Some days ago, I made a post about the EARN-IT Act:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/9/2079530/-STOP-THE-EARN-IT-ACT-ONLINE-CENSORSHIP-BILL-BEING-FAST-TRACKED-BY-US-SENATE
This act was actually covered in the past as early as 2020, and for the most part said bill has not changed significantly, nor has it addressed any of the criticisms made by major online privacy and human rights groups:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/activists-writers-and-security-experts-all-oppose-earn-it-act
https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220203/18143448411/how-earn-it-act-is-significantly-more-dangerous-than-fosta.shtml
Here is a quick summary of what the bill is most likely designed to do, despite their claims of dealing with Child Safety online:
- there’s a high chance that LGBT and racial content will be targeted and censored, since the bill is being pushed by a known Hate Group called NCOSE (formerly known as Morality in Media).
- it will remove encryption from the internet, making privacy nonexistent. All of your private messages/anything will no longer be private.
- making the internet (And the United States for that matter) much less secure against hackers, foreign entity attacks, thus also making this bill an impending national security nightmare for the USA on TOP of being invasive.
- And (ironically), not only making the internet LESS safe for kids, but also making the internet and government less able to deal with child and sexual predators. By letting third parties spy on kids' most private thoughts and photos, they are basically making it much easier for child abuse to occur, making it much easier for predators online to find and target these kids. And by forcing websites to become state actors and collect CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), they basically make that evidence completely inadmissible in court. Which means that sexual predators are more likely to run free.
In other words, not only does this bill destroy online privacy and give power to a hate group and a government that wants to control and censor ANY content on the internet, it utterly fails to even protect the kids that it claims to help, which defeats the supposed intent of the bill entirely.
It's also telling that this exact same bill was introduced 2 years ago by the exact same people, and not ONLY did they fail to fix any of the problems in this bill, but they also received the EXACT same criticisms from the EXACT same online privacy and human rights groups.
Make no mistake, this is a censorship and surveillance bill in disguise, using kid safety as a shield to avoid scrutiny, using confusing language and misdirection to make it much harder to not only figure out what the bill is really for, but also to make it harder for those who recognize the bullshit from taking a stand against this dangerous bill.
They know this is a bad bill. And they don't care, and they hope that we won't care either.
As of 2/10/2022, it left the committee phase of the bill process, and if we don't stop it before it reaches the Senate floor, there's a good likelihood that it might end up passing, and crippling all of the internet, LGBT content and online privacy for good.
But that’s not the only horrible aspect of this bill, because only recently there was an aspect that I hadn’t considered, but I now realize is even worse:
If this bill passes and is signed into law, the people in charge can use this as an excuse to censor and silence any activism they deem to be against their interests. INCLUDING US.
The above points are absolutely HORRIBLE against activism, and DailyKos would not be spared anymore than any other group, because what we do is actively against what the hate group NCOSE and the more fascist leaning/conservative parts of our government who push this bill do not want against them.
One of the people pushing this bill is Senator Lindsey Graham FOR FUCKS SAKE, who we all know as a toady for Trump’s reich wing regime, who is still running around despite his part in the GOP’s fascism.
The other person is Richard Blumenthal, who has outright admitted that this bill is nothing more than an attempt to undermine encryption.
it’s supported by a far-right anti-LGBT hate group NCOSE, a conservative anti-lgbt anti-sex group that was known as Morality in Media before they rebranded in 2015 as an "anti sex trafficking org", yet they still meet with extreme homophobes.
NCOSE is also the group behind the FOSTA/SESTA bill from 2018. NO ONE talks about how NCOSE is anti-lgbt because they've grown to have so much power they're making bills for governments internationally just like this Earn It Act.
Additionally, NCOSE’s president was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center (who monitors hate groups throughout the USA) as a major leader figure of a hate group.
Are these the kinds of people who sound like they would be trustworthy to handle our internet privacy with any degree of nuance? For that matter, can YOU be certain that they’ll only focus on child safety, and NOT abuse these laws for something far more sinister?
The answer is NO.
If they get this act through, people like them will abuse this in order to censor ANYTHING that goes against what the hate groups and the government want.
BLM activism? GONE.
LGBT activism and content online? GONE.
Online privacy? GONE.
Abuse Survivors Speaking Out Safely? GONE.
Activism Against Dictatorships across the world? GONE.
Websites like DailyKOS? Censored to oblivion and possibly worse depending on how they choose to interpret our activism.
So no, this isn’t just some little internet thing that you can just choose to ignore, choose to dismiss because you think they can’t get this bill through. Because They are currently trying to fast track this bill through the Senate while everyone is distracted with their “Look how stupid Trump looks now”, their pop culture bread and circuses, the Russia/Ukraine situation…
If this goes through, we can say goodbye to our ability to speak out against fascism, against hate groups, against Trump, against the corrupt politicians in the government pushing this bill.
WE. WILL. BE. FUCKED.
So I’m begging you, take this seriously. Call your Senators. Fax them, email them, petition them. Tell them they MUST oppose this bill, and for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, to NOT allow this bill to reach the Senate Floor.
There is a script being passed around that might help:
Spread this around whatever social media platform you have, using these tags:
#EarnItAct #StopTheEARNITAct2022 #STOPTHEEARNITACT #StopTheEARNITAAct2022
Bother whatever Big YouTubers (Like Beau of the Fifth Column for example) to speak up about this. He already talked about it once, he can do it again. We need to be LOUD. We need to be HEARD.
We don’t know how or when the bill will reach the Senate Floor. It could be within weeks. It could take months. They’re either going to spring it on us when we’re not ready, or waiting us to lose momentum so they can push it when we’re weak.
WE CANNOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.
The Internet as we know it depends on it.
The Lives of Everyone who depends on the privacy of the internet to protect them from dangerous dictators and state oppression depends on it.
DailyKOS depends on it.