actually have work besides moderation. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/7D3drHl-product-engineer https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/7D3d...

ghoward 5y ago

If anyone needs a link to point politicians to, you can use [1]. Suggestions welcome for improvements. [1]: https://everyoneneedsencryption.gavinhoward.com/ https://everyoneneedsencryption.gavinhoward.com/

javajosh 5y ago

We have to give them something for CSAM, or they'll keep coming at free speech in general using CSAM as cover. I strongly recommend considering the invention of a sticky, client-side program that scans all images passing through your network interfaces. It is also allowed to send red flagged images to a jury that will be a first hurdle to doing anything: determining it's really a CSAM matter. I've proposed this before, and got shouted down. Partly because its client side and can be theoretically disabled. But I think it can be made as difficult as black box baseband firmware to undermine. I do not believe the argument that consumers are sophisticated enough to disable this scan, if implemented well. We have demonstrated the ability to force-run processes at every level of abstraction for general compute hardware. Our best hope is to implement something that has a reasonable chance of catching actual CSAM without generating false positives and without being exploited to prosecute people deemed problematic for arbitrary reasons. Otherwise we get what is probably happening now, which is the secretive scanning of all messages, prosecution limited only by the cost of parallel construction.

anaganisk 5y ago
Couldnt it be easily broken by masquerading a jpg as a txt file? Or actual people who pass such images use some kind of masking techniques. I will tell you what, any thing can be broken if it’s on software. DRM is broken by design because it failed to stop shit its only a hurdle to actual users.
- javajosh 5y ago
  That doesn't sound like an argument against my proposal. Or, if it is, it's like arguing against using locks because any lock can be picked. Any counter-measure, even the most invasive and draconian, can be foiled by simply doing your CSAM offline, using photocopiers and the postal service. That would be a big improvement, I'd argue.
  - anaganisk 5y ago
    So whats your big improvement then? Locks are there to prevent random joes from entering your house, no one expects a lock to work against thieves that would be foolish because it never stopped em. Your argument is otherwise, you expect your “lock” to work on culprits. Also your offline scanning tech requires an update to hashes all the time, whats stopping any jury/govt from injecting hashes that aren’t CSAM, expecting governments and as an extension judiciary to operate in good faith is more foolish to assume. Im not even talking about breaking into the scanning software, defeating the scan is as easy as not sending them as image simple.

friendlydog 5y ago

Instead of just getting these shutdown how about an opposing act which puts penalties for lobbyists and politicians who back this kind of thing? I don't want to keep fighting zombie bills like these, because we will eventually miss one.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> penalties for lobbyists and politicians who back this kind of thing You want to make it illegal for people to propose and vote for policies that you don't like? What if they beat you to it and pass a law that stops you from getting your law passed?
- friendlydog 5y ago
  Some parts of government should be immutable, and putting safeguards to ensure constants are constant makes a lot of sense to me.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    The idea that a part of the government could be unchangeable even if 100% of the people in the country oppose it, seems not just dystopian but philosophically absurd. As a compromise, though, how about having some rules about which laws the government is allowed to make, and requiring something like a two-thirds majority to be able to change those rules. Then you could have a rule saying that the government can't make any laws that cause the people to not be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. Actually you're right, maybe that won't be sufficient.
    - friendlydog 5y ago
      Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but the facts on the ground are that the constitution is broken all the time without anyone being punished enough to stop them from doing it again. Unless you outline penalties or protections such as qualified immunity for defending the constitution it becomes meaningless.

tehwebguy 5y ago

It’s not just this specific legislation, there is no reason to give police any additional power and all the reason in the world to dial back the extraordinary power they already have.

boppo1 5y ago

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only way this ends with the preservation of encryption as a standard is a bipartisan fappening-style leak of CEOs, politicians, lawyers, etc. Not just sexual content, but intimate content of any and all kinds: financial records, healthcare visits, everyday texts, etc.

spacexsucks 5y ago
This is the only way.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I'm in agreement, but how sad a commentary on the state of politics and 'the best governance society has developed so far'? All I hear from the people at the top is: Me, me, fucking me! (Would I be any better in a position of power? I don't know, but I'd like to think so).
swinglock 5y ago
They would find a way to misinterpret the situation and double down, to fight the criminals at fault who did this to them.

