Stop EARN IT, the anti-encryption bill

EARN IT’s full name is the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. 

The bill would remove important protections granted by the Communications Decency Act (section 230). The rules currently in place broadly protect platforms from being liable for what users say on them; instead, the person who said it is responsible. Practically, this means that platforms can offer their services to us without pre-filtering or monitoring our every post. This protects us from blanket censorship on large platforms, and is critical to the existence of small startup or alternative platforms, who can’t provide unlimited moderation. A consequence is that section 230 protection is one of the only defences we have to stop the Internet from being even more deeply controlled by a handful of deep pocketed multi-billion dollar corporations.³

Under the guise of protecting children from harm online, the EARN IT Act would force platforms to instead ‘earn’ these protections by adhering to a set of ‘best practices’ that is decided by a commission, and which can be overridden by the Attorney General to add new ones at any time.^4,5

It’s well known that Attorney General William Barr has a long history of attacking encryption and has frequently called for service providers to compromise their users’ security.⁶

It’s clear that Barr would use EARN IT to demand that platforms stop offering the end-to-end encryption that keeps our communications safe and private. This is highly irresponsible and unsafe - especially with so many of us now working remotely and using the Internet to communicate and do business, more than at any other time in history. 

Stand up to this transparent attack on our privacy and security. On Thursday July 2nd, the Senate Judicial Committee will be reviewing the proposed bill. If we can reach enough of the committee members with our messages, we can stop this bill dead in its tracks. Send your message now!