The EARN IT Act (S.3398) is an attempt to override The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (S230)

Wired: "It’s a Sneak Attack on Encryption--The crypto wars are back in full swing"

https://www.wired.com/story/earn-it-act-sneak-attack-on-encryption/

American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for Prosperity, joint response:

"EARN IT is an attack on encryption masquerading as a blow against underage porn. measure … would lead to a backdoor' in encrypted services, thereby jeopardizing the security of every individual. Technology experts and civil society organizations have repeatedly warned that backdoors could be exploited by bad actors and that no backdoor could guarantee only law-abiding officials have access.”

Media Alliance, a coalition of 25 organizations:

"The bill would fall far short of the goal of protecting children, while at the same time making all Americans less safe and less secure by potentially exposing everyone in society to substantially higher risk from malicious cyber actors, including hostile nation-states.”

ELECTRON FRONTIER FOUNDATION (EFF):

"Imagine an Internet where the law required every message sent to be read by government-approved scanning software. Companies that handle such messages wouldn’t be allowed to securely encrypt them, or they’d lose legal protections that allow them to operate.”

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I will be posting more on this. It seems there are good reasons for this bill, lake making internet tech companies (faceBook and Google’s YouTube) responsible for the content they allow on their sites. It also allows and people to sue companies for such content. I’m all for that because it’s long past time we brought some balance back into the battle of individual rights vs. corporate rights. However, there are also serious risks to individual privacy and the potential to ban encryption altogether. That means this Bill is a knock on the door to permanent state surveillance.

Below is the first page of S.3398 which provides the purpose of the Bill and the main players who would ve heading the “Committee. We can stop right there. I have some concerns. They are circled in red.

#mywork #earnit #earnitact #earn_it #privacy #child_exploitation#pluspora #friendica #USPolitics #politics
S.3398 #S.230 #eff #encryption #crypto #cryptography #bitcoin #https #apps #diaspora #federation #thefediverse #thefederation #apps #usa #us #government #nsa #privacy #surveillance #1984 #shelenn_ayers @Shelenn Ayres #ProtonMail #Proton