
The EARN-IT Act-Prepare for another attack on encryption in the U.S. - hourislate
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/the_earn-it_act.html
======
spacephysics
We need a constitutional amendment to protect encryption. Such attacks will
continue until enough rights have been eroded away.

Sadly I think such reform won’t occur unless an unprecedented event occurs
requiring such change, which I don’t see happening in the near future. The
alternative being to inform the general public why this is important, which I
see as even less probable.

~~~
yummypaint
More fundamentally we need more explicit privacy protections. The
"unreasonable" in the 4th amendment clearly isnt sufficient. The right to
encrypt would then be a correlary.

------
throwanem
I wonder if anyone is really looking past the coronavirus pandemic at stuff
like this. It seems like a great time to sneak unpopular legislation through
without much outcry.

I also wonder what continuity of government is like once DC gets locked down.
Is the legislature prepared to operate remotely? Is it preparing? In 2020 I
see no essential reason why physical presence should be required for
lawmaking, but I haven't heard anything anywhere in the news, ever, about the
infrastructure that'd be needed to support this kind of "remote work". Have I
overlooked something?

~~~
mschuster91
I'm not aware of any major Western parliament that has any kind of remote/MPs-
under-quarantine contingency model other than varying emergency regulations.

With parliaments routinely having hundreds of MPs I'm not even sure how to
appropriately hold a debate, given that telco etiquette goes down the drain
already with a dozen participants - and that's not to speak on how to do the
audio mix, you'd need extremely expensive audio mixers that can keep up with
hundreds of inputs simultaneously.

~~~
throwanem
The technology for keeping such large debates manageable predates electric
lighting. Applying rules of order to a teleconference scenario would no doubt
have its wrinkles, but overall I don't see why it couldn't be done.

The "mixing desk" would be virtual.

Probably the major cost would be provisioning backhaul, but who are we
kidding, Verizon and Comcast would get the contract. Gouge like hell for it,
too, in the best tradition of government contracting. But most of what happens
in the process of legislating doesn't happen in the House and Senate chambers,
and I do wonder how well that'd play out without anyone in physical proximity.

------
whatshisface
Mods: why is this flagged as a dupe? I clicked on "past" and this was the only
one that showed up.

