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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 legislat

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
  "See, we donate to these organizations, we're not that bad, promise!"
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Seems the world isn’t all black and white. It’s not like those companies have “destroy democracy” as their mission.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ideashower 5y ago
  And Mozilla Corporation’s entire business model is built on Google’s financial support. Does that make Mozilla’s (or the ACLU etc.) work inherently suspect or anti-democratic?
  - E2EEd 5y ago
    MZLA is building tbird for profit
  - miketery 5y ago
    Yes it does. One rotten apple spoils the bunch. That's not to say guilt by association, but yes it is suspect.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  None of those companies are destroying democracy, that's needless hyperbole...
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    I disagree. Social media has played a huge part in the radicalization of various groups and allowed anti-democratic views to spread. The companies mentioned here have an outsized part in that because they prioritize engagement at all costs, which pushes people down rabbit holes of increasingly extreme views.
E2EEd 5y ago
E2EE is offered to all users, whether or not they are law-abiding. More precise is to say that E2EE is offered to users who are primarily law-abiding. Your points are well-heard, even by those in the IC. What isn't occurring, is a good-faith discussion on solving the issues faced by law enforcement and the IC related to the growing entropy of E2EE wielded at scale by folks, a large subset of whom are engaging in criminal behavior. I strongly believe that fighting this issue with a hard-line no compromise response will result in an undesirable outcome for your agenda. I am not a fan of kneecapped cybersecurity in consumer endpoints, which is the elephant in the room. It's a compromise borne of the E2EE entropy problem, intentional or not. I don't support unchecked recoverable encryption in any centralized fashion, nor do I support covert backdoors or skeleton keys. Unfortunately, too many folks defend their position from libertarian ideals, a position which does have a technical justification. It just misses the bigger picture - that most folks in govt are just doing their job. A compromise will seek to enable those doing their job correctly while preventing abuses with technological means. Telling the govt "too bad, you can't stop math" will backfire. The law can be used to force tech companies to literally stop doing math at scale.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > What isn't occurring, is a good-faith discussion on solving the issues faced by law enforcement and the IC related to the growing entropy of E2EE wielded at scale by folks What would a "solution" for the IC allow them to do, and what would be the limits on it? Would the IC stop asking to weaken encryption after it was granted? "Meet us halfway" is meaningless if we don't know what halfway is or what the extent is of what you're asking for, and proponents of these bills never give an answer to that question because they don't have an answer to that question. Is "meet us halfway" on CSAM zero CSAM, because I've people advocate for that -- and if that's the position and any time that encryption gets in the way of that we need to compromise, then you are effectively asking to abolish encryption. Is it that there should never be any information that law enforcement can't access -- because if so, you're asking to ban encryption. Others have pointed out (correctly) that law enforcement today has unprecedented tools to monitor civilians and catch criminals, everything from facial recognition (which has largely not been banned across America) to digital dragnets to public social media to cooperation with companies that hoover up tons of PII. We carry devices that allow law enforcement with a warrant to ask cell companies for the name and location of everyone inside of a radius. That is a frankly wild amount of power. You have already been met hecking way more than halfway on the issue of privacy vs law enforcement, and it's just utterly dishonest to claim otherwise. What we're seeing is that on the one issue where law enforcement has less access than they used to have, that's suddenly an existential problem. And my takeaway from that is that what law enforcement is asking for is not to be met halfway, law enforcement is asking to weaken and disrupt literally any tool that makes their job harder in any way at all. Any technology that weakens their level of access to anything is an existential problem to them. It is not Libertarian to ask for end to end encryption, that is a normal, moderate position for people across all political spectrums to take. The characterization of "maybe police shouldn't be able to access everything about me at time, including my location and every single one of my conversations" as a Libertarian view is just so utterly disingenuous and dishonest. So what is a halfway position where people in the government will stop calling to weaken encryption? I do not believe that position exists, and I have never heard anyone try to articulate it using measurable criteria that don't boil down to "we'll constantly balance and use the courts". I have never seen law enforcement as a unified group argue, "you know what, we have too much access here and maybe we should have less, and it's good that this technology makes our job harder." It doesn't happen. There is not a solution to this problem that law enforcement will ever be satisfied with other than complete surveillance of everyone in the United States. And these are the people that whine that privacy advocates are "absolutists." I carry a hecking cell phone already; you have monitoring tools, stop acting like you don't. Stop pretending that an era of unprecedented surveillance at a level that has never before been seen in all of human history is actually super awful and hard for you because you can't also read every single text message I've ever sent across all of time.
kragen 5y ago
> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which means letting criminals and terrorists run free. They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. Free society means limited government, and the only way for the government to be in favor of that is for the government to vote against its own interests. That requires the people in the government to identify more strongly with the people living under the government than with the government itself. This is precarious at the best of times. Why would the governing party want to make it easy to organize dissenting political parties and alternative centers of power? Power might fall into the wrong hands. I know that sounds sarcastic, but try to see it from their perspective, even if you don't agree with it.
- treis 5y ago
  We had a free society and democracy before the internet.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    In theory, but often the level of freeness, and your access to democracy, depended on the color of your skin or your gender. (Which is still the case today, to a great extent, but it was even worse 30, 50, 70, 100, etc. years ago.)
  - pixl97 5y ago
    There were many attempts by the same people to monitor phone and mail communications.
    - Terry_Roll 5y ago
      The international standards do just fine for enabling spying. Take Call Line Identification (CLI) aka Caller ID. Any device plugged into the ptsn phone system which can display caller id has to have v23 dial up modem protocol facilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID#Regional_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID#Regional_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_V.23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_V.23 This means _anyone_ with access to the ptsn can upload malicious firmware to a telephone, ATA gataway or dialup modem if the hardware is designed to allow it, & firmware space permitting! I do find govt legislation somewhat lacking though, for example porn sites now have to have "are you 18 or over", but social media like reddit or twitter does not and regularly on reddit illegal porn (child & animal) is making the front page of reddit before moderators take it down. Social media sites like reddit or twitter are exempt from the 18year old porn checks because the porn content is not the bulk of their content, it covers many things like jokes, darwin awards, Karens having a psychotic episode and other things like that. So would parents want their kids seeing illegal porn or mental health breakdowns on social media sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook/Whatsapp groups because the current legislation allows the "are you 18 or over" checks to not be applied to facebook, reddit, twitter, whatsapp and other social media platforms? I know the flip side argument for illegal content is its supposedly stopping an adult from doing it to a child, but I'm not convinced on that point considering how many parents and siblings are behind child abuse and dont post online, but use fraternal networks like the masons and religious organisations to abuse under the pretence of teaching people life lessons! The religious stance, at least new testament, is to prevent the spread of STD's and to avoid mental health issue when cognitive dissonance sets in during middle age, but Govt's and education needs to tackle this problem to avoid people being exploited through lack of knowledge of the law, because the whole population doesnt even get taught a TLDR of law for life which makes it possible for clever people to exploit less knowledgeable people, which isnt on in my books either.
