Earn it the Hard Way

Dateline: February 10th, 2022

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted today, to advance the dangerous EARN IT bill. We’re disappointed to see the committee advance this misguided bill. If enacted, EARN IT will put massive legal pressure on internet companies both large and small to stop using encryption and instead scan all user messages, photos, and files. 

The bill could now be voted on by the full Senate at any time, or worse, included as part of a different “must-pass” legislative package. We need you to contact your representatives in Congress today to tell them to vote against this bill.

 EARN IT will allow states to lower the legal standard required for prosecutions over CSAM, and it will let the use of encryption be evidence in lawsuits and criminal trials. The overt goal of EARN IT is to pressure internet companies to start doing widespread scanning of user messages and photos. This scanning is incompatible with strong encryption. 

The harms will fall on the most vulnerable people. Once we allow encryption to be compromised to scan for CSAM,, authoritarian regimes will demand the same capabilities to track information shared by activists and journalists. People subject to domestic abuse, including children, won’t have secure channels of communication to report and reach out for trusted help.

This public service announcement was provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation