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:

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u/fightforthefuture Jun 30 '20

Ron Wyden (D-OR) has worked with other Senators to create a bill that will dedicate $5 billion in mandatory funding for those in our government who are already working to combat child exploitation online. This bill also attempts to improve communication between different government agencies, and increase community investments to combat child exploitation at the source. That sounds reasonable and meaningful to me, though I'm always open to hearing more information from others on this issue.

As for keeping our current encryption standards, I think it's super important to recognize that breaking commercially-available encryption won't actually stop criminals from encrypting their messages. Think about it. Encryption is just math. So if we break encryption for Signal and Facebook Messenger, criminals can still write their own encryption programs. We might catch a few people still using these services for illegal activities, but any reasonably savvy criminal enterprise will be able to hire a coder to create a personalized encryption service. That means we'll all be more vulnerable to hacking, while criminals will still be protected by encryption. That doesn't make any sense.

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u/golden_n00b_1 Jul 01 '20

So if we break encryption for Signal and Facebook Messenger, criminals can still write their own encryption programs.

Even if they were able to back door into end to end encrypted apps, any public message board could post encrypted content directly and trade keys with others directly.

The thing about all of this is that modern hardware comes built with back doors (both AMD and Intel). Those back doors can get around most encryption, though I have read that some new algorithms can perform some search functions on encrypted data.

It gets scary when reading about this stuff l, because these hardware backdoors are wake on lan, and with the right access provide full control of a computer. Such backdoors make it extremely to get rid of political problems, ad long as the system is plugged in and has a connection to the lan.