bitL 5y ago
Maybe those people absolutely understand the implications for free society. What if there was a power transfer on the background, over many years, unnoticed, and the winning group now doesn't want any disruptions coming from encrypted communication in the future?
- IAmGraydon 5y ago
  It’s truly amazing how many people are conspiracy theorists these days.
  - exceptione 5y ago
    I understand your point, but parent did not say it was a deliberate conspiracy. It could also be a dynamic that just happens to push in a certain direction. For example, the push for deregulation that befenits corporates does not require a conspiring sect of CEOs to secretly infect the law making process, but the general thought frame that is pervasive among the boards of those companies will affect their actions and what think tanks they affiliate with. All the separate lobbies, think tanks (which by the way might be just operating under such disguise, but are funded by external state actors), external corporate consultancy agencies on which governments rely on -- all those might create a current that brings down democratic institutions with no one deliberately doing that, except for a few fascistoid nuts perhaps. What is no surprise is that all those corporates and those deep state instutions work to further their own interest. The issue is that democracy has lost control of it, and now they are running wild. Add in corporate media (that are from the same school of thought like those boards of giant corporates) in this mix and you have got a really nasty dynamic, where democracy is just something you need to manage with Public Relations and marketing.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Ending Section 230, incrementally or all in one go, has been increasingly on the minds of politicians (mostly but not exclusively conservative ones) for some time now. There's a lot more to EARN IT than just that, but some of them will vote for anything that increases the liability exposure of anyone hosting anything online.
- judge2020 5y ago
  All section 230 does is make it so that "platforms" can remove posts it doesn't like without needing to assume liability for every other posts. Unless they think Twitter is going to hire a few million employees to screen every post, Twitter and the rest would simply turn off the platform to anyone who isn't verified or doesn't otherwise sign a waiver releasing twitter of that liability (which was possible before CDA, as well, but nobody wanted to introduce that sort of barrier to social media/forums back then).
  - Diesel555 5y ago
    Section 230 is from 1996. For reference myspace launched in 2003. It has been modified since, but not in a way relative to this discussion. Section 230 classifies providers such as Facebook and Twitter as "interactive computer services" and not "information content providers." This protects them from lawsuits based on the content they provide. I'm not arguing that Facebook should be held to the same standard as the person who creates the content. However, when Facebook services misinformation on COVID with negligent moderation or even intentional promotion, or they allow eighty thousand posts by Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)-controlled accounts in two years near an election, reaching 126 million users [1 (Mueller Report)], maybe there needs to be some amendment. Perhaps not completely recategorizing Facebook, but adding some more responsibilities on these major platforms to at least not promote bad information, polarizing content, and information campaigns from foreign governments. When I did some research into how to disincentivize social media companies from spreading misinformation, reforming 230 was the best option I saw. Edit: I posted a more detailed version of this elsewhere on this thread to provide more background. Then I realized I couldn't delete this abridged version. [1] Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
judge2020 5y ago
> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. Democracy only directly benefits the people, not those in power. The only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship in terms of leaders keeping key supporters happy (the people vs. just those that hold office and control the military) is that democracies tend to employ more creative people with society-enhancing goals, thus driving technology forward and maybe even extending our lifetimes (via better healthcare).
splitstud 5y ago
goodpoint 5y ago
> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts Oh, they understand perfectly. Power-hungry people love authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is opposed by democracy. They are the threat.
gotoeleven 5y ago
Its nice to see that the ACLU actually opposes something that stomps on american civil liberties these days!
faangiq 5y ago
It’s because all those orgs are co-opted by tptb. Thoughtcrime is already here, it was welcomed eagerly.
ren_engineer 5y ago
it's almost comical how politicians always use the same tactic for destroying online privacy too - "think of the children!"
belorn 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 original bill was originally pushed because certain republican accounts was banned from certain social media platforms. It is explained pretty well on its Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act#Events_leading_to_EARN_IT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act#Events_leading_to_...). One potential reason why it is still getting pushed is that politicians on both sides of the fence is still afraid of the power that social media have, and they are using the pretext of "protect the children" in order to get bipartisan support and getting some distance to the historical events that lead up to the creation of the bill.
malwarebytess 5y ago
> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. I proffer instead that this outcome isn't a side effect but their ultimate goal.
csomar 5y ago
> the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. I think, what most people are missing, is that Democratic (the free world) governments have lost control of the narrative. It's not that there wasn't corruption before, but people trusted the government more back in the day. Before the immersion of social media, information moved slowly. There wasn't free channels to transfer information (the Media controlled what can get out) and people couldn't take high-quality photos, videos and live stream to their fellow citizens. This changed now. This means the government and politicians can't control the narrative anymore (ie: almost all politicians are corrupt now!). This is doubly worse since young people disproportionately use social media. TV is still watched, but only by seniors. They'll be gone soon and the politicians will have to rule a ruly population. The next decade is going to be quite challenging to Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Freedom of Movements and all freedoms and liberties really. Many of the liberties the West population take for granted are quite expensive; you better be ready for this change.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  This entire comment is the definition of FUD. It's not that complicated: Politicians don't know technology Politicians hear there's this thing that lets bad guys have fully secure conversations that even 3 letter agencies can't crack. Politicians see blocking that as a political win. - All of this nonsense about corruption... you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs that say bad things about them? Or this is the first step to a CPP-esque lockdown on free speech? That's fantasy at best and a disturbing level of paranoia at worst.
  - csomar 5y ago
