[HN Gopher] The EARN IT Act: how to ban end-to-end encryption wi...
___________________________________________________________________
The EARN IT Act: how to ban end-to-end encryption without banning
it
Author : liotier
Score : 306 points
Date : 2020-01-31 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)
| post_below wrote:
| I love the hitchhiker's reference.
|
| The post was well written and covered what I think are the
| important points.
|
| There's only one thing I think deserves more attention than she
| gave it: The economics. The US' place in the tech world is
| largely a result of limited barriers to innovation in tech.
|
| The kinds of "duties" proposed by this bill would be bad for big
| tech (a huge part of the economy) but worse than that they would
| be prohibitive for new innovators.
|
| New social media services which attempt to serve the increasing
| demographic of people disillusioned with big tech aren't even
| going to try to get into a market with draconian requirements amd
| potential legal obligations like those proposed (or those that
| logically follow from the proposals).
|
| Which means those services will be built elsewhere or not at all.
|
| And of course there are the innovations we haven't imagined yet
| which won't be allowed to happen.
| msp_yc wrote:
| How many people here think of encryption as a second amendment
| right?
|
| If you find yourself arguing that it is - what happens when you
| are largely, if not wholly, dependent on a third party to be able
| to exercise that right?
|
| We've decided that corporations get first amendment rights
| independent of their members - do they also get second amendment
| rights?
|
| Are these just silly arguments? It's late Friday afternoon...
| noident wrote:
| Encrypted data is more like speech than a weapon. The analogy
| to guns just doesn't work.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| The US Govt considers encryption a form of weapons tech so
| that it falls under Munitions Exports Controls (see https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...). But
| the proposed law doesn't outlaw private use of encryption,
| only potentially outlawing corporations from offering it, so
| I don't know the 2nd Amendment would really apply.
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| > Without the immunity provided by Section 230, there might very
| well be no Twitter, or Facebook, or dating apps, or basically any
| website with a comments section.
|
| Going on that description, a bit of me wishes for Section 230 to
| be repealed.
|
| Of course there would be no GitHub either, which wouldn't be so
| great.
| manfredo wrote:
| I don't think you fully understand the scope of what section
| 230 protects against. Even running an email server could put
| people at risk of being held liable for crimes, if users were
| to use that server to coordinate criminal acts. Revoking
| section 230 essentially mandates total surveillance of user
| activity.
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| So you would have to run your own email server or be given
| access to one by someone who trusts you, which would be a
| better situation in some ways than the Gmail monoculture we
| have today. Google likely has your mail on one end or the
| other; you're already under surveillance; Section 230 hasn't
| saved you.
| DuskStar wrote:
| And that email server has to be in a datacenter you own,
| because AWS doesn't exist. (What is AWS if not hosting
| user-generated content?)
|
| And if you run a tor node, then you're liable for anything
| someone does with tor.
|
| And if you host a blockchain mirror.
|
| And...
| dimensi0nal wrote:
| There's already child pornography in the Bitcoin
| blockchain, right?
| DuskStar wrote:
| Yep!
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| This is exactly analogous to DMCA in its structure--except that
| instead of the procedures being part of the law, the will be
| subject to constant change by the executive branch of government.
| dchyrdvh wrote:
| Who am I to say that these two senators don't understand big
| politics, but here's my theory why the other 98 senators won't
| support the idea. Laws is a barrier between those who rule and
| those who obey. When the latter complain, the laws barrier
| diffuses their anger. The two senators find it too difficult to
| play this game and want to break this wall to rule the internet
| directly.
| xvector wrote:
| I think we need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot have
| people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of our
| country as it goes into the future. They are simply not equipped
| to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's.
|
| At 60 years[1], the median age of the Senate is 20 years more
| than the median age of the US population[2] - if this isn't an
| example of how broken and entrenched our power structures are, I
| don't know what is.
|
| These issues are also also an artifact of a societal structure in
| which we use the winners of a rigged popularity contest to decide
| the future of our country rather than that of independent
| academics on a per-issue basis.
|
| Through the lens of E2EE legislation, we are seeing our democracy
| crumbling because we failed to enforce that our representatives
| _actually knowing what they are talking about_.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d...
|
| [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-demographics/
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Ageism is wrong in both directions. The notion that older
| people are less technical is ageist an just as unacceptable as
| thinking young people are too idealistic.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Well that's just a deformed way of thinking about stuff. What
| matters is whether it's true, not whether somebody will call
| it ageist.
| jawns wrote:
| On the flip side, at 60 years, the median-aged Senator has
| about 40 years of working experience and (arguably) that many
| years of accumulated knowledge and expertise, as well as life
| experience and a sense of proportion that comes from having
| observed our nation's ebbs and flows over a longer period of
| time.
|
| Granted, it's possible to be 60 years old, foolhardy, and out-
| of-touch -- just as it's possible to be 30 years old, whip-
| smart, and tuned in.
|
| But in general, voters value experience, and you don't amass
| experience without aging.
|
| I agree with you, though, about term limits. They're a good way
| to balance voters' desire for experienced candidates with the
| need to inject new blood from both sides of the aisle.
|
| Unfortunately, if there's one thing American voters stupidly
| fall for beyond incumbents, it's nepotism, so if term limits
| were in place, I predict we'd see more family dynasties in
| Congress.
| sephamorr wrote:
| Another side to consider is that often said Senator has
| 40-years of experience being a senator (or similar), and ~0
| years being and employee or business owner. I often feel
| (anecdotally) that many representatives have spent their
| entire lives in government such that they have never
| experienced what it's like to be in the private sector, and
| therefore can be tone deaf to issues that matter to me.
| wpasc wrote:
| To play the devil's advocate with you and GP, term limits can
| often mean that congresspeople will be perpetual novices.
| Governing can be complex especially when seated on various
| committees like foreign affairs, CBO, etc. Older
| congresspeople who have accumulated years of experience have
| seen things go right, go wrong, and have learned a great deal
| about governing.
