Cyberscoop is well known for goveernment coverage on how bad their security is. In this case, the senate is supposedly putting a bill together to get child exploitation off the Internet. That’s well and good, but most of the sites now are securely encrypted, so getting that information is going to be much harder.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously advanced a bill that would combat child pornography, but which technologists say risks weakening
encryption for average internet users by exposing tech companies to lawsuits.The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act) would remove liability protections for companies like Facebook
when users share child pornography on their platforms. The bill is the latest front in a long-running struggle between lawmakers who see end-to-end encryption
as shielding criminality, and civil liberties advocates and technologists who say weakening encryption could make swaths of the internet less secure.Lawmakers responded to criticism of earlier versions of the bill by making the standards that tech companies have to meet to receive liability protection
voluntary. The bill also now states that tech providers won’t be targeted under federal law simply for providing encryption technology, thanks to an amendment
from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
This has been a debate for quite some time. While child activity on the Internet in the criminal sense does need to be stopped, weaking the encryption is not the answer. It isn’t facebook, twitter, or any other platform’s responsibility what users put on the platform. If I were to run this story and someone posted a link to something I didn’t want posted, I’d remove it. But Facebook, Twitter, and larger platforms and blogs may not be able to do that, and this law jhas stuck the time around here.
Section 230 says that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided
by another information content provider”
To prove my point on why 230 works, there’s a portion of the paragraph that says:
For years, across Democratic and Republican administrations, law enforcement officials have said that encryption has hindered criminal and terrorism investigations. They have also, however, sometimes used hacking tools to access encrypted data on devices.
Then you have articles like this recent blog post leading to the article where hacking tools were used to decrypt such strong networks. If this is the case, than the particular debate continues where we have and need the free speech aspect, but yet we should be punished if we are found to break the law.
To read the entire article from Cyberscoop, please Senate panel advances bill to combat child exploitation, but critics fear it could weaken encryption written by Sean Lyngaas of the Cyberscoop staff. The fight goes on.