March, 11 2020, 12:00am EDT
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The EARN IT Act: A Very Bad Bill Gets its Day in Congress
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will convene a hearing on the EARN IT Act, a bill that threatens all online communications and the encryption technologies used to secure those conversations. Introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), the legislation would open a door to online-content screening by a governmental commission serving under U.S. Attorney General William Barr.
WASHINGTON
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will convene a hearing on the EARN IT Act, a bill that threatens all online communications and the encryption technologies used to secure those conversations. Introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), the legislation would open a door to online-content screening by a governmental commission serving under U.S. Attorney General William Barr.
The EARN IT Act has already earned the disapproval of leading free-speech and digital-rights groups that have raised concerns about its threats to internet users' privacy and free speech rights.
If passed, the legislation would charge a new congressionally appointed commission with the development of "best practices" that all websites, applications, broadband providers and other online entities could follow to avoid liability for what the bill describes as "online child sexual abuse material" posted on their sites or sent over their services by third parties. Failure to certify compliance with these best practices could remove immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Act and expose online entities to state criminal prosecution and civil suits for content they did not themselves create.
Free Press Action Senior Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia made the following statement:
"The EARN IT Act is constitutionally suspect. It threatens key First and Fourth Amendment rights while failing to specify how it could or would administer the tests online entities need to pass to preserve those rights for themselves and their users.
"The drafters of this bill obviously want to address some real harms, yet their solutions could radically change the way we communicate online. The legislation sets up the U.S. government as the arbiter of all communications and conversations that happen on the internet -- a terrible idea in any instance, and a truly terrifying one when the person driving this effort and seeking this power is none other than Donald Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr.
"Online child sexual-abuse material, as the bill labels it, is a heinous problem. It's understandable that the co-sponsors of this bill want to address it. But the legislation's construct could upset the entire internet ecosystem to combat activities that are already clearly unlawful.
"The bill takes aim at a popular political punching bag, Section 230, which shields websites, apps, broadband providers and other online entities from liability for things they do not themselves say. According to Section 230, a speaker who posts unlawful or defamatory content online is fully responsible for it, while a website like Twitter or Yelp or an internet provider like AT&T or Comcast isn't liable for the content they host or transmit on that speaker's behalf.
"But Section 230 has no impact on federal criminal law, which already makes production and distribution of child sexual-abuse material a crime and already requires online entities to tell law enforcement about the existence of any such material they find on their networks. Subjecting online providers to new civil suits and state laws unless they comply with the Earn It Act's currently undefined best practices is a poor substitute for strengthening existing federal criminal laws as needed.
"The bill's stated intent is to remove Section 230 protection for online entities that, in Bill Barr's opinion, don't earn it. Recent reports suggest that the Department of Justice could float proposed best practices very soon -- undermining the commission and the processes the bill lays out for lengthy bureaucratic and congressional consideration of this scheme before it even begins.
"The particularly frightening part is the collateral damage caused by ceding so much authority to this government or any government. For example, handing over this kind of power to an administration and attorney general with such an abysmal record on LGBTQIA+ rights could seriously impact the availability of lifesaving information. We wouldn't want an ordinary administration to have the authority to police the content that flows over our communications networks. The threats are that much greater with the Trump administration.
"The First Amendment implications are obvious and severe, made all the more so by the bill's attempts to dance around them. To call the best practices unconstitutionally vague gives them too much credit. We don't yet know what these rules might look like, and to charge a governmental commission with review of every online provider's practices on the basis of unannounced standards would chill free speech.
"It's also likely that AG Barr would advance standards that would enable him to outlaw secure encryption, based on the notion that the police should have a key to every lock and a transcript of every private conversation.
"The idea that we can break encryption and safely store a record of everything just for the putative good guys is technically unsound. And it's anathema to the privacy rights people must have against not just corporate actors and criminals but against overly intrusive governments, too."
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
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However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
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Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
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In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
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Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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