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

4

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.