US folks who are interested in writing their Senators can find information at https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?OrderBy%253Dstate%2526Sort%25

US folks who are interested in writing their Senators can find information at https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?OrderBy%253Dstate%2526Sort%253DASC https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?OrderBy... FWIW, I sent the email below (largely cribbed from the EFF). Dear : I am a constituent. I urge you to oppose the EARN IT act, S.3538. It does not strike a reasonable balance between fighting crimes and the rights of users to privacy and encryption. The bill empowers every state or territory to create sweeping new Internet regulations, by stripping away the legal protections for websites and apps in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The states will be allowed to pass whatever law they want to hold private companies liable, as long as they somehow relate their new rules to online child abuse. The bill’s sponsors have stated that EARN IT will pressure Internet companies to do widespread scanning of user messages and photos. This scanning is incompatible with strong encryption. Consequently, the act allows states to pass laws that will punish companies when they deploy end-to-end encryption, or offer other encrypted services. This includes messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage, as well as web hosts like Amazon Web Services. The sponsors have falsely claimed that the act would protect children. But abusive images are already highly illegal under federal law. Any Internet platforms that knows about child sexual abuse material being distributed or received are required to take action on it, and can be severely prosecuted if they do not. EARN IT would lead to penalties for people and companies that use encryption. The harm done by this will fall on vulnerable people. Once we allow encryption to be compromised in order to scan for one thing, authoritarian regimes will demand the same capabilities to track information shared by activists and journalists. Another example is that people subject to domestic abuse, including children, won’t have secure channels of communication to report and reach out for trusted help. Once again, I urge you to oppose the EARN IT act. Thank you,