|
| I think in tech we can attest to how disruption does not
| always mean good and how move fast and break things can go
| wrong.
|
| To be clear, I don't disagree entirely with the idea of term
| limits or age limits, I just think the counter arguments
| deserve a fair amount of weight.
| cvwright wrote:
| A limit of two terms in the US senate would still allow for
| a total career of 12 years -- 4 years more than any
| president.
|
| A 3-term cap would give 18 years, two more than any two
| presidents combined.
|
| That's a long way from being a newbie.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| And the senate is even already voted in on a rolling
| schedule, so even in the worse case, 66% of the senate
| would have more than 2 years experience, and half of
| those would have 4 years.
|
| Term limits to me seem to be one of those obvious
| solutions that are almost impossible to fix after the
| creation of a government. How do you convince politicians
| to vote against their own self interest? Especially with
| term limits, where you would need 2/3s of them to do so.
| protanopia wrote:
| Perhaps government should be made less complex.
| jhayward wrote:
| While you're accomplishing that I would like water to be
| less wet, and the value of Pi to be set to three as well,
| please.
|
| All proposals that I've ever seen to "simplify"
| government amount to abdicating large functions, usually
| justified by some ideology around "rugged individualism"
| or anarchism which are completely fatuous.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I'm a big fan of the idea of abolishing states, having a
| US national government and then county/city level
| governments. The states were created when it was
| infeasible to manage large amounts of territory due to
| the difficulty of communicating across long distances.
| That's no longer the case. We could cede some state
| powers to local governments and some to the federal
| level.
|
| The idea would get pushback from those in smaller states
| who enjoy a disproportionate voice in national politics,
| but I feel that those voices don't deserve to be
| amplified over anyone else's just because they have a
| bunch of empty land backing them.
| puffyredchair wrote:
| So blatant ageism?
| slg wrote:
| Term and age limits would do more to empower lobbyist than it
| would do anything to fix the government. You want politicians
| to know what they are talking about, but running a government
| is like almost every other job out there, you gain experience
| and expertise as you do it. That experience generally leads to
| a more productive and effective government. If you kick all
| those experienced people out, that knowledge shifts to
| lobbyist. Political officials will be even more dependent on
| them for guidance on governing and to learn the issues.
| xvector wrote:
| Good point, this is a perspective I had not considered.
| sgk284 wrote:
| I'd argue the opposite. By having no term limits, lobbyists
| are able to build up connections over years and take
| advantage of them. It also means any dirt, corruption, or
| bribery has an unbounded time for leverage.
|
| Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse. I don't see
| why they wouldn't work well for Congress. And forcing
| lobbyists to reestablish rapport, dig up dirt, etc... with
| new congresspeople every few years would do wonders.
|
| There's a reason financial institutions force people to take
| holidays. It's good for rooting out theft.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Term limits work really well for the Whitehouse.
|
| This certainly isn't obvious.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Imagine that Trump could be president for 20 years,
| instead of just 8. Or that George W Bush could. Or that
| Clinton could. No matter where you sit politically, at
| least one of those should give you pause.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I honestly wouldn't mind a president whose in charge for
| >8 years.
|
| I don't like term limits because often times, the
| Congressman most likely to do right by their country are
| the ones that feel "safe" in their district. They can
| tell their party whips to fuck off, because they can run
| as an independent and still be elected. If we instituted
| term limits on Congress, my guess is that Congress would
| be inhabited _entirely_ by corporate shills looking to
| get rich, rather mostly inhabited by such people, as is
| currently the case.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| Compare and contrast with monarchs, as the Framers did.
|
| Edit: While I'd like to build out the analogy further,
| there's only one data point that I can find in the
| missing quadrant: The Philippines have a limited number
| and duration of terms for their legislators. One data
| point is not enough to even identify a single confounding
| factor, and there's too many ways in which the USA and
| the Philippines differ.
| slg wrote:
| Prolonged reigns are not among the biggest flaws of
| monarchies. The primary problem is first and foremost the
| power a monarch generally has compared to a president or
| prime minister. Next comes the difficultly of removing
| that person from the position is incredibly difficult if
| they prove unfit in any way unlike positions in a
| democracy. Lastly is the selection process in which
| people are usually chosen for their bloodline and not any
| skill or even a predilection for governance. A long
| reigning monarch in fact is often linked to eras of
| prosperity for their countries rather than a steady
| decline as the monarch ages.
|
| Also I should note that unlike fixes for the three flaws
| mentioned above, presidential term limits weren't
| officially part of the Constitution until after WWII. It
| clearly wasn't a high priority for the framers to
| formalize term limits.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Next comes the difficultly of removing that person from
| the position is incredibly difficult if they prove unfit
| in any way unlike positions in a democracy.
|
| I think current events are demonstrating that we're
| unable to remove hilariously unfit people in democracies,
| too.
| slg wrote:
| Regardless of your opinions on this specific president,
| we need to recognize that removing any president through
| impeachment should require a high bar of difficulty in
| order to maintain the balance of power. Impeachment is a
| check on the president. Making it too easy would result
| in the president serving at the pleasure of Congress.
|
| That said, I was mostly talking about elections in which
| we have the chance to remove our leaders every 2, 4, or 6
| years.
| mullingitover wrote:
| When the president's crime is election rigging, the idea
| that we're supposed to keep him in check via the rigged
| election is pretty weak. When the president's crime is
| election rigging, the idea that we're supposed to keep
| him in check via the rigged election is pretty weak.
|
| We've now established the precedent that brazen election
| rigging is fair game as long as your party holds a hair
| over 1/3 of the senate.
| [deleted]
| favorited wrote:
| Then why did the Framers add neither Presidential nor
| Congressional term limits to the Constitution (never mind
| the Federal judiciary)?
| [deleted]
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| We've only had term limits on the executive since 1951.
