General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhile primary and media dramas unfold, heed a warning from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
We're learning these days that surveillance is what's done to us by those in and out of our country.
Security is one thing. Privacy is quite another.
Give corporations, or the state, access to your privacy in the name of security, and Americans might never know who perpetrates chaos and disquiet upon them. We've been learning that in elections. It's time we fight a constitutional infrastructure fight, too.
I highly recommend that DU read more from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who I've followed since their founding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation
Are they perfect? Who is? However, they've done great work and their mission is to keep our online user rights as free as possible.
To the point: EFF is campaigning for Congress to stop the Graham-Blumenthal Anti-Security Bill, called the EARN IT Act. Blumenthal just leaked it. https://www.eff.org/document/earn-it-act
Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have been quietly circulating a draft version of EARN IT. Congress must forcefully reject this dangerous bill before it is introduced.
Other digital rights groups are with them. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200131/11252343832/lindsey-grahams-sneak-attack-section-230-encryption-backdoor-to-backdoor.shtml
So is Stanford. https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-ban-end-end-encryption-without-actually-banning-it
There is nothing as seductively bi-partisan as surveillance, as I see it.
As I see it, the EARN IT Act is misguided at best, and totally evil in the hands of a DOJ Attorney General like Barr and his legal toadies.
The EARN IT Act is the stuff of totalitarian aspiration for Barr, justified by his Opus Dei fundamentalist christo-fascist outlook on how to make America "great" again; and of course, Trump, who would love those powers like he loves Kim Jong-Un.
They both do each other's bidding in anything having to do with the pacification of Americans.
The politics of inevitability must not rule us. To lose a bit of privacy is one thing; to lose both our privacy and security to this pack of jackals is another.
We The People need to stop fighting in packed courts AFTER stealth moves are made on us, and practice our agency, to keep working preventively to protect and defend our constitutional rights to "life, liberty, property" and PEACE. Just peace, not unjust peace.
So please. Let's do the Democratic thing of multi-tasking, and make our opinions known by phone to any and all Democratic and Republican House members.
Please. Call at least one House member. https://www.house.gov/representatives
denbot
(9,901 posts)Vote!
ancianita
(36,132 posts)nail down the real consequences of this bill.
ancianita
(36,132 posts)djacq
(1,634 posts)Big Brother is watching.