The anti-privacy EARN IT Act could change the internet as we know it | Hacker News Reader

The anti-privacy EARN IT Act could change the internet as we know it

mashable.com

250 pointsjoeyespo41 comments

Here in the UK similar laws were referred to as a Snoopers Charter. This was good PR against them as it was catchy and unattractive. Don't call these acts by their "name" (which is just someone's bullshit acronym to make it sound harmless). Call it "the tax on freedom" or "government in your bedroom" law. That's how you get the 99% to decide they don't like it.

What similarities do you see between EARN IT and IPA?

"...the newly amended version of the bill essentially gives state lawmakers the ability to regulate the internet, according to Joe Mullin, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who broke down the censorship risks posed by the measure should it become law.

"All 50 states will be able to write new Internet rules that online platforms and websites will have to follow,""

I’m 99% sure that that is already the case (and has been).

It is a matter of enforcibility. Alabama can try to ban say women with exposed ankles and you as an operator of a website in California can tell the DA in a notorized letter to go fuck themselves because they lack jurisdiction.

There should be a wider protest to sink this nonsense.

previous discussions https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22earn%20it%20act%22

Glad you posted this but...

This is one of those multi-day, multi-faceted topics that need us to have many conversations until it's stopped.

Recall the SOPA & PIPA protests of last decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

There were more than a few discussions here

HN doesn't really need constant repeat of political promotion. It's been discussed, if there's nothing new happening, it probably doesn't belong on HN.

Requiring everyone to discuss this every few years seems like a surefire strategy to exhaust people. It normalizes the idea, if nothing else.

So the question is how do we get it so that supporting ending effective encryption is a political third rail that ends political careers? Because that seems like the only way to get this to stop coming up until it eventually passes.

Feinstein seems to be a perpetual supporter of this kind of thing. But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places.

The full list of PIPA supporters according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Members_of_the_U.S._Co...): Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Barbara Boxer (D-CA) Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Thad Cochran (R-MS) Chris Coons (D-DE) Bob Corker (R-TN) Dick Durbin (D-IL) Mike Enzi (R-WY) Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Al Franken (D-MN) Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Withdrawn 1/18/12[11] Kay Hagan (D-NC) Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Tim Johnson (D-SD) Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Herb Kohl (D-WI) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) John McCain (R-AZ) Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Bill Nelson (D-FL) Jim Risch (R-ID) Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) Tom Udall (D-NM) Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

"Requiring everyone to discuss this every few years seems like a surefire strategy to exhaust people"

The older generation may get exhausted, but fortunately there's Eternal September at play, where newer generations constantly arrive, start to become politically aware, and have fresh energy.

In order to continue to effect change we need to continually educate and re-educate people on what's going on and why.

"Feinstein seems to be a perpetual supporter of this kind of thing. But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places."

Yeah, I really don't get California Democrats' unwavering support for Feinstein.. but then again, they've elected quite a few Republican governors as well, which I also don't understand.

On the other hand, contrary to popular belief, California is not an overwhelmingly Democratic state... there are a fair number of Republicans in office and even when Republicans lose they often manage to get 40% or more of the vote... not the 0% or 10% that's probably in the popular imagination of what California is like.

It’s a pretty bipartisan list, I’m more surprised because CA has a large tech industry which could be hurt by loss of trust in US tech at home and abroad.

This is the first time I've heard anyone mention Eternal September in a positive sense.

Congratulations on finding the silver lining!

> But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places.

Never underestimate the power of the national party to protect seniority by supporting those campaigns. Seniority brings with it more power on committees.

Al Franken got cancelled so that must be an old list. After the whole FISA/Steel Report/FBI affair we are now supposed to trust the government with our secrets?

It is an old list, PIPA is one of the earlier attempts at this.

The thing is, how many of those politicians receive throwbacks from industry to support this vs actually care about and believe in these laws?

Addressing rampant corporate government bribery(lobbying) would go a long way to preventing these kind of laws from passing.

On a more immediately achievable and realistic level, I think the idea really needs to drilled down into the general public that encryption is your computer and phone's equivalent of a 'front door lock'. I know this is simplistic and not necessarily 100% accurate, but it might as well be as important as one these days for any personal information and these kinds of simplistic, easily understandable metaphors tend to work a lot better than drilling over the details as to why encryption matters.

You can also use "comments>N" and "points>N" to narrow down to the major threads, a la https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Thanks @dang

its a disaster in the making. it absolutely needs to be stopped

There are so many awful things about this bill that its hard to know where to begin. What makes it especially ridiculous is that it does nothing to prevent people with even basic technical knowledge from sending encrypted communications. At the end of the day, encryption is simply math. You can't outlaw math.

Just please go read the latest versions of the bill people

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/339...

