Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center and a fe

The Assault on Internet Privacy: Why Data Encryption Is Essential

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2021-06-07 12:00:02

Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at NYU School of Law.

Amanda Kadish is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School and a former civil rights intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center.

Despite having more access to our communications and movements than ever before, federal officials continue to wage an assault against internet security, fighting to undermine the encryption technologies that protect our personal information. But as dangerous as this offensive already is to secure communications, it could get much, much worse.

Justice Department supporters in Congress are pushing an array of measures that could further empower federal law enforcement agencies to snoop on all of our communications while crippling the use of network encryption, which has grown in response to increasing consumer concerns about data breaches and cyberattacks. 

The EARN IT Act is a bill that uses child sexual exploitation as a pretext for eroding legal protections for tech companies, with big implications for encryption. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants tech platforms limited immunity from being treated as the publisher of content shared by users, provided that they remove prohibited material in good faith. Under the bill, they could lose this immunity if they fail to follow new, unspecified federal guidelines, particularly if they offer end-to-end encrypted services.

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