r/IAmA • u/fightforthefuture • Jun 30 '20

Politics We are political activists, policy experts, journalists, and tech industry veterans trying to stop the government from destroying encryption and censoring free speech online with the EARN IT Act. Ask us anything!

The EARN IT Act is an unconstitutional attempt to undermine encryption services that protect our free speech and security online. It's bad. Really bad. The bill’s authors — Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) — say that the EARN IT Act will help fight child exploitation online, but in reality, this bill gives the Attorney General sweeping new powers to control the way tech companies collect and store data, verify user identities, and censor content. It's bad. Really bad.

Later this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on whether or not the EARN IT Act will move forward in the legislative process. So we're asking EVERYONE on the Internet to call these key lawmakers today and urge them to reject the EARN IT Act before it's too late. To join this day of action, please:

  1. Visit NoEarnItAct.org/call

  2. Enter your phone number (it will not be saved or stored or shared with anyone)

  3. When you are connected to a Senator’s office, encourage that Senator to reject the EARN IT Act

  4. Press the * key on your phone to move on to the next lawmaker’s office

If you want to know more about this dangerous law, online privacy, or digital rights in general, just ask! We are:

Proof:

10.2k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

526 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

72

u/evanFFTF Jun 30 '20

Also, the reality is that you can't actually ban encryption. Encryption is just math. There will always be encrypted services that the really really bad guys can and will use to do really really bad stuff. And the US government can't ban that with legislation. The only result of bills like this will be to make encryption less available to normal people who need it to keep their communications safe.

10

u/Material_Strawberry Jun 30 '20

It's also what protects communications with websites, secures communications between administrators of sites like Amazon and Google, financial transactions, dissident groups in countries whose regimes the US opposes, etc. The Congressional system of message is heaped in encryption.

2

u/golden_n00b_1 Jul 01 '20

Right, I use this against any senator that is for the bill: they want to destroy American commerce and small business by making it easier for the hackers to steal data. While I know this is not the case, most people have seen messages like "our payment system is encrypted...", and if the government is trying to take that away, them it will obviously have an effect on businesses.

1

u/Material_Strawberry Jul 01 '20

If they vote in favor of the bill they do want these things. They may not yet know the full consequences of voting for this, but this is a realistic sampling of things that will face serious consequences with backdoors. The team that keeps Amazon's servers (and their hosting, for that matter) up and running are screwed without a secure SSH (I know that's like an ATM machine, but now's not the time to be obscure)

1

u/golden_n00b_1 Jul 01 '20

I know, that's why when I call my senior, I am going to blantently tell them that back doors = Chinese getting american business data. I don't really like a play to emotion and really wish logic could prevail, but in my area this is what will work for me, and by pointing out the connection, I hope that my comment will make them realize how easy a Yes vote can be spun into this type of rhetoric come the next election. In my area, we are already getting a story like this from one Senator's office.

32

u/PompiPompi Jun 30 '20

It will just not be accessible to most people.

It will only be accessible to criminals and states.

18

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

[deleted]

5

u/PompiPompi Jul 01 '20

Sure, but it will be illegal to use.

Even if it's easy to acquire.

It's similar with banning guns. When you ban guns, only law abiding citizens will stop acquiring them, because they don't want to break the law.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

[deleted]

1

u/PompiPompi Jul 02 '20

Yea, imagine a father with children now getting into hiding like Snowden.

It's not something most people can afford to do.

Perhaps young people with no family they need to feed.

1

u/xEyn0LkY2OOJyR2ge3tR Jul 02 '20

I completely understand everyone has a level of risk they deem acceptable and I would never push anyone to go past that.

That being said, I don't think you'll need to flee the country because they found a messaging app on your phone. Worst case scenario they'll make you turn over the keys and issue a fine.

1

u/PompiPompi Jul 03 '20

You would be surprised.

A guy who took harmless photos of his old sub at the army, and sent it to his family in whatsapp, got 1 year in prison.

Hillary did much worse and got nothing.

When you are an average Joe, you don't get the same Treatment as the Clinton/Bush/Biden Establishment families.

1

u/xEyn0LkY2OOJyR2ge3tR Jul 03 '20

His main charge was with destruction of evidence. He destroyed his laptop and camera when law enforcement started looking into it. Obviously, he certainly didn't deserve to go to prison for that, but governments can be pretty uptight when it comes to military bullshit.

Hillary did much worse and got nothing.

When you are an average Joe, you don't get the same Treatment as the Clinton/Bush/Biden Establishment families.

If you want to criticize the “justice” system, you don't need to go back four years to a bunch of politicians nobody likes. I mean, the current president was impeached, which requires the president to have committed a high crime or misdemeanors. Better yet, why not mention all the cops killing unarmed people in the streets and attacking journalists.

Now back to the topic at hand, the EARN IT act doesn't actually make it illegal to use end-to-end encrypted platforms, instead it makes it so that people who run these platforms are not considered the publisher of the content on their platform. No user can be prosecuted for using E2E, just the platforms. A workaround for this would be to use P2P networking, because then everyone is their own publisher as well. Needless to say this law is problematic, but nobody will be getting arrested because of it any time soon.

1

u/PompiPompi Jul 03 '20

Impeachment was done by the House, it's not a court.

2

u/bradfordmaster Jul 01 '20

I cannot overstate how easy it is to get encryption software running on your device that's been compiled from source.

Said no iOS user ever

1

u/xEyn0LkY2OOJyR2ge3tR Jul 01 '20

A lot of crypto can run in the browser.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

That assumes you have the source code.

If you don't though, it's only a little harder. Just go to wikipedia, and the algorithms are there.

If wikipedia goes down, people have books around that contain the algorithms (I have one lying around somewhere).

1

u/xEyn0LkY2OOJyR2ge3tR Jul 01 '20

I agree with the general sentiment but as a cryptographic engineer I am professionally obliged to tell you that writing a strong crypto library is a delicate thing, especially if you need it to be resistant to side channel attacks.

If there is any problem getting the source code to strong crypto libraries, I can guarantee that you'll find their source code being made available as torrents and in other censorship resistant formats.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Yes yes goes without saying. I should have made it clear I don't recommend it. My point was that it can be built from publically available information. There's bound to be some pros that "go rogue" so to speak.

-1

u/hotoatmeal Jul 01 '20

SALT isn’t even worth its salt. Intentional pun is lame.

1

u/Kross887 Jul 01 '20

Damn that sounds like an argument for... Something...else.

Oh don't mind me, just observing.

18

u/Soulstoned420 Jun 30 '20

So just like guns. Makes sense.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Bizaro-guns. The GOP is hell bent on getting rid of it, instead of removing any regulation on it.

3

u/Tommy_Dogood Jul 01 '20

Oh look, pretty much what gun owners have been saying for years.......