Though it purports to address some of society’s worst crimes, in reality, the EARN It Act will do far more harm than good. It will jeopardize the privacy of every American, fundamentally alter the freedom of our online communications, and, potentially, undermine the very prosecutions it seeks to enable. https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-opposition-s-3398-earn-it-a...
Ive read through the bill and I dont see what everyone is concerned about. There's a committee with no power, slight wording changes, and generic anti cp stuff. What are we supposed to be mad at?
It would give legal basis to ban the virtue signaling trans-topic flame-baiting posters from forums without the fear of getting cancelled. This is a good thing. It helps gatekeep small, niche communities that have been infested by people looking to cancel top developers, maintainers, project leaders.
Apple's on-device scanning experiment failed miserably. It was (at least, co-opted as) a litmus test for working around the post-Snowden E2EE-at-scale status quo in which we find ourselves.
I don't have enough background to understand the implications of EARN IT for the LGBT community. What is occuring, though, is a lack of common ground between libertarians and law enforcement:
If the tech idealists and law enforcement types fail to find common ground to develop robust compromises, EARN IT, which will be implemented sub-optimally out of convenience, will have the negative consequences noted by the techno-libertarian crowd.
However, a sound compromise does exist. It's just that nobody is talking about it, because most folks have strong opinions at one end or the other. The "edge", as it may be, is slated to introduce tens of trillions in new tech value in the coming decades -- all in support of hyperscale networking. It's a chance to find robust solutions that satisfy most parties, but not if the libertarians maintain the hard-line. It's up to the tech community to develop responsible encryption recovery techniques, because clearly law enforcement and congress are too provincial to understand what's at stake. Yet, by maintaining the hard line, congress will get their way, and we'll be less safe as a result.
Responsible encryption recovery is possible if you throw out the existing mechanisms of centralization along with "trust us, we're the NSA" mentality. Build your techniques around ideas that reject centralization, and reject mathematically unauditable recovery schemes. Reject techniques that exclude civil libertarians from the systems of checks and balances needed.
I say this with urgency because finding common ground is the only way we'll achieve a more responsible system of oversight for policing our private comms.
This is was the special secret FISA court was supposed to be - a check and balance for the people vs the overlords given unconstitutional search and seizure capabilities.
Unfortunately you will never be able to argue again for the whole 'it just for [insert horrible thing here] - we can trust the overlords, and there is even a 'verify oversight board for the people'
why? because we've already seen it used not for foreign terror, but also drugs and sex and speech. It's been abused and used as an excuse by yahoo, microsoft and all the others.
Even when dreamhost fought back for a bit, there is no way to fight it truthfully (they have all the data recorded already, just easier and faster to get it with a digitally delivered request.
Obama's peeps used it for lesser things, trumps people used it for lesser things, the anti-trump people used it for lesser things. It's been used and abused against the people and the politicians.
Even when several resigned from the citizen oversight positions - a sign that shit is totally wrong - nothing changed.
The whole thing reeks so bad it's made the effbeeeye stink from the top to their lawyers even. Some of the saddest things in our history imho.
Now they want more data. It's like a group of babysitters that have already killed several wanting more access to more babies.
You'll claw my privacy from my cold dead hands. Tech will tend to centralize over time and be incredibly attractive to those with an authoritarian bent. The world must respect that no, not even the entirety of the rest of the world wanting to be privy to the content of a communique is an acceptable reason to crack open a pair of people's shared comm over a technological link.
The price of Liberty is vigilance eternal; and home of the brave means nothing if we're too cowardly to allow others tge right to organize and think without forcing an in for the authorities in every technological medium.
There are lines, and I, for one, will not budge on this one. No matter the price.
Except that govt will ingratiate itself not by force, but by the stroke of a pen. This may not affect you if you have means to deploy your own E2EE in a lawful or covert manner, but it will affect the masses.
Comments about consequence for adhering to such a hard line still applicable.
The language in this comment may be hyperbolic but the sentiment is on point. Phrases like “responsible encryption recovery” are Orwellian indeed, since it can only be code for “government mandated backdoor”. This is not a paranoid hypothetical; such mandates already exist in our world. Visit any dictatorship to discover the consequences. So the fascist epithet sticks as well. Mealy-mouthed calls for “compromise” in this regard deserve a robust reply.
What kind of ridiculously sensationalized title (and blog post) is this? The act is taking steeper measures again child pornography. Are you somehow trying to imply that this will harm the LGBT community?
