The Earn It Act Empowers Big Tech.
The Earn it Act proposes a contractual quid pro quo with Big Tech which offers continued protection from things like their biased breeches of the 1st Amendment. In exchange, the communications giants are expected to be the first line of defense against online child porn, now named CSAM (Child Sexual Exploitation Material), scanning every text, image, and file that is shared. The bill has already been pushed through the first phase of the Senate, whose members welcome becoming better bedfellows with the technological gurus who provide the apps, websites, and mobile services that we all depend on to communicate. Indeed, the Earn it Act gives unbounded license to tech companies to ignore privacy laws and intercept all communications under the semblance of looking for CSAM.
The fact that these companies have already been abusive of their powers in deleting content or banning users who publicly disagree with the government-sanctioned narrative is well known. So, how can we even entertain not just allowing, but offering incentives, to the partisan and biased Internet masters to go through our private files and transmissions? The Earn It Act puts the onus on the telecommunication providers to prove they are doing everything in their power to seek and share with law enforcement all instances of CSAM that cross their platforms. Any company continuing with end-to-end encryption for its users' privacy protection, would then be subject to expensive court costs to prove their efforts, to detect and/or eliminate the transmission of CSAM were sufficient for the governing bodies ruling in these circumstances. While it doesn't directly. at this time, demand backdoor access to the data for the government, but just the act of eroding the privacy usually provided by the internet companies' current encryption practices is a violation of the 4th amendment. As the proposed law demands that these resources do the government's spying dirty work for it.
The Proposed Child Protections are Short-sighted.
If you look closely at the proposal it becomes evident that the "intended" child protection is just hyperbole to hide the government's agenda to jam its proverbial foot in the door of our private exchanges. And we know once they get a foot inside, that door is eventually coming off. The Earn It Act also will do nothing to protect the child exploitation that occurs outside of the Internet. Those relatives, teachers, and youth leaders with direct access to minors, who would abuse them for their own sexual gratification, have no need to create or distribute CSAM. Furthermore, the criminal court cases of Jeffery Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell have revealed that the rich and powerful can fuel their lustful exploitation of children without the internet; they had a whole real-world island. Moreover, with the revelation that the internet offers no protection, those who are guilty of distributing CSAM electronically will simply find other means to collect and trade their illicit material.
Clearly, with the Earn It Act and its focus on CSAM, the government is willfully avoiding giving resources to the many other ways children are exploited. Is it by design, that these rich and powerful lawmakers are holding themselves out as protectors of the innocent, when this act will actually enable other forms of child exploitation by diverting resources? Or is it more insidious, like so many recent government power expansions, and not about protecting any children at all, but rather to be used to backdoor spying on every citizen who uses an app or the internet to exchange information with anyone? The government is guilty of abuse of powers, most recently putting constitutional rights on hold for mandates that they themselves often ignored. How much worse could this get when private conversations are no longer private? How long before you're unable to vent your anger in a text message, or pass a meme that mocks someone's undignified behavior for fear of being accused of hate speech or even sedition?
We have been witness to the abuse of the power of tech and media companies who control the narrative and cancel or vilify anyone with a counter opinion. Can we trust these oligarchs, who abuse their power silencing public commentary, with sanctioned access to our private interactions? If the Earn It Act is passed by the power-hungry bureaucrats who fear non-compliance from their citizens, how long until the once highly encrypted protections on banking and other sensitive data can be easily hacked because of built-in access points? And then with the movement away from real cash to digital currencies, how long before your life savings disappear? The Earn It Act in its narrow-minded approach is possibly not only a waste of resources, but an irreparable crack in the armor of anonymity that the Internet has up until now given its users.
A Better Alternative Exists to Protect Kids.
Unfortunately, the Earn It Act is just another bureaucratic nightmare. Proposing a 19 member panel of The Attorney General, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and someone from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), with 16 additional politician appointed "experts" in child exploitation, consumer protections, and computer security. Better to adopt the alternative proposal the Invest in Child Safety Act which would focus on empowering, and funding law enforcement specifically to Enforce and Protect Against Child Sexual Exploitation. This would be headed by people with a proven background (experience) in prosecuting and investigating these crimes. The idea is to literally invest in the current organizations that are in the business of protecting children and going after their assailants. The groups involved would be focused on protecting children. addressing missing children, street kids, as well as helping identified victims. It wouldn't overlook the Internet problem either, with a two-fold attack proposed to go after CSAM. First $15 Million, and more jobs are proposed for the technologically competent engineers and analysts who weed through the technology company leads on CSAM content discovered online. As well as another $60 Million for an Internet Crimes task force to hunt down and bring in the perpetrators. Obviously, the Invest in Child Safety Act is a superior proposal for protecting children and our rights….but are YOU going to do anything to stop the Earn It Act from being the one that is implemented?