| makomk wrote:
| The US has only had legally binding term limits for the
| presidency since 1951, but traditionally the president
| was expected to stand down after two terms. The
| constitutional term limits were introduced after
| Roosevelt managed to hold on to the presidency well past
| two terms until he died.
| frogperson wrote:
| If you cap someone's career at 4 years, they might have
| more incentive to take as much lobby money as possible
| while they can.
| xvector wrote:
| This doesn't change if you cap the person's career at 40
| years. Greedy people are going to be greedy.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Not necessarily, if you can serve for 40 years there's
| more risk in losing your sweet gig if you get found out.
| xvector wrote:
| Is there? Famous congresspeople are "found out" every
| single day and nothing happens.
|
| The only real change in Congress that we are seeing is
| from people like AOC - determined and idealistic young
| people who see straight through the bullshit and aren't
| letting it get to them.
|
| Maybe rather than an age limit we need to actually test
| Congresspeople on what they are legislating.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > There's a reason financial institutions force people to
| take holidays. It's good for rooting out theft.
|
| Can anyone explain what this is referring to?
| jtuente wrote:
| Someone else has to do the vacationer's job while they're
| gone, so the substitute may discover that something has
| been done improperly.
| lsiebert wrote:
| I think you can't ignore the importance of congressional
| oversight on the executive branch, and the benefits of
| experience there.
| paulmd wrote:
| Term limits yes, age limits no. If 60 years isn't enough time
| to gather life experience and domain expertise to make
| independent decisions then nothing is and democracy as an
| institution is inherently flawed.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| 1. A representative who is termed out does not need to run
| for reelection, which changes incentives substantially.
|
| 2. The knowledge may not necessarily shift to lobbyists.
| Legislative staffers could become subject matter experts.
|
| 3. California implemented term limits, and provides an
| interesting data point to show what really happens to a
| legislature.
|
| https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_1104BCRB.pdf
| clSTophEjUdRanu wrote:
| Would you ban Ken Thompson or Brian Kernighan from holding
| office?
|
| Age is a lazy argument, there are extremely ignorant young
| people too. America should just stop electing know-it-all,
| greedy people.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They're probably too smart to want to run...
| lukifer wrote:
| Given the old joke about wanting the job being a
| disqualification for having it, maybe it's time we started
| electing people who don't want the job:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
| trilliumbaker wrote:
| > I think we need age limits.
|
| Ageism is not an acceptable solution. We complain about this in
| tech all the time. Why would we find it acceptable in politics?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well for one we know plenty of technically competent older
| workers who get passed over in tech and it isn't a zero sum
| game - in a functioning system there is room for young and
| old workers and overall success inproving with more workers
| can make more room. Elected officials are finite and zero sum
| so the situation isn't comparable even if principles are.
|
| There are also the throughly mixed messages sent. Ageism is
| enshrined into law even past the threshold of 18. It is just
| defined with maximum hypocrisy such that a 20 year old is too
| incapable of drinking while a senile nonegarian year old with
| Alzheimers severe enough to have the mental capacity of a
| child is. Now there are obvious dangers to sunsetting rights
| but that double standard both normalizes the reverse and both
| equality and spite make "what is good for the goose is good
| for the gander" viscerally tempting to those who were
| disadvantaged. Not the best of mentalities but it is easy to
| see how someone who couldn't rent a car until recently would
| be less than sympathetic.
| MadWombat wrote:
| Have you seen this movie? :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets
| svnpenn wrote:
| I want you to know that in general, I strongly agree with you.
|
| However you must be careful, as these arbitrary rules could
| cause some collateral damage.
|
| Namely: Bernie Sanders (78)
| syshum wrote:
| I don't see that as Collateral Damage. :)
| Jaygles wrote:
| We might just be in a weird transition period where the modern
| technology us youngins are used to is still a relatively new
| thing in the long term. The fix might just be to wait until the
| older people in charge retire or die out and the new older
| people in charge are those who grew up with these modern
| technologies.
| rayiner wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but modern technology is painfully
| simple compared to what the older people in charge used
| growing up. People who are in their 40s now grew up having to
| assign IRQs in their modem to download porn. Today, young
| people use iPads and have no idea how computers work.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The fix might just be to wait until the older people in
| charge retire or die out and the new older people in charge
| are those who grew up with these modern technologies.
|
| I don't think so. I'm an older person, and I've been immersed
| in these technologies for almost my entire life (since I was
| 12). There is nothing old hat to the younger crowd that isn't
| old hat to me as well.
|
| Age is not a reliable indicator of these things.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I'm not personally a huge fan of taking away choices just
| because you're afraid someone will make the wrong choice. If
| you don't like older politicians, then make your voice be
| known. Claiming that you know better than everyone and that
| your view needs to be the rule of law seems a bit heavy-handed,
| though. Same goes for censorship.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding
| the fate of our country as it goes into the future. They are
| simply not equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone
| tomorrow's.
|
| This is not a function of age. It's a function of whether or
| not people are engaging in continuing education.
|
| There are many young people who are simply not equipped to
| handle today's problems too, after all, and there are many
| older people who are fully up to date.
| veeralpatel979 wrote:
| I like term limits. But how would you respond to those who say
| elections are term limits?