It takes almost no measures against child pornography specifically while essentially ending encryption (or moving encryption to a “first prove you’re not using it for harm” approach) and allowing an unelected commission to essentially define what is and what is not considered inappropriate for the internet to view
The bill is pushed by anti-lgbtq/religious groups under the guise of protecting children, similar to the failed California ballot measure pushed by religious groups in 2016 to require all porn viewed in California to feature the usage of condoms under the guise of promoting safe sexual practices (and allow individuals who witnessed such a video to personally sue the content provider), yet was actually a thinly veiled attempt to shut down the entire porn industry in California, where it was essentially invented.
Both of these cases should and likely would be thrown out by the Supreme Court as a direct threat against the first amendment, but who knows anymore.
IANAL, so can someone please explain this section:
“(7) CYBERSECURITY PROTECTIONS DO NOT GIVE RISE TO LIABILITY.—Notwithstanding paragraph (6), a provider of an interactive computer service shall not be deemed to be in violation of section 2252 or 2252A of title 18, United States Code, for the purposes of subparagraph (A) of such paragraph (6), and shall not otherwise be subject to any charge in a criminal prosecution under State law under subparagraph (B) of such paragraph (6), or any claim in a civil action under State law under subparagraph (C) of such paragraph (6), because the provider—
“(A) utilizes full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device encryption, or other encryption services;
“(B) does not possess the information necessary to decrypt a communication; or
“(C) fails to take an action that would otherwise undermine the ability of the provider to offer full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device encryption, or other encryption services.”.
(b) PURPOSE.—The purpose of the Commission is to
14 develop recommended best practices that providers of inter-
15 active computer services may choose to implement to pre-
16 vent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation
17 of children, including the enticement, grooming, sex traf-
18 ficking, and sexual abuse of children and the proliferation
19 of online child sexual abuse material.
>The act is taking steeper measures again child pornography. Are you somehow trying to imply that this will harm the LGBT community?
Sensationalized yes 100%, a bill that defines what is safe for children to see and not see content wise is absolutely a cause for concern as it enters a very partisan political chamber.
Sadly just cause a bill is aimed to do good does not mean the fine print doesn't screw over vast populations or has anything to do with how its advertised at the begining. Look at what the policies that made Pizza a 'vegetable', they were attached to policies to help children's health.
This reddit link had a petition of a pro pedophilia group (prostasia foundation) against it. I don't think it does any favours for people who agree dangerous information online needs to be dealt with.
From the reddit post: *UPDATE 3: The Prostasia Foundation is likely pro-map, so I deleted the link. I am dearly sorry to those I made sign that petition. The link is also not working for some people, so I replaced it with the Mozilla one.
> Hacker News really is hostile to the LGBTQ community.
I never noticed that. Keep in mind that HN is not a uniform mass, it's full of people with wildy different opinions. Yes, there are probably some homophobic comments, but they are a tiny minority.
> seeing people here equate being gay to a mental disorder
I would expect such a comment to get downvoted into oblivion and/or called out by other users.
It's true. There are many supportive people too. I think the problem is that the 'mental disorder' guys are not banned. So they keep on commenting. Flagging doesn't work that well, because one already read the comment.
That's a slur and you should know much better than to post it. If you know of a way to write software to classify such comments correctly when they first appear on a public internet forum, I'm all ears. Otherwise, it takes time for countervailing mechanisms, like user flags and moderator action, to kick in and deal with such comments. To act like those comments are somehow representative of the community is 100% untrue and I'm ashamed to see you stoop to that.
>To act like those comments are somehow representative of the community is 100% untrue and I'm ashamed to see you stoop to that.
They do represent an aspect of the community. Not the community as a whole - you seem to assume that every criticism of a part of the community is an attack on the whole - rather a toxicity within it that seems to be growing, albeit slowly and not without resistance. That it is growing isn't a reflection on the users and moderators as much as the society that feeds into the community. We can only do what we can, but no one can command the tides.
To pretend this toxicity and bad behavior is something alien and wholly detached from the community, or that because comments are flagged and killed they don't represent the community, is specious and counterproductive. All of it is the community, good and bad. This rising toxicity and anger and cynicism is a real problem, and if you didn't take every criticism of the community so defensively as you seem to, I think you'd agree.
No, I don't know what can be done about it, but I'm certain it's not a problem that can be solve with software classifiers. I'm not going to be ashamed for pointing it out and complaining about it, either. If we simply quietly downvote and flag but otherwise stay silent, then there's no social pressure against that kind of behavior.
