Digital privacy: Encrypted smartphone messages threatened by Grassley and Ernst’s ‘Earn It Act’

Secure private messages on your smartphone are in jeopardy as Republicans and Democrats in Congress push forward with their hostile offensive against “Big Tech.”

The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (Earn It Act) aims to spur tech companies into taking action against child porn. The bill got unanimous approval this month from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Iowa’s Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the committee, and Sen. Joni Ernst are among more than 20 Senate bipartisan co-sponsors of the legislation.

Cracking down on child porn sounds like a good idea but companies already are required to take action when they discover such content on their platforms. The effect of the Earn It Act would be to pressure providers to do mass surveillance of private data on the government’s behalf. End-to-end encryption could be on the chopping block.

Facing a patchwork of state laws and the threat of criminal enforcement, some companies would simply choose not to offer popular encryption services that help keep our communications secure from hackers and state spies.

The bill clears the way for states to hold tech companies liable if their services are used for child sex abuse material. It creates an exception to Section 230, the controversial and widely misunderstood federal law that gives providers some immunity for third-party and user-generated content posted on their sites.

Facing a patchwork of state laws and the threat of criminal enforcement, some companies would simply choose not to offer popular encryption services that help keep our communications secure from hackers and state spies.

Digital encryption is an easy political punching bag — if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, as they say. Conservatives worry that Antifa is using it, liberals worry that Boogaloo Bois are using it and they both worry that terrorists and sex traffickers are using it.

But most encrypted messaging is just not that interesting. Millions of Americans use it everyday for routine communication and they might not even realize it. Popular apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage use encryption, as does Facebook Messenger’s “secret conversations” function.

There are plenty of reasons for sending secure messages that have nothing to do with violence or exploiting children. Families use it to share photos, health information and website logins. Domestic violence victims use it to conceal plans from their abusers. Political organizers use it as a barrier to illegal searches.

Politicians love to take something that’s already illegal and try to make it extra illegal. It allows them to say they’re “doing something” about the problem. All they’re really doing is ramping up surveillance on law-abiding citizens.

You can tell a lot about a bill by its enemies and this legislation has some interesting ones — the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Campaign, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Wikimedia Foundation, to name a few.

More than 50 organizations recently co-signed a letter to Grassley and Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin. They warn the proposal will fail to achieve its intended goals and also threaten free speech and privacy.

“The EARN IT Act would have devastating consequences for everyone’s ability to share and access information online, and to do so in a secure manner,” advocates led by the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in a Feb. 9 letter.

(319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com

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