Signal sends smoke, er, signal: If Congress cripples anonymous speech with EARN IT Act, we'll leave the US
- Reference: 1586462952
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/09/signal_earn_it/
- Source link:
In a blog post on Thursday, the non-profit said it will have to shut down in the States should the [1]EARN IT Act be passed and signed into law. Legal and liability concerns would make it impossible to operate in the US, it claims.
"Some large tech behemoths could hypothetically shoulder the enormous financial burden of handling hundreds of new lawsuits if they suddenly became responsible for the random things their users say, but it would not be possible for a small nonprofit like Signal to continue to operate within the United States," Signal's Joshua Lund [2]said .
"Tech companies and organizations may be forced to relocate, and new startups may choose to begin in other countries instead."
Pitched as a measure to stop the spread of child sex abuse imagery online, the EARN IT Act proposes stripping websites and the like of their Section 230 free-speech exemption under the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
This would leave them open to lawsuits should they fail to adhere to a number of yet-to-be-determined best practices, the most likely being either allowing law enforcement the ability to decrypt select conversations or requiring providers to screen all messages.
This is the rub for Signal and digital rights groups who oppose the bill. They believe that it will be impossible to be able to screen all messages on the service without compromising the security of the entire platform. After all, secure end-to-end encryption means exactly that: conversations are protected at all steps between the sender and recipient, and not even Signal can access the contents.
What's that? Encryption's OK now? UK politicos Brexit from Whatsapp to Signal [3]READ MORE
"You can’t have an Internet where messages are screened en masse, and also have end-to-end encryption any more than you can create backdoors that can only be used by the good guys. The two are mutually exclusive," [4]argued Joe Mullin at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, another opponent of the bill.
"Concepts like 'client-side scanning' aren’t a clever route around this; such scanning is just another way to break end-to-end encryption. Either the message remains private to everyone but its' recipients, or it’s available to others."
Signal notes that, in its case, use of end-to-end encryption is the fundamental draw of the platform, and its benefits are widely recognized by some of the same people who want to torpedo the Section 230 protections.
"For a political body that devotes a lot of attention to national security, the implicit threat of revoking Section 230 protection from organizations that implement end-to-end encryption is both troubling and confusing," Lund said.
"Signal is recommended by the United States military. It is routinely used by senators and their staff. American allies in the EU Commission are Signal users too. End-to-end encryption is fundamental to the safety, security, and privacy of conversations worldwide."
Meanwhile, [5]the EARN IT Act remains in its early phases, having yet to see any vote in the House or Senate. ®
Sponsored: [6]Choosing A Low-Code Vendor
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/06/earn_it_bill_encryption/
[2] https://signal.org/blog/earn-it
[3] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_brexit_from_whatsapp_to_signal/
[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-bill-governments-not-so-secret-plan-scan-every-message-online
[5] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3398
[6] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8579/choosing-a-low-code-vendor?td=wptl1936
If you follow the money
It will be the very people who promote encryption publicly who are likely to profit the most from an end to most encryption. Currently, many of those who provide encrypted platforms are the same people who make a living out of selling as much of everybody's data as possible, makes you wonder what kind of conversations their lobbyists have behind closed doors.
Re: If you follow the money
Do they? The only one that comes immediately to mind is the chat app WhatsApp, which is Facebook-owned. The rest of the big players only seem to offer end-to-end on things they get paid for, and don't bother with it for other communications they work with. Apple, for example, offers relatively good encryption for many of their things, including end-to-end on some, but to use any of those, you have to already have purchased an Apple device. Anything that is clearly mined, such as email services from Google and the like, are not encrypted and there's no pretense that they are. The clearest providers of completely encrypted communication services I can think of are all smaller nonprofits, such as Signal, Tor, or Telegram.
Re: If you follow the money
The most likely effect of this bill will be to improve encryption methods.
I am still waiting for the first (originally American) IT company to close its doors in the USA. The only organisation I know which did it, organized scientific HIV congresses and that happened when foreign HIV positive participants weren't allowed to enter the USA.
"a political body that devotes a lot of attention to national security"
No, it does not devote a lot of attention to national security, it devotes a lot of attention to the excuses that allow it to pretend that national security is its focus.
In reality, it just wants the means to spy on everyone without bothering with the Constitution of its own country.
Because that is so much easier than paying attention when the CIA warns them that Al Qaeda terrorists are getting flying lessons on US soil.
"For a political body that devotes a lot of attention to national security, the implicit threat of revoking Section 230 protection from organizations that implement end-to-end encryption is both troubling and confusing,"
Sending mixed signals.
EARN IT
Would be a huge foot self shoot by the American Gvt.
So, it'll probably happen :-)