Censorship is the real aim of internet Senate bill (Editorial) – masslive.com

It's all about protecting children, don't you know. And who could oppose that?

So said those behind a Senate bill called the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies -- EARN IT -- Act.

And so persuasive were they that the Judiciary Committee voted unanimously, 22-0, to move the bill to the full Senate. When something can pass out of committee without a single dissenting vote in our hyper-partisan era, you know it's either completely noncontroversial or an obviously great idea.

This bill, though, is neither.

To read the bill, and to hear its supporters talk it up, you'd think that the bill would end the scourge of online child pornography. And if that were true, then one could understand why it passed in committee unanimously.

Trouble is, the bill, by most rational estimates, would actually do next to nothing about child pornography. It would, however, chill speech by making those who monitor Web postings increasingly skittish, and, as a result, prone to added censorship.

Specifically, the bill amends Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It's that section that shields Internet companies from legal liability for postings made by others. Simply put: Website X isn't legally responsible for something posted by User Y.

Such has allowed both the good and the bad that has made the Internet balloon over these decades.

Though the Senate bill that had been proposed contained sweeping anti-encryption provisions that made it toxic to civil libertarians and a broad swath of tech advocates, the bill was successfully amended on Thursday to kill those proposals. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the bill's sponsor, called the encryption debate "a separate issue." Further, he said, "My goal is not to outlaw encryption."

Sadly, that may well be Attorney General Bill Barr's goal, so don't be surprised to see the encryption discussion bubbling up again soon enough. When it does, it'll be fundamentally important to remember one central point: We don't make the people safer by making their personal devices and their data less secure.

That discussion, thankfully, can be put on hold for the moment. Sadly, though, everyone should anticipate lots of yapping about child pornography and exploitation as essential elements of the new Senate bill. Thats a cover for the real aim of the law -- to add government control and increase censorship on the net.

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Censorship is the real aim of internet Senate bill (Editorial) - masslive.com