    Stop trying to explain for Politicians. Ignorance is just as harmful and evil. > This entire comment is the definition of FUD. This would have been true if this was the first bill. But this bill (and variants of it) keep getting proposed again and again. From different and multiple angles. It's not a small political win here they are looking for. > you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs that say bad things about them? Yes. But you need the Technology there first. Once it's there, it's much easier to pass these things. > Or this is the first step to a CPP-esque lockdown on free speech? Yes. It worked for China. So it might work for us. > That's fantasy at best and a disturbing level of paranoia at worst. It's not. The amount of restrictions and surveillance we have today is unprecedented. Things can move fast once the technology is ready and the moment is there to seize.
Diesel555 5y ago
Edit: See thread below, the EARN IT act does not in any way reclassify the designation of social media companies under section 230 or solve the issues mentioned in this post with 230. The change to 230 just provides exceptions for CSAM. However, keep reading if you want background on 230 and why many people are trying to change it. I want to provide some background on section 230 which the EARN IT act proposes to amend. I was against regulating social media companies, then I researched and wrote a paper on misinformation and changed my opinion on whether or not any policy action should be taken. I'm not saying the EARN IT act is correct (Edit: It's not), but here are some excerpts with sources on why I believe Section 230 should be amended in some way. I hope it makes more clear the reasons people want to change section 230. Social media companies currently enjoy protections from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. For reference, Myspace was launched in 2003. Section 230 allows social media companies to be classified as interactive computer services and not information content providers (Gallo, 2021). Due to this designation, social media companies are not responsible for the content they distribute. Even media companies in America are still held responsible for libel or false information designed to incite immediate violence or public harm (FCC, 2021) which social media companies are not. The media is still provided many freedoms guaranteed by our constitution while being held responsible for gross negligence. Social media companies do not adequately moderate the content they promote to their users, allowing members of society to be presented misinformation by domestic and foreign actors resulting in polarization, the propagation of false facts, and the loss of faith in our democratic electoral process. Social media algorithms, motivated by financial gains, promote divisive content and have little incentive to prevent the distribution of false information. This false, divisive information comes from internal actors, such as those who want to discredit climate change and COVID facts. It also comes from external actors, such as Russia, who want to destabilize our democratic systems and influence our policy choices in their best interest. For example, YouTube shared videos containing COVID-19 misinformation 20 million times, generating 71 million reactions in eight months (Gallo, 2021). Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) is a private organization funded by a close confidant of Putin (Bowen, 2021). Eighty thousand posts were made on Facebook by IRA-controlled accounts in two years, reaching 126 million users. The IRA even organized political rallies in the United States through these accounts (Mueller, 2019). Intelligence services have determined that Russia uses its cyber teams to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," as Russia's influence operations demonstrated in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton (Sayler, 2021). I'm not saying that social media companies should be held to the same standard as content creators or the media, or that the EARN IT act is right. I haven't looked at the implications of that. However, the current law is outdated and something needs to change the incentives of social media companies to prevent these externalities (influencing elections, misinformation, etc) from effecting our population. FCC. (2021, January 8). Broadcasting False Information. Federal Communications Commission. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-information https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-info... Gallo, J. A. G., & Cho, C. Y. C. (2021, January). Social Media: Misinformation and Content Moderation Issues for Congress (No. R46662). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662 Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download Sayler, K. M. S., & Harris, L. A. H. (2021, June). Deep Fakes and National Security (No. IF11333). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333
zamalek 5y ago
> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The truly idiotic thing about it is that they aren't really: cryptography knows no jurisdiction, it's just mathematics. They are limiting the power of law abiding citizens to communicate freely, nobody else.
kurthr 5y ago
I agree it's dangerous not only for civil society, but also against other nation states. I have wondered why the TLAs seem enamored of this sort of anti-encryption legislation (since presumably they are the likely only technical enough members to write and promote it). My best guess is not that they "hate freedom" or that they are "compromised agents of a foreign power", but simply that they are fighting the last battle. The older cold war generation has retired, and people in positions of power within the TLAs are simply so consumed by foreign terrorist threats, that they aren't thinking about the fact that if they can read (and forge) these communications, then so can our geopolitical adversaries. Furthermore, the possible disruption of our entire economic (banking) and political system are made possible by such a vulnerability.
noelsusman 5y ago
I'm reminded of when I was told for years that eliminating net neutrality would destroy the Internet as we know it. Then it was eliminated and the Internet is exactly the same as it was before. Point being, I am extremely skeptical that this bill is an existential threat to free society and democracy. Anyway, the text of the bill clearly states that offering encryption services cannot serve as a basis for liability under the new CSAM carveout. I haven't seen critics of the bill explain why that language isn't good enough to protect E2EE services from liability. Most critics just pretend that part of the bill doesn't exist.
marcan_42 5y ago
I agree with your comment, but just to point out something counterintuitive: > privateer (NSO etc) threat actors, E2EE is actually a boon to NSO and friends. It's how they get to deliver their exploits to targets without the service operator being able to inspect them or filter them, or retroactively analyze them to plug the exploits. NSO doesn't have any traffic inspection capability, so their antics rely entirely on exploiting target devices, and E2EE counterintuitively helps in that case. If iMessage weren't E2EE it would be very easy for Apple to implement a heuristic to look for suspicious messages and keep a copy for further analysis, or automatically run them through their codebase in a sandbox and see if it results in any indicators of compromise. But they can't do any of that, and that's how NSO sometimes goes on years exploiting the same iOS bugs before Apple figures them out. With E2EE, you have to rely entirely on endpoint security, and the provider can't help you server-side.
- klabb3 5y ago
  > E2EE is actually a boon to NSO and friends. I think you're right, but I don't think it's due to some first principles contradiction between E2EE and exploits as much as it is largely a historical anomaly that customers have looked to service providers for security. The track record shows pretty clearly that the service provider's interest in customer security only goes as far as not to be reputationally damaging - we've seen plenty of communications companies actively helping authorities to spy on their own customers. > If iMessage weren't E2EE it would be very easy for Apple to implement a heuristic to look for suspicious messages Indeed, it would at the very least be easier, but let's assume Apple did have this capability. The first order of priority would be stopping spam, which is orders of magnitude more common and problematic than targeted exploits. Simply taking a look at the app store kind of shows their ambition level. At best, Apple is going to want to be "more secure than Android", but beyond that.. it's simply not gonna be a priority (and Apple is even one of better ones). > NSO sometimes goes on years exploiting the same iOS bugs before Apple figures them out Yes, but I think this is temporary. Citizen Labs have been shortening this round trip time enormously simply by having analysis or software deployed on likely targets' devices. CrowdStrike and similar security companies operate on a similar model, acting as a counter-surveillance trusted third party. On medium-term time scales, I think such models are more ethical, have a superior incentive structure and, most importantly, will prove to be more effective than the usual half-assed service provider solutions. At least, I hope I'm right.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