But I know you don't like repetition so I'll try not to do it that often.
> If we simply quietly downvote and flag but otherwise stay silent
People already do speak up.
I just don't think that HN has a general homophobia problem. Such comments are definitively outliers and are dealt with by the mods and the community. The only thing I would complain about is that it doesn't happen fast enough for a site like this where posts come and go quickly.
A big part of the pull of HN is the opportunity to participate in live discussions happening around things that are on the front pages. The problem with 'how it's dealt with is that matters' is that it's essentially telling the LGBTQ person to come participate only after things have settled down or dealt with. By then the heat of the discussion is over, or the post has been shot down to the 3rd or 4th page. In some places, there is a practice of women cooking food and first all the males eat it while the women wait. Then after they finished, the women start eating. They are treated like second class citizens. Sensible places ban people who say being gay or LGBTQ is mental health issue. It's 2022.
=> Sensible places ban people who say being gay or LGBTQ is mental health issue.
I don't agree. Perhaps the person who says being gay is a mental health issue has a deep knowledge of a technical subject that is of interest to the community, and 80% of their posts are about that subject, and very informative, while only 5% of their comments are about being gay as a mental health issue. Banning such an account outright would deprive the community of the 80% of comments from that account that are informative and useful. If they're not banned, the 5% of the comments that the community finds problematic will be downvoted most of the time. This is a more measured and better targeted reaction than an outright ban.
If someone is on a crusade to convince everyone that gay people are sick, on the other hand, and all their posts are about that, then that's a different matter. Such an account is not really contributing anything useful to a community like HN. So ban away, I guess.
There's another reason. As an LGBT person myself, I want to hear opinions that are hostile towards me, even against my very existence. I want to hear them because if I don't, I won't be aware of all the awful things that people make up in their minds about people like me and I won't know how to protect myself against them. Of course I already know many of the awful things that people think and say and do, but having those opinions out in the open where everybody can see them also acts as a barometer for popular opinion. If everybody starts agreeing with the person who says gay people are mentally ill, then I know things are turning bad. If everyone challenges such opinions, and I can see that they are downvoted to [dead], then I know that at least this community is not uniformly hostile.
Last, if someone really thinks that people like me are sick or shouldn't exist, what's the point of banning them? That won't change their opinion. We can't change peoples' minds forcefully, and even if we could, we shouldn't. Freedom of thought means that some people will think thoughts everyone else finds despiceable. So be it. If we only accept some views in public discussions and ban all the rest what happens when the political winds change and it's my thoughts and opinions that are not kosher anymore?
I think you have a point. I do think that people get (shadow) banned for writing stuff like this, but we need more mods. Ideally, they should live in different time zones.
One the other hand, I personally don't remember seeing such comments before. Does this really happen regularly?
Maybe if people did not open the discussion with virtue signaling their sexuality, things wouldn't be so bad. I'm not straight, yet I hate on the rainbow crowd, and I never mention it because it's fucking cringe to bring these things up outside of personal discussions in person. You give everyone a bad name because of this. Just like how most women I know shun and find feminists cringe.
Would you like the people to stop thinking their thoughts or do you like someone else to read those thoughts (if they are published) so that they can 100% shield you from them for free?
Homophobia exists and we have to fight it. That's the sad reality. Yes, homophobic comments are harmful and reading can already do damage. But what can we do apart from downvoting/flagging?
Being gay is not a mental disorder, but gender dysphoria (just like body dysphoria) is, and should be medicated and treated responsibly instead of making it the new norm and not providing people with the mental care they need.
> gender dysphoria (just like body dysphoria) is, and should be medicated and treated responsibly
I'm sure you were trying to be offensive here (no surprise here, coming from a throwaway account) but apart from it not being called that anymore (DSM-5 calls it "Gender Incongruence" now) and it not being a disorder (again, see DSM), you are mostly correct. It should be treated by medication (HRT) and social transition, and of course appropriate therapy should be provided.
And you, random commenter on the internet not even invested in the discourse enough to use real account and obviously trying to push your own agenda, are the authority? If you're a professional you surely wouldn't mind sharing the sources and your credentials, would you?
Are you seriously implying that being LGBT is a mental health issue?
I’m opposed to the restriction of content online that doesn’t inherently infringe on someone else’s liberties or body, personal opinions be damned. It’s asinine to believe that an entire Internet worth of people should have their accessibility to content limited because “I don’t like this.”
[0]https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/339...