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Very simple: just look at the percentage of incumbents who
| face a primary challenger (low), and the percentage of
| general elections won by incumbents (high). Elections are
| frequently won by incumbents on name recognition. Some
| ballots indicate which is the incumbent candidate, and a lot
| of people will just automatically vote for them.
|
| I'm sure there's research out there that demonstrates the
| first 2 points. I'm less sure about the second two, but I'd
| bet there's a paper out there that covers at least one of
| them.
| wpasc wrote:
| >Elections are frequently won by incumbents on name
| recognition.
|
| Doesn't that imply that voters don't know better? arguments
| like that don't fare well in my opinion.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| In your opinion? I don't understand your point. Do you
| think I'm underestimating the ignorance of the average
| voter?
|
| Also, it's "fare," not "fair" in this context, FYI.
| wpasc wrote:
| TY for the spelling correction. My point only is: Given
| that many incumbents win re-election on name recognition
| alone, doesn't refute the above post mentioning that
| elections can serve as term limits.
|
| To say to a voter, "we're instituting term limits because
| you voters don't learn about challengers to incumbents".
| This proposition would not be popular amongst voters even
| if it is true that people are ignorant and stupid when it
| comes to voting.
|
| Just because voters may not take full advantage of
| elections' ability to oust a politician may not suffice
| as reason to alter who the voters want. Voters voting on
| name recognition vs. actually liking a rep kinda have to
| be treated equally. If not, a rule curbing that may be
| interpreted as limiting people's choice.
|
| Again, I'm not disagreeing with you! just trying to state
| how a new rule like term limits could be perceived and
| the difficulty such a perception would create.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I see. I didn't intend that to be a point that stands on
| its own, merely a partial explanation for why incumbents
| win so much.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"the median age of the Senate is 20 years more than the
| median age of the US population"_
|
| Has the mean age of politicians increased faster than that of
| the general population over time, or has it always been this
| way?
|
| Do politicians become older, on average, as democracies mature
| and power structures become more entrenched?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _We cannot have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding
| the fate of our country as it goes into the future._
|
| While I agree that the age skew in politics is curious, and
| perhaps incorrect, the other side of this is, "We cannot let
| people with 30 years less experience, knowledge, and history
| decide the fate of our country as it goes into the future."
|
| Automatically associating youth with intelligence and
| "progress" and stereotyping people with years of accrued wisdom
| to being "old fogies" is textbook ageism.
|
| It's something most of the rest of society grows out of by the
| time they hit college, but also a thing that persists within
| the SV bubble and what is now called "bro" culture.
| Fortunately, it's also illegal in many arenas.
| dathinab wrote:
| But when I look at the decisions today's politicians do wrt.
| IT, I would argue that many 30year old ex-IT students have
| _far_ more experience wrt. IT topics than our current
| politicans.
|
| The problem is that the tech landscape moved to fast and all
| the wisdom and experience often just doesn't apply anymore
| but, to make it worse, sometimes it seems that you can bend
| technology to make it apply but that a very dangerous
| fallacy. One I have seen politicans step into frequently.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's not just IT. How many legislators have experience with
| any particular thing that they write legislation on? Not
| very many.
|
| I will admit that IT legislation often seems insanely out
| of touch. But I wonder if that's just because I know IT
| better than I know, say, the merchant marine.
| hobofan wrote:
| How many ex-IT students become politicians?
|
| Old politicians with no IT experience are being replaced
| with young politicians with no IT experience. Age limits
| don't improve anything here.
| seppin wrote:
| None. They are all lawyers.
| jvalencia wrote:
| I'm also not sure that having IT-savvy politicians will
| change policy. The government has certain safety goals
| (eg trafficking) that it will still have to deal with.
| These might be a driver regardless of tech savvy-ness.
| There's an assumption that if only they knew enough --
| but perhaps it's not them who don't know enough.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _But when I look at the decisions today 's politicians do
| wrt. IT, I would argue that many 30year old ex-IT students
| have _far_ more experience wrt. IT topics than our current
| politicans._
|
| While I don't disagree that many 30-year-old IT people know
| more about IT than politicians, politicians have to see
| what is good for the whole of society, not just what
| affects people in an IT bubble.
|
| We've seen countless times that technologists cannot be
| trusted alone. They have to be tempered by people from
| other disciplines.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > While I don't disagree that many 30-year-old IT people
| know more about IT than politicians, politicians have to
| see what is good for the whole of society, not just what
| affects people in an IT bubble.
|
| Let's not delude ourselves, most lawmakers are not
| pinnacles of wisdom. They're not looking out for the best
| outcomes for society in the long term. They're partisans
| controlled by whomever pays them the most.
| kiba wrote:
| The politicians are _lawyers_ as opposed to former IT
| professionals.
| killface wrote:
| Oh yes, I'm totally going to grow out of this climate
| crisis... my, how hard are your pearls being clutched right
| now?
| reroute1 wrote:
| just because you believe in climate change doesn't mean you
| won't have other issues, like the parent was suggesting...
| as evidenced by your dying comment. That's not at all what
| they were saying.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I agree that stereotyping older people is ageism and should
| not be tolerated.
|
| However, specifically with regard to age limits, it's
| interesting to note that the law which prohibits age
| discrimination in the US also explicitly allows for mandatory
| retirement for "bona fide executives or high policymakers"
| who are age 65 or older [1]. In addition, many areas of the
| government such as the military and State Department have
| mandatory retirement ages. So one would naively expect our
| elected officials to fully support a similar policy being
| applied to them!
|
| [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm
| paulmd wrote:
| We already have ageism enshrined in our constitution with
| minimum ages. If that's OK, then we should have upper age
| limits as well.
|
| The lack of an upper age limit is potentially _far more
| damaging_ in the modern era than not having a lower age
| limit. People in the founding fathers ' times didn't live
| into senility, if you made it to 60 you were doing pretty
| good and probably not going to make it for another 3 decades.
| We have had at least one definitely senile president in the
| last 30 years and the evidence strongly suggests our current
| one is suffering from dementia as well. The two leading
| Democratic presidential candidates are both 80+ years old and
| one of them is looking awfully senile in public too. Dementia
| is a serious threat to American democracy in the modern era.
|
| The structure of the American political system means that the
| people most likely to make a successful run are the ones that
| have spent 30-40 years building political capital, and those
| are inherently the oldest among us. Without some form of
| check, you end up with rule by octogenarian which is where we
| are.
|
| What's the average age of a Senator these days? 65 or so? And
| that is _the most likely place_ a presidential campaign can
| be launched from. And you would want to be a senior senator
| to be able to beat out the other senators...
