Leahy’s 2020 amendment aimed to preserve companies’ ability to offer secure encryption in their products by providing that a company could not be found in violation of the law because it utilized secure encryption, doesn’t have the ability to decrypt communications, or fails to undermine the security of their encryption (for example, by building in a backdoor for use by law enforcement).īut while the 2022 EARN IT Act contains the same list of protected activities, the authors snuck in new language that undermines that very protection. Leahy’s office to implement language from his 2020 amendment to the previous version of EARN IT (even as he admitted to a reporter that encryption was a target). Richard Blumenthal called encryption a “red herring,” relying on his work with Sen. It protects our commerce and our communications from the prying eyes of criminals, hostile authorian regimes and other malicious actors. Strong encryption is essential to online life today.
Mistake #1: “Encryption Is not Threatened by This Bill” Here are the top ten legal and technical mistakes the Committee made today.
It showed that there is nothing remotely judicious about the Judiciary Committee that most of its members have little understanding of the Internet and even less of how the, ahem, judiciary actually works and, saddest of all, that they simply do not care. Today’s markup was a singular low-point in the history of what is supposed to be one of the most serious bodies in Congress. The Committee thereafter made major (but largely cosmetic) changes to the bill, leaving its Members more confused than ever about what the bill actually does. The one and only hearing on the bill occurred just six days after its introduction back in March 2020. The Committee didn’t bother holding a hearing on the bill before rushing it to markup. Lindsey Graham would have to leave soon for a floor vote. Dick Durbin kicked off the discussion by noting that Sen. We knew there wouldn’t be much time for discussion because Sen. This time, no amendments were adopted indeed, none were even put up for a vote.
Even worse, the bill will do the opposite of what it claims: instead of helping law enforcement crack down on child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the bill will actually help the most odious criminals walk free.Īs with the July 2020 markup of the last Congress’s version of this bill, the vote was unanimous. government that initially funded the development of the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) now found in Signal, Whatsapp and other such tools. Aiding such dissidents is precisely why it was the U.S. Thus, the bill poses a dire threat to the privacy, security and safety of law-abiding Internet users around the world, especially those whose lives depend on having messaging tools that governments cannot crack. Only by monitoring what users communicate could tech services avoid vast new liability, and only by abandoning, or compromising, end-to-end encryption, could they implement such monitoring. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the EARN IT Act and sent that legislation to the Senate floor. Thu, Feb 10th 2022 03:30pm - Berin Szoka and Ari Cohn