It’s bad, but there is still some light. This bill, remember, removes Section 230 protections against civil lawsuits for noncompliance. The solution is fairly easy though. If your messaging app runs somewhere hard to sue (Russia, China), good luck bringing a lawsuit. Even better if it’s decentralized with no clear leader to sue. If anything this may help get people further away from regulated tech companies.
throwaway058527 5y ago
Isnt it true that the "society" has dug its own grave ? Where were the freedom of speech defenders (aclu et al) when the progressives and policians in that spectrum celebrated shutting down opinion by effectively monopolies of information (twitter, FB, google, cc infra) Why is there no common ground? When speech is shut down, no matter the side its on, the net winner is the state. Frankly there is no room for bipartisan support of anti security state.... Until and unless there is recognition of section 230 enabled abuses that are still ongoing. Obviouly 230 should not apply uniformly to every single website, but thats the kind of nuance that is missing from the current debate.
secondaryacct 5y ago
But democracy existed before whatsapp, why cant it exist after ? I mean I agree with what you say it s convenient to anonymously communicate private thought over public telecom fibres, but... I mean... democracy and "freedom" as a Nation citizrns are unrelated to this, completely unrelated.
- indymike 5y ago
  Taking away freedom of speech and freedom of press, just because it's no longer talking to my neighbor on the corner or smashing ink into paper is the issue.
noduerme 5y ago
I'd personally love to see social media shut down tomorrow, by holding twitter and facebook liable as publishers for the content of every post on their platform, and letting them defend in civil litigation every time they re-publish their users' false statements for profit. But that has nothing to do with government censorship, that's pure libertarianism and letting the publisher bear the cost. The entire notion of inching forward a general level of public disapproval for encryption is indeed terrifying. The template for government now is so well-worn, to take a 2/3rds opinion in the dumb populace and get them to go against the other 1/3rd in the name of safety; yet, we see it much more clearly now. It's easier to fight. The platforms that are the biggest targets of this are, unfortunately, extremely compromised already by their failure to regulate their own users. Take that and a dose of populist anger, and it's pretty easy to see how important freedoms will be eroded and ultimately, any kind of private speech will be held as grounds for suspicion, even though that speech has nothing to do with these platforms or this law. Private speech and personal files never belonged on those platforms in the first place, and to me it's hard to believe anyone doing anything illegal at scale would even be using those platforms. What we're concerned with here is how the demolition of their privacy regulations might turn public opinion against those of us who manage our own privacy. The one bright spot is that we all see it coming.
- closeparen 5y ago
  What you are proposing is that the only writers we should hear from are professionals at publishing institutions, who have editors to vet their work and lawyers to defend it. That is certainly a take on what The Discourse should be! Return to the print media era, basically. But it is weird to see this take expressed in the same form it wants to end. Hacker News is social media and YCombinator is surely not going to stand beyond everything everyone posts here, or turn it over to spammers.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    No, not exactly. Unlike in the print age, we all have the ability to set up a home server or distributed servers; we have the ability to reach anyone in the world. But we don't have a natural right to do that or extend our readership through someone else's platform. I can sit here and host whatever I'd like. In the BBS era, you were responsible for people posting illegal stuff on your board, and you were held responsible if your board was full of some bullshit propaganda, and it should still be that way. Zuckerberg should be treated like any asshole sysop who isn't tending his domain. Hacker News does, to a large degree, moderate what people write here. Much more so than any social media platform. That's why it's still a functional platform. You can't just go on here and slander or espouse libelous conspiracy theories. You won't get far. I'm not saying the gov't should regulate it! Not at all. I'm saying the content distribution networks shouldn't be shielded from civil litigation. HN and Facebook and Twitter aren't general carriers. If they simply delivered messages from point A to B, they might not be liable; but the more a service like FB news feed chooses to re-distribute something, the more they should be held liable for content. Simply putting it on top and letting it be downvoted, like HN, is far less nefarious than re-targeting it and repeating it relentlessly to the most vulnerable 15% of dumbasses who'll believe it. One person posting and having it sink isn't a big deal. But re-targeting that post to others makes you a re-poster. They aren't the postal service. They aren't neutral. Re-posting lies has monetary, reputational and social costs. Facebook profits directly from massively re-posting lies, but bears none of the cost. All I'm saying is that no one in a position to determine what's re-posted or not should be allowed to profit from spreading disinformation with one hand while externalizing those costs onto society, without a neutral arbitration willing to reassess the cost to individuals they harmed. [edit] The current system can't support free speech, because shielding the re-printers of false speech makes it impossible to disentangle truth from propaganda; and in an asymmetrical field, propaganda always wins. Letting the courts sort it out and putting the social media networks on notice that they were responsible for veracity would solve this silly debate over whether "free speech" is being quashed on private networks, and also, encourage better forms of debate that conformed to certain standards of logic. And if you don't want to conform to any kind of logic, you can always set up your own server.
netcan 5y ago
I think on one side you have security. This means law enforcement, espionage and the increasingly relevant civil security industry. They have pretty straightforward "pro" interests. You also have child protection advocates. They, perhaps rightly, are focused on their own agenda, not the greater picture. It's "not their job" to worry about freedom of speech and association. This side, like any scrutinized company or government department insisting that "it's a resource thing." IE, their doing all they can with what they've got. Doing better requires something external. More resources, more power, etc. They deliver estimates of how many more children can be saved if only X. On the other side is more vague. Esoteric digital freedom advocates. Abstract, ideological general freedom advocates. The concentrated, directly interested parties are the social media companies themselves. So first, social media companies do not want to be stuck in a debate where it's them vs child advocates. They don't want to make esoteric freedom arguments that they don't believe in anyway, and use these to counter child protection arguments. Second, regulation like this is often beneficial to incumbents. The DMCA, for example. Large incumbents can influence details of legislation, enough that they can at least live with the legislation. It also makes it harder to disrupt them from the outside. Under DMCA, record companies and film studios got what they wanted & social media companies got what they wanted.
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sandworm101 5y ago
>> by making it legally risky for large social media and platform companies to offer end-to-end encryption I'm converted. I now totally support this legislation. Lack of secure encryption will bring down all the large social media companies. It happened to Blackberry during the London riots a decade ago. The kids quickly realized that someone associated with the police was reading their texts. From that point, Blackberry was doomed. Also Skype. So let the FBI have a free hand inside facebook. Let teachers inspect the social media posts of their students. Let cops track the location tags of clandestine highschool parties. Every teenager will dump facebook, creating huge new markets for other services. Facebook will be MySpace within the decade.
- eximius 5y ago
  ... you realize it doesnt specify companies by name. If it is legally risky for Facebook, it will be legally risky for any replacement services.