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| None of the leading Democratic presidential candidates are
| in their 80s.
| wahern wrote:
| The average age of the 1st Congress (1789) was 46.[1] The
| average age of the 50th Congress (1887) was 57.[2] The
| average age of the 115th Congress (2018) is 61.[3]
|
| That's not a terribly huge change, especially considering
| the increase in age of the population.
|
| [1] Average age of all listed Senators at 1789.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_United_States_Congress
|
| [2] Average age of all listed Senators at 1887.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50th_United_States_Congress
|
| [3] https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-
| 6474d...
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Automatically associating youth with intelligence and
| "progress" and stereotyping people with years of accrued
| wisdom to being "old fogies" is textbook ageism.
|
| Is it as much ageism as outright restricting rights based on
| age? That seems far more like ageism except it is so deep in
| our cultural DNA we don't view it as such. If we can, as a
| group, say that everyone below a certain age cannot have
| rights such as voting, thus saying they have no ability to
| have a say in politics that will impact their entire lives,
| then why can't we have age caps like saying no one over 60
| can be elected in government because <insert some reasoning
| that mimics the same logic not letting any 17 year old vote>?
| ta999999171 wrote:
| I don't want experience.
|
| I want people with less time to become endebted to corporate
| M.I.C. scumbags who have financial/personal blackmail on
| those people.
| maverick2007 wrote:
| I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not know
| what they're talking about or do they know who's paying for
| their reelection and governing accordingly? I would hope and
| think that they have the self awareness to know what they're
| not experts in and surround themselves with people who are
| experts in what they're weak at (maybe IT). I just worry that
| they have that but they know if they stop voting according to
| party line/special interest, their reelection coffers will be
| much lighter.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I guess my cynical question is: do these legislators not
| know what they're talking about or do they know who's paying
| for their reelection and governing accordingly
|
| Why is that the dichotomy? How about, they know what they're
| talking about, and simply care about different things than
| you do?
| ryandvm wrote:
| > We really need age limits.
|
| That's a pretty regressive suggestion. What's next? Revoking
| voting rights by race or gender?
| rayiner wrote:
| > We really need age limits. And lower term limits. We cannot
| have people stuck in an era 3 decades old deciding the fate of
| our country as it goes into the future. They are simply not
| equipped to deal with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. I think millennials' commitment to
| freedom of speech and information is lower than that of the
| older generation. ("Speech as violence" and whatnot. Young
| people today adopt a lot of the same modes of reasoning we
| ridiculed Tipper Gore for 25 years ago. It's just directed to
| different perceived evils.)
|
| I'm also not sure that "people just don't understand how the
| Internet works" is actually anybody's problem. It should be
| remembered that Section 230 actually originated in the
| Communications Decency Act in 1996, a sweeping attempt to
| regulate the Internet. A panel of three federal judges, who
| were then in their 50s and 60s, in Philadelphia struck down
| almost the entire law, leaving only the Section 230 safe
| harbor. Two points are illuminating.
|
| One, the decision was widely praised for its cogent
| articulation of how the Internet works. It was impressive in
| its technical detail. For example, it describes routing
| packets: https://cyber.harvard.edu/stjohns/aclu-findings.html
|
| > Messages between computers on the Internet do not necessarily
| travel entirely along the same path. The Internet uses "packet
| switching" communication protocols that allow individual
| messages to be subdivided into smaller "packets" that are then
| sent independently to the destination, and are then
| automatically reassembled by the receiving computer. While all
| packets of a given message often travel along the same path to
| the destination, if computers along the route become
| overloaded, then packets can be re-routed to less loaded
| computers
|
| It also described how USENET works:
|
| > For unmoderated newsgroups, when an individual user with
| access to a USENET server posts a message to a newsgroup, the
| message is automatically forwarded to all adjacent USENET
| servers that furnish access to the newsgroup, and it is then
| propagated to the servers adjacent to those servers, etc. The
| messages are temporarily stored on each receiving server, where
| they are available for review and response by individual users.
| The messages are automatically and periodically purged from
| each system after a time to make room for new messages.
| Responses to messages, like the original messages, are
| automatically distributed to all other computers receiving the
| newsgroup or forwarded to a moderator in the case of a
| moderated newsgroup. The dissemination of messages to USENET
| servers around the world is an automated process that does not
| require direct human intervention or review.
|
| The other point is that it was a radically pro-First Amendment
| decision:
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we...
|
| > We were surprised at how sweeping the ruling was," said
| Cathleen A. Cleaver, director of legal studies for the Family
| Research Council of Washington, a supporter of the law.
|
| > "They went far beyond where they needed to go," she said.
| "Not only did the court strike down the law against the display
| of pornography, but also the parts that made it illegal to
| transmit pornography directly to specific children. It's very
| radical."
|
| Finally, as a nit picky aside: of course the median age of the
| senate is higher than the median age of the whole population.
| The median age of the population includes children. Senators
| are, however, required by the Constitution to be at least 30.
| So the relevant point of comparison is the median age of people
| who are over 30.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Agree with the first part of your point on median age (and
| was going to say the same thing before seeing you had).
|
| However, I disagree with the second half. Imagine if the
| Constitution said Senators had to be 55 or older. Would that
| alone be a reason to conclude that the current Senate makeup
| was "excessively young"? IMO, the relevant comparison is the
| median age of people who are adults (and could therefore
| plausibly serve in any governmental role full-time).
| paulmd wrote:
| > I'm not sure I agree. I think millennials' commitment to
| freedom of speech and information is lower than that of the
| older generation. ("Speech as violence" and whatnot. Young
| people today adopt a lot of the same modes of reasoning we
| ridiculed Tipper Gore for 25 years ago. It's just directed to
| different perceived evils.)
|
| And that is OK. Liberal societies function fine while banning
| hate speech and naziism and other types of activity. There is
| not a slippery slope here, we really can just ban the nazis
| marching in the streets and not fall into a dictatorship.
