Dianne Feinstein's reply to constituents' opposition to EARN IT act
Sigh, another feel-good law being proposed with no consideration for second or third order effects.<p>Tech companies would be required to police their systems for this data. There’s no good automated way to do this, so an army of compliance workers would be needed if you have a non-trivial amount of content on your platform. For small tech companies, this would be prohibitively expensive.<p>Then there’s the 800lb gorilla in the room: the encryption issue. How can a company police its content if it doesn’t know what it is? Are we really suggesting that every end-to-end encryption technology be nuked in favor of “saving the children?” How many children will it really save? And how many others will it endanger in oppressive, dictatorial regimes? Not to mention the myriad other criminals seeking to exploit unencrypted and non-private technologies?<p>This is akin to vehicle manufacturers being required to monitor the audio of vehicle occupants at all times in case a rape occurs.<p>“Think of the children.” This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It’s disgusting.<p>I’m counting the days until Feinstein leaves office. EARN IT causes more harm than good.