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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
"See, we donate to these organizations, we're not that bad, promise!"
wbsss4412 5y ago
Seems the world isn’t all black and white. It’s not like those companies have “destroy democracy” as their mission.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ideashower 5y ago
And Mozilla Corporation’s entire business model is built on Google’s financial support. Does that make Mozilla’s (or the ACLU etc.) work inherently suspect or anti-democratic?
- E2EEd 5y ago
  MZLA is building tbird for profit
- miketery 5y ago
  Yes it does. One rotten apple spoils the bunch. That's not to say guilt by association, but yes it is suspect.
TameAntelope 5y ago
None of those companies are destroying democracy, that's needless hyperbole...
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I disagree. Social media has played a huge part in the radicalization of various groups and allowed anti-democratic views to spread. The companies mentioned here have an outsized part in that because they prioritize engagement at all costs, which pushes people down rabbit holes of increasingly extreme views.

E2EEd 5y ago

E2EE is offered to all users, whether or not they are law-abiding. More precise is to say that E2EE is offered to users who are primarily law-abiding. Your points are well-heard, even by those in the IC. What isn't occurring, is a good-faith discussion on solving the issues faced by law enforcement and the IC related to the growing entropy of E2EE wielded at scale by folks, a large subset of whom are engaging in criminal behavior. I strongly believe that fighting this issue with a hard-line no compromise response will result in an undesirable outcome for your agenda. I am not a fan of kneecapped cybersecurity in consumer endpoints, which is the elephant in the room. It's a compromise borne of the E2EE entropy problem, intentional or not. I don't support unchecked recoverable encryption in any centralized fashion, nor do I support covert backdoors or skeleton keys. Unfortunately, too many folks defend their position from libertarian ideals, a position which does have a technical justification. It just misses the bigger picture - that most folks in govt are just doing their job. A compromise will seek to enable those doing their job correctly while preventing abuses with technological means. Telling the govt "too bad, you can't stop math" will backfire. The law can be used to force tech companies to literally stop doing math at scale.

danShumway 5y ago
> What isn't occurring, is a good-faith discussion on solving the issues faced by law enforcement and the IC related to the growing entropy of E2EE wielded at scale by folks What would a "solution" for the IC allow them to do, and what would be the limits on it? Would the IC stop asking to weaken encryption after it was granted? "Meet us halfway" is meaningless if we don't know what halfway is or what the extent is of what you're asking for, and proponents of these bills never give an answer to that question because they don't have an answer to that question. Is "meet us halfway" on CSAM zero CSAM, because I've people advocate for that -- and if that's the position and any time that encryption gets in the way of that we need to compromise, then you are effectively asking to abolish encryption. Is it that there should never be any information that law enforcement can't access -- because if so, you're asking to ban encryption. Others have pointed out (correctly) that law enforcement today has unprecedented tools to monitor civilians and catch criminals, everything from facial recognition (which has largely not been banned across America) to digital dragnets to public social media to cooperation with companies that hoover up tons of PII. We carry devices that allow law enforcement with a warrant to ask cell companies for the name and location of everyone inside of a radius. That is a frankly wild amount of power. You have already been met hecking way more than halfway on the issue of privacy vs law enforcement, and it's just utterly dishonest to claim otherwise. What we're seeing is that on the one issue where law enforcement has less access than they used to have, that's suddenly an existential problem. And my takeaway from that is that what law enforcement is asking for is not to be met halfway, law enforcement is asking to weaken and disrupt literally any tool that makes their job harder in any way at all. Any technology that weakens their level of access to anything is an existential problem to them. It is not Libertarian to ask for end to end encryption, that is a normal, moderate position for people across all political spectrums to take. The characterization of "maybe police shouldn't be able to access everything about me at time, including my location and every single one of my conversations" as a Libertarian view is just so utterly disingenuous and dishonest. So what is a halfway position where people in the government will stop calling to weaken encryption? I do not believe that position exists, and I have never heard anyone try to articulate it using measurable criteria that don't boil down to "we'll constantly balance and use the courts". I have never seen law enforcement as a unified group argue, "you know what, we have too much access here and maybe we should have less, and it's good that this technology makes our job harder." It doesn't happen. There is not a solution to this problem that law enforcement will ever be satisfied with other than complete surveillance of everyone in the United States. And these are the people that whine that privacy advocates are "absolutists." I carry a hecking cell phone already; you have monitoring tools, stop acting like you don't. Stop pretending that an era of unprecedented surveillance at a level that has never before been seen in all of human history is actually super awful and hard for you because you can't also read every single text message I've ever sent across all of time.

kragen 5y ago

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which means letting criminals and terrorists run free. They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. Free society means limited government, and the only way for the government to be in favor of that is for the government to vote against its own interests. That requires the people in the government to identify more strongly with the people living under the government than with the government itself. This is precarious at the best of times. Why would the governing party want to make it easy to organize dissenting political parties and alternative centers of power? Power might fall into the wrong hands. I know that sounds sarcastic, but try to see it from their perspective, even if you don't agree with it.

treis 5y ago
We had a free society and democracy before the internet.
- kelnos 5y ago
  In theory, but often the level of freeness, and your access to democracy, depended on the color of your skin or your gender. (Which is still the case today, to a great extent, but it was even worse 30, 50, 70, 100, etc. years ago.)
- pixl97 5y ago
  There were many attempts by the same people to monitor phone and mail communications.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    The international standards do just fine for enabling spying. Take Call Line Identification (CLI) aka Caller ID. Any device plugged into the ptsn phone system which can display caller id has to have v23 dial up modem protocol facilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID#Regional_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID#Regional_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_V.23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_V.23 This means _anyone_ with access to the ptsn can upload malicious firmware to a telephone, ATA gataway or dialup modem if the hardware is designed to allow it, & firmware space permitting! I do find govt legislation somewhat lacking though, for example porn sites now have to have "are you 18 or over", but social media like reddit or twitter does not and regularly on reddit illegal porn (child & animal) is making the front page of reddit before moderators take it down. Social media sites like reddit or twitter are exempt from the 18year old porn checks because the porn content is not the bulk of their content, it covers many things like jokes, darwin awards, Karens having a psychotic episode and other things like that. So would parents want their kids seeing illegal porn or mental health breakdowns on social media sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook/Whatsapp groups because the current legislation allows the "are you 18 or over" checks to not be applied to facebook, reddit, twitter, whatsapp and other social media platforms? I know the flip side argument for illegal content is its supposedly stopping an adult from doing it to a child, but I'm not convinced on that point considering how many parents and siblings are behind child abuse and dont post online, but use fraternal networks like the masons and religious organisations to abuse under the pretence of teaching people life lessons! The religious stance, at least new testament, is to prevent the spread of STD's and to avoid mental health issue when cognitive dissonance sets in during middle age, but Govt's and education needs to tackle this problem to avoid people being exploited through lack of knowledge of the law, because the whole population doesnt even get taught a TLDR of law for life which makes it possible for clever people to exploit less knowledgeable people, which isnt on in my books either.

bitL 5y ago

Maybe those people absolutely understand the implications for free society. What if there was a power transfer on the background, over many years, unnoticed, and the winning group now doesn't want any disruptions coming from encrypted communication in the future?

