Privacy isn’t a privilege, it’s a right.

I just read an incredibly well written and thought out piece on EARN IT. What is EARN IT? It’s new legislation introduced to the USA Senate that would remove service providers’ protections under Section 230 (the one that absolves them of liability for the actions of their users) if they do not implement a methodology to scan for child pornography in every message sent in their platform.

Section 230 is the reason that services like Facebook, Discord and Telegram can exist. Without it, they would become liable whenever a user does something illegal. If those protections go away, then these services simply would no longer be able to function and would go away. So they are going to do whatever they have to in order to retain those protections.

Currently, end-to-end encryption does not allow for services to fulfill the obligations under EARN IT because it’s not possible to detect child pornography in an encrypted message. Services like What’s App and Telegram use end-to-end encryption to protect their users’ communications from prying eyes, like the Chinese Government or the Iranian Ayatollahs (Telegram is banned in Iran specifically because of this). These services would have to drop end-to-end encryption to scan each message sent to fulfill their obligation with EARN IT in order to retain their Section 230 protections. Not doing so opens them up to massive liability that will lead to bankruptcy in no time.

So what is EARN IT other than an attempt to force service providers to abandon End-to-End encryption? Nothing.