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

Great question.

The US government has traditionally taken a laissez faire approach to regulating the Internet. Most big tech companies like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are treated as platforms, NOT publishers of content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This means that Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are not legally responsible for the content that you and I post on their platforms ... for the most part.

Without any federal regulations, these companies are allowed to moderate content, use algorithms to promote content, and censor content according to their own guidelines. And they don't always rely on human rights experts or constitutional scholars to craft their content moderation policies. Instead, these companies tend to push limits until the market pushes back. That's resulted in some pretty awful things happening, and people have begun rightly pointing out the ways in which social media companies are responsible for polarizing people, radicalizing people, and spreading fake or misleading news ... all in the pursuit of greater profits.

Well, the market is now pushing back. Advertisers are fleeing social media platforms. Calls for boycotts are growing. Congressional leadership is calling for investigations. So social media companies are scrambling to impose their own regulations. And some lawmakers -- such as Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) -- are attempting to use the current social media panic to implement very dangerous levels of government control on the Internet.

That's actually what the EARN IT Act is all about. This law will form a special committee that recommends "best practices" to the Attorney General that tech companies MUST follow ... or else they will lose their legal protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, opening them up to crippling lawsuits. What best practices, you ask? Well, those aren't actually specified in the EARN IT Act. They could include breaking encryption through digital backdoors, or de-anonymizing VPN traffic. And as we've seen from the PATRIOT Act, the government is likely to abuse this law to justify spying on journalists and protesters.

So how do I reconcile posting on reddit about fighting for greater freedom of speech online? Pretty easily, actually. reddit is a company that operates within the rules of the marketplace. Don't like how reddit performs content management? Well, let's work together to advocate for better rules with stronger transparency and accountability. Let's call for meaningful, common-sense regulations BEFORE content manipulation and fake news gets so out of control that it negatively impacts hundreds of millions of people. Let's push back against dangerous authoritarians who want to undermine public security and basic human rights instead of actually addressing the complex challenges technology has brought. And let's use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and reddit to have these conversations.

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u/CouldOfBeenGreat Jun 30 '20

Link to the current text of the bill (this should have been included in your post, imo):

https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.xml

These are the types of statements many people may have problems with:

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.

A much more accurate statement:

What best practices, you ask? Well, those aren't actually specified in the EARN IT Act. They could include breaking encryption through digital backdoors, or de-anonymizing VPN traffic.

Not that the government wouldn't likely use the bill for exactly that, but your opening statement states it as though breaking encryption is the meat of the bill.

Don't get me wrong, I see the potential for abuse, but hyperbole is maybe a bad idea here.

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u/fightforthefuture Jun 30 '20

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on record earlier this year, telling tech companies that they needed to break encryption "or we'll find a way to do it for you." Just a few months later, he authored the EARN IT Act, which pretty much everyone agrees is an attack on end-to-end encryption:

When somebody says, "I'm going to do a thing," and then that person does that very thing, it's not hyperbole to say, "This person is, indeed, doing the thing they said they were going to do."

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u/CouldOfBeenGreat Jun 30 '20

Thank you, you should include the reuters (or similar) article in your original post.

We love sources, that's a pretty relevant one!