IAmGraydon 5y ago
It’s truly amazing how many people are conspiracy theorists these days.
- exceptione 5y ago
  I understand your point, but parent did not say it was a deliberate conspiracy. It could also be a dynamic that just happens to push in a certain direction. For example, the push for deregulation that befenits corporates does not require a conspiring sect of CEOs to secretly infect the law making process, but the general thought frame that is pervasive among the boards of those companies will affect their actions and what think tanks they affiliate with. All the separate lobbies, think tanks (which by the way might be just operating under such disguise, but are funded by external state actors), external corporate consultancy agencies on which governments rely on -- all those might create a current that brings down democratic institutions with no one deliberately doing that, except for a few fascistoid nuts perhaps. What is no surprise is that all those corporates and those deep state instutions work to further their own interest. The issue is that democracy has lost control of it, and now they are running wild. Add in corporate media (that are from the same school of thought like those boards of giant corporates) in this mix and you have got a really nasty dynamic, where democracy is just something you need to manage with Public Relations and marketing.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Ending Section 230, incrementally or all in one go, has been increasingly on the minds of politicians (mostly but not exclusively conservative ones) for some time now. There's a lot more to EARN IT than just that, but some of them will vote for anything that increases the liability exposure of anyone hosting anything online.

judge2020 5y ago
All section 230 does is make it so that "platforms" can remove posts it doesn't like without needing to assume liability for every other posts. Unless they think Twitter is going to hire a few million employees to screen every post, Twitter and the rest would simply turn off the platform to anyone who isn't verified or doesn't otherwise sign a waiver releasing twitter of that liability (which was possible before CDA, as well, but nobody wanted to introduce that sort of barrier to social media/forums back then).
- Diesel555 5y ago
  Section 230 is from 1996. For reference myspace launched in 2003. It has been modified since, but not in a way relative to this discussion. Section 230 classifies providers such as Facebook and Twitter as "interactive computer services" and not "information content providers." This protects them from lawsuits based on the content they provide. I'm not arguing that Facebook should be held to the same standard as the person who creates the content. However, when Facebook services misinformation on COVID with negligent moderation or even intentional promotion, or they allow eighty thousand posts by Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)-controlled accounts in two years near an election, reaching 126 million users [1 (Mueller Report)], maybe there needs to be some amendment. Perhaps not completely recategorizing Facebook, but adding some more responsibilities on these major platforms to at least not promote bad information, polarizing content, and information campaigns from foreign governments. When I did some research into how to disincentivize social media companies from spreading misinformation, reforming 230 was the best option I saw. Edit: I posted a more detailed version of this elsewhere on this thread to provide more background. Then I realized I couldn't delete this abridged version. [1] Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download

judge2020 5y ago

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. Democracy only directly benefits the people, not those in power. The only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship in terms of leaders keeping key supporters happy (the people vs. just those that hold office and control the military) is that democracies tend to employ more creative people with society-enhancing goals, thus driving technology forward and maybe even extending our lifetimes (via better healthcare).

splitstud 5y ago

goodpoint 5y ago

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts Oh, they understand perfectly. Power-hungry people love authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is opposed by democracy. They are the threat.

gotoeleven 5y ago

Its nice to see that the ACLU actually opposes something that stomps on american civil liberties these days!

faangiq 5y ago

It’s because all those orgs are co-opted by tptb. Thoughtcrime is already here, it was welcomed eagerly.

ren_engineer 5y ago

it's almost comical how politicians always use the same tactic for destroying online privacy too - "think of the children!"

belorn 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 original bill was originally pushed because certain republican accounts was banned from certain social media platforms. It is explained pretty well on its Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act#Events_leading_to_EARN_IT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act#Events_leading_to_...). One potential reason why it is still getting pushed is that politicians on both sides of the fence is still afraid of the power that social media have, and they are using the pretext of "protect the children" in order to get bipartisan support and getting some distance to the historical events that lead up to the creation of the bill.

malwarebytess 5y ago

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. I proffer instead that this outcome isn't a side effect but their ultimate goal.

csomar 5y ago

> the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. I think, what most people are missing, is that Democratic (the free world) governments have lost control of the narrative. It's not that there wasn't corruption before, but people trusted the government more back in the day. Before the immersion of social media, information moved slowly. There wasn't free channels to transfer information (the Media controlled what can get out) and people couldn't take high-quality photos, videos and live stream to their fellow citizens. This changed now. This means the government and politicians can't control the narrative anymore (ie: almost all politicians are corrupt now!). This is doubly worse since young people disproportionately use social media. TV is still watched, but only by seniors. They'll be gone soon and the politicians will have to rule a ruly population. The next decade is going to be quite challenging to Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Freedom of Movements and all freedoms and liberties really. Many of the liberties the West population take for granted are quite expensive; you better be ready for this change.

BoorishBears 5y ago
This entire comment is the definition of FUD. It's not that complicated: Politicians don't know technology Politicians hear there's this thing that lets bad guys have fully secure conversations that even 3 letter agencies can't crack. Politicians see blocking that as a political win. - All of this nonsense about corruption... you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs that say bad things about them? Or this is the first step to a CPP-esque lockdown on free speech? That's fantasy at best and a disturbing level of paranoia at worst.
- csomar 5y ago
  Stop trying to explain for Politicians. Ignorance is just as harmful and evil. > This entire comment is the definition of FUD. This would have been true if this was the first bill. But this bill (and variants of it) keep getting proposed again and again. From different and multiple angles. It's not a small political win here they are looking for. > you think politicians are successfully going to get social media giants to intercept DMs that say bad things about them? Yes. But you need the Technology there first. Once it's there, it's much easier to pass these things. > Or this is the first step to a CPP-esque lockdown on free speech? Yes. It worked for China. So it might work for us. > That's fantasy at best and a disturbing level of paranoia at worst. It's not. The amount of restrictions and surveillance we have today is unprecedented. Things can move fast once the technology is ready and the moment is there to seize.

