Members of Congress have mounted a major threat to your freedom of speech and security online. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) recently introduced a bill that would undermine key protections for Internet speech in U.S. law. It would also expose providers of the private messaging services we all rely on to serious legal risk, potentially forcing them to undermine their tools security.
The so-called EARN IT Act (S. 3398) is anti-speech, anti-security, anti-innovation, and unnecessary. Let’s tell Congress to reject it.
The fight between the providers of encrypted messaging platforms and lawmakers has entered a serious new phase. And this time around it is looking ever more likely that proponents of end-to-end security, the likes of Facebook and Apple, will lose their campaign to maintain user security as a priority.
The EARN IT bill Is the Government’s Plan to Scan Every Message Online.
NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) believes online services should be made to screen their messages for material that NCMEC considers abusive; use screening technology approved by NCMEC and law enforcement; report what they find in the messages to NCMEC; and be held legally responsible for the content of messages sent by others.
You can’t have an Internet where messages are screened en masse, and also have end-to-end encryption any more than you can create backdoors that can only be used by the good guys. The two are mutually exclusive. Concepts like “client-side scanning” aren’t a clever route around this; such scanning is just another way to break end-to-end encryption. Either the message remains private to everyone but its recipients, or it’s available to others.
They didn’t put the word
encryption
in the bill, they’re going to insist it doesn’t affect encryption.
This bill says nothing about encryption
co-sponsor Sen. Blumenthal said at today’s hearing.
Have you found a word in this bill about encryption?
he asked one witness.
in nutshell – must read – https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/03/06/earn-it-is-an-attack-on-encryption/
sources https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/03/14/new-warning-issued-for-all-whatsapp-and-imessage-users-major-threat-to-encryption
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-bill-governments-not-so-secret-plan-scan-every-message-online https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/graham-blumenthal-bill-attack-online-speech-and-security
24/03/2020 - Keeping Government Out of Your Business
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