A ton of companies stand to lose by this bill so it may be wise to adopt some skepticism towards all the doom and gloom.

This bill is ever evolving and they have been closing the gaps people were worried about re encryption(and now there are complaints about new issues). Are there holes that could be exploited, perhaps but a lot of them have been closed. I know it isn’t popular to say it but this isn’t turning out to be nearly as draconian as most people are making out to be.

If it has any chance of passing, it could very much cripple the tech sector in the US and make us less competitive.

On the other side of the coin, this is not going to stop individuals from using encryption that isn't broken. It would be ugly to see what it does in commercial spaces, and to your average citizen whose data is less protected. I think it would force a knowledgeable subcommunity further into the shadows while everything else burns.

You replied to my comment but you didn’t even read the bill.

Read the amendments, they specifically outline that the scope of this bill will not impact encryption laws (which they added specifically because of all the fear-mongering brought by the companies that stand to lose from this bill).

I have to admit, I like the look of that amendment.

That said, I also liked the look of the part in the ACA where Medicare Part D would be allowed to bargain for drug prices. Pity it wound up on the cutting room floor while I wasn't watching. I wonder how that happened?

There is nothing in this bill worth having. What exactly are you supporting here?

The amendment looks legitimately good, unless they're hustling it to an inappropriately small scope or intend to drop it at the lest second. Both are time honored legislative traditions, of course.

    “(7) CYBERSECURITY PROTECTIONS DO NOT GIVE RISE TO LIABILITY.—Notwithstanding
    “(paragraph (6), a provider of an interactive computer service shall not be
    “(deemed to be in violation of section 2252 or 2252A of title 18, United States
    “(Code, for the purposes of subparagraph (A) of such paragraph (6), and shall
    “(not otherwise be subject to any charge in a criminal prosecution under State
    “(law under subparagraph (B) of such paragraph (6), or any claim in a civil
    “(action under State law under subparagraph (C) of such paragraph (6), because
    “(the provider—
    
    “(A) utilizes full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device encryption,
    “(or other encryption services;
    
    “(B) does not possess the information necessary to decrypt a communication; or
    
    “(C) fails to take an action that would otherwise undermine the ability of the
    “(provider to offer full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device
    “(encryption, or other encryption services.”.

The amendment, even assuming it ends up in the final bill, only limits one specific type of damage that doing this could cause. The bill as a whole is still malicious garbage with no redeeming value.

It's like having a bill giving the FBI regulatory authority over the public school curriculum and then people say that's a terrible idea because they could e.g. prohibit sex education. So then they modify the bill to carve that out in particular. But that was just one specific example. The overall premise of the bill is still inherently damage even if you take out one specific bad thing people were using as an example.

I apologize, I didn't see the amendment. I did respond out of anger from the encryption standpoint.

I still don't like that for a number of other reasons safe harbor can be tossed aside

Do they still want to make a skeleton key for the internet and entrust it to the same people who couldn't protect the database containing secrets from their own background checks and who argue with a straight face that xkeyscore didn't count as a search under the 4th Amendment?

> Do they still want to make a skeleton key for the internet

No, this bill never did that and the updates make it explicit that it will not do this. Read the bill.

They did, last time I RTFB. I do not consider your summaries to be made in good faith.

This might just make me angry enough to burn another perfectly good evening on it. We'll see.

Read the goddamn bill, it’s pretty short.

By congressional standards, and at a given point of time.

It's not short when measured by the time required to keep up with it.

This 112 page bill? https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/339...

It's not really 112 pages. It looks like it's struck-through until the end of page 65. And it's in 16pt font. The toughest part is getting through the legalese.

The current version establishes a commission of 19 people which are composed of various interests. Of those interests 2 of are civil liberties experts and 2 of which are computer science or cryptography experts. 14 members are required to pass resolutions. So the cryptographers and civil liberties people can just be ignored by the prosecutors and entrenched corporate representatives.

No thanks. This is just as open-ended in the downside as before.

If the bill still claims to be about "child online exploitation", that's plenty reason to be skeptical. "Think of the children" is a powerful weapon because it's easy for the sponsors to politically assassinate anyone who votes against it. Source: I worked for a company that used that argument when lobbying.

I know enough about myself to know I'm not qualified to represent myself in court and I'm not qualified to read the text of a bill and pretend like I understand it.

I trust the EFF[1] to represent my values.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still...

By this logic, no legislation can ever seek to reduce online child sexual exploitation

I'd prefer we stop all sexual exploitation, not just online and not just of children.

That said, all new legislation must weigh what is lost against what we anticipate to gain.

It "evolving" isn't a reason to let down your guard, it is more reason to hammer a stake in the bastard's heart before it becomes something even worse. There is nothing good about it.

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