ryeights 5y ago

Politicians are malignant tumors on free, democratic society. IMO anyone who would choose to run for a political office in today’s society should be banned from ever holding a position of power.

yakorevivan 5y ago

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iopq 5y ago

Only Rand Paul and Ron Wyden voted against FOSTA/SESTA, the legislation passing 97 to 2

OGforces 5y ago

natsup123490 5y ago

If this bill passes, it will only weaken America's position as leader in the Internet space. The world will eventually benefit from that weakening. We will route around America.

grammers 5y ago

Man that's bad. I wish if a bill was off the table once, it can't be simply brought back again and again. It feels like constantly treading water, no wonder people are frustrated with politics.

jmconfuzeus 5y ago

The return of Gestapo.

shmerl 5y ago

Using encryption should be considered a right, this way such kind of bills will become impossible.

totorovirus 5y ago

wow I am just utterly surprised how the politicians in US are trying to pass the bill via CSAM just like the politicians in korea. Korea already has a DNS surveilance on porn related websites because it may contain sexually abusive material that may harm teenagers' mental health (it is called children and teenangers act). They even passed a bill to monitor the videos shared in online chatroom because people may share sexually abusive material via messengers. They have a very strong ethical reason in that they are trying to protect children and teenagers, and it is difficult to overcome that by making a case for privacy protection.

dsign 5y ago

Here is where we are going: https://dsignrandom.tumblr.com/post/675431677522329600/not-so-futuristic-concept-of-a-market-street-each https://dsignrandom.tumblr.com/post/675431677522329600/not-s... I think that these bills will have not only a chilling effect over free speech, but also reduce the overall safety of citizens, both of which are truly bad things. And make no mistake, many countries will follow the lead of USA, UK and Australia in taking these steps. On the plus side, moving free speech outside the moderation of big tech and, by extension, big-government, is a good thing. And that will happen the moment people realize that they are liable for CSAM crimes for posting photos of bread and having a stupid AI flag them, or referring to their cat as "my kid" in a tweet. People with a strong political opinion on bread or otherwise will need to find high-effort platforms to publish those opinions, i.e. magazines, books, and (eventually) face-to-face meetups. My perhaps over-optimistic hope is that this will attenuate the rage-by-tweet phenomenon, we will get back to thinking before publicly expressing something, and people will only get mobilized after informing themselves properly on a subject. Even if this is a "count your blessings" attitude.

jeegsy 5y ago

I'm not sure why a law is needed. These big tech companies do the government's bidding all the time.

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MatekCopatek 5y ago

To start, I absolutely don't think this bill is good, BUT I think there might be potential for some interesting silver lining. Let's say it's passed and big platforms such as FB need to start heavily policing their users because they become responsible for all published content. This level of moderation is nearly impossible to achieve, so they are forced to heavily limit participation (you can only post a limited amount, posts need to be confirmed before becoming public, AI filters auto-reject various topics etc.). Users are pissed and move to platforms with "more freedom", but nothing lasts - as soon as they grow, they all hit those same issues. Because all the responsibility is on the publisher, the only realistic solutions are smaller and more distributed communities. You can self publish your blog or create an invite-only forum/chatroom/Mastodon instance for your friends/family/neighbourhood. Because now everyone is doing this, hosting providers, ISPs and software publishers adapt by improving UX and reducing technical barrier to entry. It's basically a reneissance of oldschool internet. Whaddya say, too optimistic?

bagacrap 5y ago
whatever "self publish your blog" means, but if it's sufficiently easy for non technical users to figure out, no doubt it's a platform that can be subjected to this law. If it's not an easy-to-use platform it will deplatform and disengage the less sophisticated internet users. The old-school internet was mostly a few eccentrics no one paid attention to.
- MatekCopatek 5y ago
  Disagree - you could take the exact registration flow of any existing platform (e.g. Blogger) and adjust it so that instead of creating an account in their database (and consequently on their platform), it provisions a hosting account in your name and installs some blogging software there.

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tomjonesey 5y ago