| It's worked fine for, say, Germany for the last 70 years.
|
| This isn't a popular sentiment among the capital-L
| libertarians that tend to populate this site and software
| development as a whole, but even the US has limits to the
| type of speech that are allowed. There is no reason that the
| particular places they happen to have been interpreted are
| necessarily the optimal ones.
|
| Again, the slippery slope theory has literally been proven
| false, experimentally. The US is sliding into fascism
| (executive/legislative lawless and direct attacks on
| democratic mechanisms and constitutional checks/balances)
| while upholding near-absolute speech rights, while the EU is
| maintaining democracy with stronger restrictions. There is no
| correlation between these things, or there is a negative
| correlation between these things. The libertarian theory of
| slippery slope-ism is false.
| harryh wrote:
| In Switzerland a man was manhandled by police and then
| fined for saying "Allahu akbar" in public.
|
| https://www.theweek.co.uk/98878/swiss-muslim-
| fined-178-for-s...
|
| Elsewhere a European Court of Human Rights rules that
| defaming the Prophet Muhammed "goes beyond the permissible
| limits of an objective debate" and "could stir up
| prejudice" and thus exceeds permissible limits of freedom
| of expression.
|
| https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/defaming-prophet-muhammed-
| no...
|
| I love posting these together because of their
| contradictory nature.
|
| We're obviously not talking about a dictatorship here, but
| claiming that free speech rights in Europe are just fine is
| clearly wrong.
| paulmd wrote:
| And the fact that the US has stronger speech rights
| doesn't keep the police from manhandling minorities and
| throwing the book at them either.
|
| These things are uncorrelated. Except for the part where
| one society has nazis marching in its streets and one
| doesn't (specifically, recalling Charlottesville).
| mjevans wrote:
| How about we require our legislators to become educated enough
| on a topic to understand the broad view of how it works before
| the regulate any given thing.
|
| In the case of regulating websites, they might need to
| understand (at a high level) what an IP address is, generally
| what DHCP and DNS do, how a web-page is like a mix of recipe
| and content for dynamically constructing a publication. How a
| database might provide some of that content and the difference
| between static and dynamic content.
|
| I think if there are any particular boogeymen they're after,
| those examples should be deconstructed and contrasted against
| similar publications that they find OK.
|
| Maybe the Library of Congress should have a Congressional
| Education sub-office dedicated to providing such instruction,
| and if not state colleges should definitely file briefings for
| congress.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That brings to mind subdividing Congressional seats into
| domains to allow for specialization. The devil as usual is in
| the details.
|
| Issues include:
|
| * Defining expertises to not become outdated or too general
| to give any specialization advantage.
|
| * Handling border cases and deciding when every domain may
| vote on it.
|
| * While allowing specializations would the subdivisions
| actually be more expert in practice? We have already seen how
| "sabotour boards" assemble as those who are most interested
| in it are those who oppose it.
|
| I have already taken it as a given that qualification
| gatekeeping would take Goodheart's Law to new levels as
| refusing to recognize reality gives more concrete power.
| Still it is an interesting concept.
| paulmd wrote:
| You've just suggested a poll test/literacy test for
| politicians. That definitely has obvious problems based on
| who gets to choose the "right" answers.
|
| The question that will be on the revenue committee exam: "do
| tax cuts pay for themselves"? (I mean, I know the answer, but
| which one is going to be "correct"?)
|
| It's much simpler to realize that the majority of the people
| above a certain age can no longer stay current with
| technological developments. Yes, some of them can, but the
| vast majority are starting to lose it and certainly aren't
| absorbing anywhere near as much as they used to.
|
| Just like the minimum age limits also throw away a certain
| number of potentially qualified younger candidates who do
| have enough life experience to make good decisions, it's OK
| that upper age limits would exclude a certain number of older
| candidates who could still keep up with things.
| dillonmckay wrote:
| Repeal the 17th Amendment?
| __jal wrote:
| Don't fall for the trap that this is about "big tech".
|
| It isn't.
|
| It is about your freedom of speech and ability to protect
| yourself.
| OrangeMango wrote:
| It is about big tech: WhatsApp doesn't need section 230
| immunity if it isn't part of Facebook.
| elpool2 wrote:
| Can you explain how? The article lists WhatsApp as an example
| of an interactive computer service that is covered by section
| 230 immunity. Is it because WhatsApp is purely a messaging
| service without curation or moderation and so the law
| wouldn't consider WhatsApp to be a publisher anyway?
| nullspace wrote:
| I'm confused? What's WhatsApp being part of a big tech
| company got to do with 230 immunity?
| t223 wrote:
| What a great write up. The bill is rather dangerous, and I'm
| immediately suspicious of anything claiming to help children in
| the context of legislation.
|
| FOSTA/SESTA is a horrible law and it has done a lot of damage.
| ne9xt wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but I can see how this would apply
| to a platform providing end-to-end encryption and how
| restricting that is a bad thing. What's to stop someone from
| using, e.g. PGP in an email? Isn't that outside the scope of
| this?
| wmf wrote:
| There aren't PGP plugins for mobile apps and people wouldn't
| use them if there were.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| ... or maybe the Attorney General can declare that a service
| that allows PGP-encrypted communiques is in violation and
| will lose its 230 protections. The law as constructed is way
| over-broad.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| FOSTA/SESTA was _intended_ to cause lots of damage.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| True, but arguably it wasn't intended to cause the specific
| types of damage it caused, and its actual targets suffered
| less than expected.
| DuskStar wrote:
| A cynical person would say that this is because the
| _stated_ targets weren 't actually the targets, just like
| with this act. (Stated targets: sex traffickers, real
| targets: tech companies offering e2e encryption)
| pjc50 wrote:
| The intended target was sex workers, far more so than
| pimps.
| xvector wrote:
| Yes, IMO FOSTA/SESTA were deliberately malicious and yet
| another successful attempt to force puritanical ideals
| upon our citizens, regardless of the damage it would
| cause.