Diesel555 5y ago

Edit: See thread below, the EARN IT act does not in any way reclassify the designation of social media companies under section 230 or solve the issues mentioned in this post with 230. The change to 230 just provides exceptions for CSAM. However, keep reading if you want background on 230 and why many people are trying to change it. I want to provide some background on section 230 which the EARN IT act proposes to amend. I was against regulating social media companies, then I researched and wrote a paper on misinformation and changed my opinion on whether or not any policy action should be taken. I'm not saying the EARN IT act is correct (Edit: It's not), but here are some excerpts with sources on why I believe Section 230 should be amended in some way. I hope it makes more clear the reasons people want to change section 230. Social media companies currently enjoy protections from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. For reference, Myspace was launched in 2003. Section 230 allows social media companies to be classified as interactive computer services and not information content providers (Gallo, 2021). Due to this designation, social media companies are not responsible for the content they distribute. Even media companies in America are still held responsible for libel or false information designed to incite immediate violence or public harm (FCC, 2021) which social media companies are not. The media is still provided many freedoms guaranteed by our constitution while being held responsible for gross negligence. Social media companies do not adequately moderate the content they promote to their users, allowing members of society to be presented misinformation by domestic and foreign actors resulting in polarization, the propagation of false facts, and the loss of faith in our democratic electoral process. Social media algorithms, motivated by financial gains, promote divisive content and have little incentive to prevent the distribution of false information. This false, divisive information comes from internal actors, such as those who want to discredit climate change and COVID facts. It also comes from external actors, such as Russia, who want to destabilize our democratic systems and influence our policy choices in their best interest. For example, YouTube shared videos containing COVID-19 misinformation 20 million times, generating 71 million reactions in eight months (Gallo, 2021). Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) is a private organization funded by a close confidant of Putin (Bowen, 2021). Eighty thousand posts were made on Facebook by IRA-controlled accounts in two years, reaching 126 million users. The IRA even organized political rallies in the United States through these accounts (Mueller, 2019). Intelligence services have determined that Russia uses its cyber teams to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," as Russia's influence operations demonstrated in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton (Sayler, 2021). I'm not saying that social media companies should be held to the same standard as content creators or the media, or that the EARN IT act is right. I haven't looked at the implications of that. However, the current law is outdated and something needs to change the incentives of social media companies to prevent these externalities (influencing elections, misinformation, etc) from effecting our population. FCC. (2021, January 8). Broadcasting False Information. Federal Communications Commission. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-information https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-info... Gallo, J. A. G., & Cho, C. Y. C. (2021, January). Social Media: Misinformation and Content Moderation Issues for Congress (No. R46662). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662 Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download Sayler, K. M. S., & Harris, L. A. H. (2021, June). Deep Fakes and National Security (No. IF11333). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333

zamalek 5y ago

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The truly idiotic thing about it is that they aren't really: cryptography knows no jurisdiction, it's just mathematics. They are limiting the power of law abiding citizens to communicate freely, nobody else.

kurthr 5y ago

I agree it's dangerous not only for civil society, but also against other nation states. I have wondered why the TLAs seem enamored of this sort of anti-encryption legislation (since presumably they are the likely only technical enough members to write and promote it). My best guess is not that they "hate freedom" or that they are "compromised agents of a foreign power", but simply that they are fighting the last battle. The older cold war generation has retired, and people in positions of power within the TLAs are simply so consumed by foreign terrorist threats, that they aren't thinking about the fact that if they can read (and forge) these communications, then so can our geopolitical adversaries. Furthermore, the possible disruption of our entire economic (banking) and political system are made possible by such a vulnerability.

noelsusman 5y ago

I'm reminded of when I was told for years that eliminating net neutrality would destroy the Internet as we know it. Then it was eliminated and the Internet is exactly the same as it was before. Point being, I am extremely skeptical that this bill is an existential threat to free society and democracy. Anyway, the text of the bill clearly states that offering encryption services cannot serve as a basis for liability under the new CSAM carveout. I haven't seen critics of the bill explain why that language isn't good enough to protect E2EE services from liability. Most critics just pretend that part of the bill doesn't exist.

marcan_42 5y ago

I agree with your comment, but just to point out something counterintuitive: > privateer (NSO etc) threat actors, E2EE is actually a boon to NSO and friends. It's how they get to deliver their exploits to targets without the service operator being able to inspect them or filter them, or retroactively analyze them to plug the exploits. NSO doesn't have any traffic inspection capability, so their antics rely entirely on exploiting target devices, and E2EE counterintuitively helps in that case. If iMessage weren't E2EE it would be very easy for Apple to implement a heuristic to look for suspicious messages and keep a copy for further analysis, or automatically run them through their codebase in a sandbox and see if it results in any indicators of compromise. But they can't do any of that, and that's how NSO sometimes goes on years exploiting the same iOS bugs before Apple figures them out. With E2EE, you have to rely entirely on endpoint security, and the provider can't help you server-side.

klabb3 5y ago
> E2EE is actually a boon to NSO and friends. I think you're right, but I don't think it's due to some first principles contradiction between E2EE and exploits as much as it is largely a historical anomaly that customers have looked to service providers for security. The track record shows pretty clearly that the service provider's interest in customer security only goes as far as not to be reputationally damaging - we've seen plenty of communications companies actively helping authorities to spy on their own customers. > If iMessage weren't E2EE it would be very easy for Apple to implement a heuristic to look for suspicious messages Indeed, it would at the very least be easier, but let's assume Apple did have this capability. The first order of priority would be stopping spam, which is orders of magnitude more common and problematic than targeted exploits. Simply taking a look at the app store kind of shows their ambition level. At best, Apple is going to want to be "more secure than Android", but beyond that.. it's simply not gonna be a priority (and Apple is even one of better ones). > NSO sometimes goes on years exploiting the same iOS bugs before Apple figures them out Yes, but I think this is temporary. Citizen Labs have been shortening this round trip time enormously simply by having analysis or software deployed on likely targets' devices. CrowdStrike and similar security companies operate on a similar model, acting as a counter-surveillance trusted third party. On medium-term time scales, I think such models are more ethical, have a superior incentive structure and, most importantly, will prove to be more effective than the usual half-assed service provider solutions. At least, I hope I'm right.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

It’s bad, but there is still some light. This bill, remember, removes Section 230 protections against civil lawsuits for noncompliance. The solution is fairly easy though. If your messaging app runs somewhere hard to sue (Russia, China), good luck bringing a lawsuit. Even better if it’s decentralized with no clear leader to sue. If anything this may help get people further away from regulated tech companies.

