Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

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Internet users have voiced privacy concerns over their personally identifiable information and website behavior since the beginnings of the world wide web.

While the net has evolved dramatically in the last thirty years, those concerns persist. 

Some experts in internet privacy believe it no longer exists. We slightly disagree: it’s teetering on the precipice. Messages sent between computers aren’t being read by government-approved scanning software yet. And online companies are still able to encrypt messages between their customers. 

But if a powerful group of U.S. Senators gets their way, that could all change. (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

That’s what the Senate Judiciary Committee has proposed and hopes to pass into law. The so-called EARN IT bill, sponsored by Senators Lindsay Graham (R-GA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), will strip Section 230 protections away from any website that doesn’t follow a list of “best practices,” meaning those sites can be sued into bankruptcy. The “best practices” list will be created by a government commission, headed by Attorney General Barr, who has made it very clear he would like to ban encryption, and guarantee law enforcement “legal access” to any digital message. 

The EARN IT bill had its first hearing today, and its supporters’ strategy is clear. Because 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.

It’s true that the bill’s authors avoided using that word. But they did propose legislation that enables an all-out assault on encryption. It would create a 19-person commission that’s completely controlled by the Attorney General and law enforcement agencies. And, at the hearing, a Vice-President at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) made it clear [PDF] what he wants the best practices to be. NCMEC 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.

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Comments

  1. As we have discovered, FISA offered NO protections to the innocent. From my perspective, because of the depravity of man, without protections it will be only a matter of time before the innocent will be prosecuted in the same manner as those who served in the Trump campaign.

  2. The republican / dems party should be very careful if they think they can word a paragraph to not mean what it really says and think we the people are so dumb (just because we vote for them) that we can’t think fore our self’s and read through the lines, think again. That will cause me to think another party! You are walking on thin ICE.

    1. Typical Graham few Republicans that need to be put out of his misery for being a traitor I will never donate to that coward like McConnell. These people wonder if they all buy their seats cause their is no way they earn it and stay in office this long

  3. This will not affect encryption like HIPPA didn’t affect the ability of a spouse to assist in the medical care of the other spouse. In other words, what it is really about is not in the title!!

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