|
| The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They
| knew exactly how it would play out.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They
| knew exactly how it would play out.
|
| Blumenthal (who wrote SESTA and also this bill) was
| waging a war against consensual sex work for years, long
| before he was elected to the Senate.
|
| The fallout from SESTA was not accidental; it was by
| design.
| frandroid wrote:
| There was plenty of warning of the effects of these bills
| on sex workers. Legislators at best ignored them, and at
| worst were happy for these side effects, depending on where
| they sit of the political spectrum.
| microcolonel wrote:
| Write Congress to say that if something like this is passed, it
| must be actual legislation, and not this "whatever the regulator
| approves" nonsense.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Sadly that horse has long left the barn, fled thousands of
| miles, died and been eaten by vuktures. Its grandchildren are
| feral and flee at the sight or scent of humans.
|
| I suspect there are only two ways to fix that issue both
| unlikely. Game theory and sloth favor buck passing to agencies
| let alone the logistical scale involved with a mytgical ideal
| Congress of honest actors.
|
| The first is an amendment limiting the delegation abilities of
| congression to departments and agencies to be essentially
| programatically explicit or else be unconstitutionally vague.
|
| The second is a precedent and jurisprudence shift as judges
| strike down such delegation as unconstitutional.
| manfredo wrote:
| So in short:
|
| * EARN IT creates a committee that is set out to define "best
| practices" for preventing child sex abuse.
|
| * Companies that don't adhere to these best practices lose
| liability protections for user-generated content.
|
| * The attorney general can unilaterally edit these best practices
| as he sees fit.
|
| * The current attorney general has repeatedly made statements
| that he wishes to eliminate the ability for companies to offer
| end-to-end encryption - he wants all communications to be
| vulnerable to wiretapping.
|
| This effectively gives the attorney general the power to compel
| tech companies to do whatever he wants (so long as he can argue
| that it's preventing sex abuse) by threatening to revoke section
| 230 protections, and it's likely that this would be used to
| revoke protections from companies that offer end to end
| encryption.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Would such a thing have a positive side effect of effectively
| encouraging decentralized end-to-end encrypted technologies?
| eugeniub wrote:
| People almost never deliberately use end-to-end encryption.
| They use it by accident when centralized services they
| already use like WhatsApp and iMessage implement it.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| For the commoner, sure. For hn readers, it's probably more
| appealing.
| outworlder wrote:
| Elitist connotations aside, the fact that you _want_ to
| use encryption is irrelevant if noone else is using. Are
| you going to talk to yourself, or only with a close-knit
| group?
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I'm a member of several group chats on keybase which I
| use daily... Who is elitist here exactly? Sure I also
| have several friends who I talk to not on keybase. As
| soon as there's a service that's easier to setup, more
| reliable, and supports voice, I'll push it on all my
| friends.
|
| Also, the keybase app on desktop runs 8+ processes,
| chewing more than 1gb of ram and several gb of storage,
| and the phone app is using about 1gb of storage too. I
| very begrudgingly endure this because it's the only
| service I trust so far, along with my friends who also
| value e2ee.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Don't Stand Out is a key privacy defence and is impossible
| with actually decentralized technologies. "The alleged
| terrorist was communicating with somebody else" is nothing,
| whereas "The alleged terrorist was communicating with
| JeremyNT's Private Node" means now you (JeremyNT) are getting
| the third degree. "It was somebody else" will get you just as
| far then as it would any number of people who were in the
| wrong place at the wrong time and went to prison (Birmingham
| Six) or worse (several inmates at modern US "black sites" as
| described in the Senate's book on torture).
|
| When fifty people organise something the government wants to
| track but it can't distinguish that from the five hundred
| people ordering an Uber, the five thousand people reacting to
| a funny cat video or the fifty thousand people who just got a
| weather update those fifty people have privacy. That's
| important, it's why for example Signal uses Google's and
| Apple's generic notification frameworks rather than only
| using their own. It's also why eSNI plus DoH is on the
| critical path for the Internet.
| diroussel wrote:
| So what will happen? Facebook will lose ability to deploy
| encryption and move servers overseas? Unlikely to affect non US
| internet users, unless my phone suddenly looses ability to use
| encryption.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| The article does mention that companies could argue they took
| "reasonable steps" if they refuse to follow the best practices.
| If they choose that route and win whatever court battle that
| follows, it'd essentially neuter this law. So there would at
| least a way out but it's risky.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Lets think of what "reasonable steps" a service provider of
| encrypted messaging could take to prevent child porn on their
| service...
|
| * They could put up a big message saying 'no child porn'. I
| don't think that would be considered sufficient by a court.
|
| * They could put a 'report' button. Again - insufficient.
|
| * They could make client-side automated content scanners.
| Might be accepted by a court, but if you provide the scanner
| to the user, the government could argue it is easy to make
| images which bypass the scanner, which it would be.
|
| * They could break encryption on some percentage of chats. A
| court would likely be looking at a particular case, and would
| consider the service provider not to have done their duty if
| the particular case at hand hadn't been checked.
|
| I don't really see any reasonable steps which would stand up,
| other than breaking e2e and doing server-side scanning.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| The proposed law (according to the article) requires the
| committee coming up with the rules to consider user privacy
| (not that they have to actually do that), but that gives a
| platform some cover to argue that breaking end-to-end
| encryption is not reasonable and that the report button
| will have to suffice.
| syshum wrote:
| I can not wait for all the people to tell me if I do not support
| this law then I want children to be abused.
|
| At this point any law that has position of "protecting the
| children" it almost universally bad for society, Children are
| being used a political tools for Authoritarians to remove
| individual rights and liberties
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I can not wait for all the people to tell me if I do not
| support this law then I want children to be abused._
|
| I cannot wait for all the people to tell me if I do not oppose
| this law then I am a neo-Fascist.
| syshum wrote:
| I will not called you a Neo-Fascist, I will however Label you
| Authoritarian which would be accurate given the nature of the
| law.
|
| Then I would ask you why you hate Individual Freedom and
| liberties which would also be a valid question given the
| nature of the law
|
| Laws of this type embodies the "good of society" is more
| important that the liberties of the Individual, is places the
| collective ahead of the individual.
|
| I, a libertarian individualist, reject any and all forms of
| collectivism and authoritarianism
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| You reject the concept of enforced laws?
