Save Encryption - Stop the EARN IT Act.

This is a communique I received from the EFF - it is Important

ACTION ALERT
Stop the EARN IT Act to Save Encryption

Congress has revived the EARN IT Act, and it’s even clearer than before what the nefarious purpose of this proposal is. The bill enables every U.S. state and territory to pass laws that put companies who offer encrypted services at the risk of criminal prosecution or civil suit. The goal: put in place universal message scanning with government-approved software.

The Senate Judiciary Committee could vote on this bill as soon as next week. We need you to contact your Senators right now and tell them to reject this plan.

TAKE ACTION Link To https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

TELL CONGRESS TO REJECT THE EARN IT ACT Link To https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

Under the guise of fighting child abuse, the sponsors of the EARN IT Act want to coerce private companies to scan every message, photo, and website on the Internet. Then those scans will be checked against U.S. law enforcement databases.

End-to-end encryption is vital to our privacy, security, and freedom of speech. But it will be completely undermined by the kind of universal scanning that these Senators are promoting.

We’ve never let state legislatures regulate the internet, and we shouldn’t start now. EARN IT will create a race to the bottom, as every internet service—small or large—will have to figure out how to comply with the most restrictive state law, or risk prosecution and endless lawsuits.

We urgently need your support to kill the EARN IT Act before it gets any further in Congress. This disastrous bill was originally proposed two years ago, and disappeared after significant pushback—nearly 200,000 EFF supporters told their representatives to oppose the bill. We stopped this bill once, and we can do it again.

TAKE ACTION Link To https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

TELL CONGRESS TO REJECT THE EARN IT ACT Link To https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

Yours,
Joe Mullin
EFF Activism Team

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Alrighty, time to kill it again.

be well and have a good one

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Comments

jorogo's picture

But why must the EFF action page start by requiring us to enter our address to "find" our US representatives? Where's an "I already know that!" option? I know it so well it hurts!
Drives me nuts when a progressive issue organization that knows I understand the issue, insults me by assuming I must not know who my reps are. It's like activism for dummies.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

usefewersyllables's picture

@jorogo

and I know them, but some folks don't- and the EFF mechanism makes it dead easy to send in messages, to be ignored along with everybody else's messages that they are ignoring. That will help inspire some people to try that might otherwise not bother.

It's like Heinlein's character Lazarus Long said: "Certainly, the game is rigged. But don't let that stop you: if you don't bet, you can't win." Maybe enough people will contact them that they simply can't ignore it. One can only hope that the straw that will break the bastards' metaphorical backs (or at least that of some faceless unpaid interns in their offices) is out there somewhere.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

enhydra lutris's picture

@jorogo

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

jorogo's picture

@enhydra lutris I did follow through, signed the EFF letter, though EFF said they are unable to send it to one of my Senators, Ron Johnson (holding back vomit), not that that would do any good anyhow.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

usefewersyllables's picture

again. Sigh...

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2 users have voted.

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

Names of legislation are usually meant to send a message in their own right, especially if they're clever acronyms.

"EARN IT" sounds like it ought to be a name for a bill centered on something like immigration, or employment, or welfare, or education, or the prison system; it makes almost no sense for this.

What is this trying to say?
To whom?
If to We The People, what is it we are supposed to "earn" and how are we supposed
to go about doing so?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat Apparently it's:

The EARN IT Act (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act)

and...yeah. It makes no sense. Earn what? Posting on the internet is to be earned by first proving you are not engaging in child porn I guess?

And the IT part is not even "information technology" but "Interactive technology"?

Blumenthal and Graham aren't known for their large brains, but come on...

It's almost as if they don't give a real shit about child porn but just want control and power. /s

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enhydra lutris's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

deceive, concealing or misrepresenting the true contents and intent. Worse yet are the little prologue paragraphs that start with phrases like "the purpose of this bill is to ..." which are very frequently total lies.

be well and have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.