About a month ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) EARN IT Act, S. 3398, setting up a potential full Senate vote. With very few legislative days left on the Senate’s calendar between now and November’s elections, it is highly possible that Senator Graham may try to quickly pass his bill. Although the bill is marketed as combatting child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) online, the bill was -- and, even after being amended, remains -- a thinly veiled assault on encryption.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to mark up a bill that is a classic piece of Washington, D.C. misdirection. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, S. 3398, presents itself as a bill targeted at fighting the spread of child pornography (rebranded as “child sexual abuse material,” or “CSAM”), which obviously no decent person would oppose. However, the actual impact of the bill reaches far beyond this purpose, simultaneously threatening both tech platforms’ liability protections and their ability to deploy strong encryption for their users, endangering innocent Americans’ security in the process.

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