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| where's the lie though
| novok wrote:
| You need creepy catholic sex abusing priest cartoons (with the
| senators & the AG as the priests) saying it's for the children
| while they act like peeping toms to really get the point
| across.
| lanternslight wrote:
| Or school teachers.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Really the give away is in the vagueness if they don't give an
| actual explanation as to how it will protect children. They
| haven't even thought about it enough to come up with a reasoned
| pretext. Instead they are using them as a demagogic thought
| terminator for emotional manipulation.
|
| The other hint is if the rest of their actions aren't
| consistent with their claimed position, giving a damn about the
| children.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| AG Barr basically said as much in a speech at the White House
| Human Trafficking Summit this morning. Decried "military-grade
| encryption (lol) being marketed on consumer devices" and made
| all the same old for-the-children excuses.
|
| Naturally no mention of how his own DoJ botching and slow-
| walking the Epstein case may be helping some of the worst and
| most prolific traffickers in the country escape justice. It
| takes real gall for him to complain about how difficult
| encryption is making it for investigators to gather evidence of
| human trafficking, when the FBI still hasn't raided Epstein's
| New Mexico ranch.
|
| https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1223320056257376256
| syshum wrote:
| Pulling a Pay out of the Anti-Gun Playbook "Encryption like
| this is only for war" and "Regular people do not need this
| type of encryption"
|
| I wonder how many people support this line of reasoning when
| it used as a case to strip me of my Gun Rights, but reject it
| when it used to strip me of my Privacy rights...
|
| //for the record, I support both Gun and Privacy Rights
| clSTophEjUdRanu wrote:
| I like owning firearms so I'm regularly told that I love dead
| children. Welcome to the club.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| I do find it interesting that Lindsay Graham is one of the main
| sponsors of this legislation. From the linked article,
|
| >The idea is to make providers "earn" Section 230 immunity for
| CSAM claims, by complying with a set of guidelines that would be
| developed by an unelected commission and could be modified
| unilaterally by the Attorney General, but which are not actually
| binding law or rules set through any legislative or agency
| rulemaking process.
|
| The structure and powers of this agency sound kind of like the
| Consumer Financial Protection Bureau setup by the Obama
| administration. The CFPB was an unelected commission that could
| create rules financial institutions had to abide by, and dole out
| punishment in terms of fines, without going through a legislative
| or rule making process. What were Lindsay Graham's thoughts on
| the CFPB?
|
| >Graham, however, called the agency the "most out-of-control,
| unaccountable federal agency" in Washington.
|
| >"Really no oversight at all," he said. "They can get into
| everybody's business. I don't think they added much at all to the
| consumer protection. They sure add a lot to increasing costs for
| midsize banks throughout the country that had nothing to do with
| the financial collapse."
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/graham-durbin-cons...
| komali2 wrote:
| Pointing out that a politician is a hypocrite is a waste of
| time. Finding a financial conflict of interest is a waste of
| time. These days either catch them in a rape or looking at
| child porn or don't even bother.
|
| Was first presented to me in a talk at defcon about hacking
| public records for political dirt.
| sailfast wrote:
| Pedantic but for clarity: CFPB is directed by a single person
| who serves for five years and cannot be terminated by the
| President except for cause, which is one of the reasons
| unaccountability is brought up. Folks often indicate they want
| a "commission" (similar to SEC or FDIC) instead of an agency
| with a single director.
|
| All that said, yes, this panel of people making
| "recommendations" that are not laws but have the effect of law
| seems like a great recipe for selective enforcement based how
| large or small a company is and what they do, which is not
| going to do much to solve the bigger issue. Congress is not
| going to move at the speed of the internet / technology. I'm
| not sure if that's a named "rule" yet, but it should be.
|
| Illegal communities will move. And similarly, conditional "safe
| harbor" to operate a website should not be a thing. These regs
| are easily avoided by operating in other countries which will
| just make the US even less involved and competitive in this
| space.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > CFPB is directed by a single person who serves for five
| years and cannot be terminated by the President except for
| cause, which is one of the reasons unaccountability is
| brought up.
|
| Of course they could be fired, the legislature could take
| action and rewrite the law. There is no pedantry required
| here, it is simply Graham's trademark hypocrisy.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| I just think it's interesting that you can make almost
| exactly the same argument against this new commission that
| Graham made against the CFPB with a couple of words swapped
| out:
|
| "They can get into everybody's business. I don't think they
| added much at all to child protection. They sure add a lot to
| decreasing privacy for people in the country that had nothing
| to do with the exploitation of children."
| KarlKemp wrote:
| You can make that sort of argument against anything: the
| FAA, FEC, FCC, National Wetland Agency, etc.
|
| What's euphemistically called "the real world" simply moves
| too fast for _any_ legislative body to keep up, let alone
| the current US Senat. So to some degree, the specific
| implementation of regulation will always be delegated to
| agencies.
| duckMuppet wrote:
| Agreed. The Obama administration used federal agencies,
| the FBI, DOJ, and infamously the IRS to target
| conservative groups.
|
| All of these groups tend to be beholden to their
| particular agendas.
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| Does it matter? What Graham says is purely a matter of partisan
| support, there's no principle to be discerned.
| jeffdavis wrote:
| Hypocrisy is so common for everyone, and especially
| politicians, that it's not really noteworthy. It's fun to point
| out but ultimately doesn't convince anyone.
|
| (The SCOTUS tries harder than most people to at least _appear_
| consistent.)
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