throwaway058527 5y ago

Isnt it true that the "society" has dug its own grave ? Where were the freedom of speech defenders (aclu et al) when the progressives and policians in that spectrum celebrated shutting down opinion by effectively monopolies of information (twitter, FB, google, cc infra) Why is there no common ground? When speech is shut down, no matter the side its on, the net winner is the state. Frankly there is no room for bipartisan support of anti security state.... Until and unless there is recognition of section 230 enabled abuses that are still ongoing. Obviouly 230 should not apply uniformly to every single website, but thats the kind of nuance that is missing from the current debate.

secondaryacct 5y ago

But democracy existed before whatsapp, why cant it exist after ? I mean I agree with what you say it s convenient to anonymously communicate private thought over public telecom fibres, but... I mean... democracy and "freedom" as a Nation citizrns are unrelated to this, completely unrelated.

indymike 5y ago
Taking away freedom of speech and freedom of press, just because it's no longer talking to my neighbor on the corner or smashing ink into paper is the issue.

noduerme 5y ago

I'd personally love to see social media shut down tomorrow, by holding twitter and facebook liable as publishers for the content of every post on their platform, and letting them defend in civil litigation every time they re-publish their users' false statements for profit. But that has nothing to do with government censorship, that's pure libertarianism and letting the publisher bear the cost. The entire notion of inching forward a general level of public disapproval for encryption is indeed terrifying. The template for government now is so well-worn, to take a 2/3rds opinion in the dumb populace and get them to go against the other 1/3rd in the name of safety; yet, we see it much more clearly now. It's easier to fight. The platforms that are the biggest targets of this are, unfortunately, extremely compromised already by their failure to regulate their own users. Take that and a dose of populist anger, and it's pretty easy to see how important freedoms will be eroded and ultimately, any kind of private speech will be held as grounds for suspicion, even though that speech has nothing to do with these platforms or this law. Private speech and personal files never belonged on those platforms in the first place, and to me it's hard to believe anyone doing anything illegal at scale would even be using those platforms. What we're concerned with here is how the demolition of their privacy regulations might turn public opinion against those of us who manage our own privacy. The one bright spot is that we all see it coming.

closeparen 5y ago
What you are proposing is that the only writers we should hear from are professionals at publishing institutions, who have editors to vet their work and lawyers to defend it. That is certainly a take on what The Discourse should be! Return to the print media era, basically. But it is weird to see this take expressed in the same form it wants to end. Hacker News is social media and YCombinator is surely not going to stand beyond everything everyone posts here, or turn it over to spammers.
- noduerme 5y ago
  No, not exactly. Unlike in the print age, we all have the ability to set up a home server or distributed servers; we have the ability to reach anyone in the world. But we don't have a natural right to do that or extend our readership through someone else's platform. I can sit here and host whatever I'd like. In the BBS era, you were responsible for people posting illegal stuff on your board, and you were held responsible if your board was full of some bullshit propaganda, and it should still be that way. Zuckerberg should be treated like any asshole sysop who isn't tending his domain. Hacker News does, to a large degree, moderate what people write here. Much more so than any social media platform. That's why it's still a functional platform. You can't just go on here and slander or espouse libelous conspiracy theories. You won't get far. I'm not saying the gov't should regulate it! Not at all. I'm saying the content distribution networks shouldn't be shielded from civil litigation. HN and Facebook and Twitter aren't general carriers. If they simply delivered messages from point A to B, they might not be liable; but the more a service like FB news feed chooses to re-distribute something, the more they should be held liable for content. Simply putting it on top and letting it be downvoted, like HN, is far less nefarious than re-targeting it and repeating it relentlessly to the most vulnerable 15% of dumbasses who'll believe it. One person posting and having it sink isn't a big deal. But re-targeting that post to others makes you a re-poster. They aren't the postal service. They aren't neutral. Re-posting lies has monetary, reputational and social costs. Facebook profits directly from massively re-posting lies, but bears none of the cost. All I'm saying is that no one in a position to determine what's re-posted or not should be allowed to profit from spreading disinformation with one hand while externalizing those costs onto society, without a neutral arbitration willing to reassess the cost to individuals they harmed. [edit] The current system can't support free speech, because shielding the re-printers of false speech makes it impossible to disentangle truth from propaganda; and in an asymmetrical field, propaganda always wins. Letting the courts sort it out and putting the social media networks on notice that they were responsible for veracity would solve this silly debate over whether "free speech" is being quashed on private networks, and also, encourage better forms of debate that conformed to certain standards of logic. And if you don't want to conform to any kind of logic, you can always set up your own server.

netcan 5y ago

I think on one side you have security. This means law enforcement, espionage and the increasingly relevant civil security industry. They have pretty straightforward "pro" interests. You also have child protection advocates. They, perhaps rightly, are focused on their own agenda, not the greater picture. It's "not their job" to worry about freedom of speech and association. This side, like any scrutinized company or government department insisting that "it's a resource thing." IE, their doing all they can with what they've got. Doing better requires something external. More resources, more power, etc. They deliver estimates of how many more children can be saved if only X. On the other side is more vague. Esoteric digital freedom advocates. Abstract, ideological general freedom advocates. The concentrated, directly interested parties are the social media companies themselves. So first, social media companies do not want to be stuck in a debate where it's them vs child advocates. They don't want to make esoteric freedom arguments that they don't believe in anyway, and use these to counter child protection arguments. Second, regulation like this is often beneficial to incumbents. The DMCA, for example. Large incumbents can influence details of legislation, enough that they can at least live with the legislation. It also makes it harder to disrupt them from the outside. Under DMCA, record companies and film studios got what they wanted & social media companies got what they wanted.

deleted 5y ago

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sandworm101 5y ago

>> by making it legally risky for large social media and platform companies to offer end-to-end encryption I'm converted. I now totally support this legislation. Lack of secure encryption will bring down all the large social media companies. It happened to Blackberry during the London riots a decade ago. The kids quickly realized that someone associated with the police was reading their texts. From that point, Blackberry was doomed. Also Skype. So let the FBI have a free hand inside facebook. Let teachers inspect the social media posts of their students. Let cops track the location tags of clandestine highschool parties. Every teenager will dump facebook, creating huge new markets for other services. Facebook will be MySpace within the decade.

eximius 5y ago
... you realize it doesnt specify companies by name. If it is legally risky for Facebook, it will be legally risky for any replacement services.