JULY NEWSLETTER

Amended EARN IT Act Still Threatens Fundamental Rights

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee marked up the EARN IT Act, a bill CDT has opposed since it was introduced in March of this year. Even with amendments, the bill still threatens fundamental rights and the ability of all internet users to enjoy the crucial protections of strong encryption. Online intermediaries would face a dramatically expanded risk of lawsuits over both user-generated content and use of end-to-end encryption on their services.

As CDT's Emma Llansó said in a release following the markup, "The EARN IT Act sets the stage for judges across the country to apply scores of different legal standards to intermediaries' content moderation and security practices. We know from decades of experience that threats of litigation lead website operators and other intermediaries to censor speech and shutter services. The EARN IT Act vastly amplifies those threats."

The Judiciary Committee adopted an amendment from Senator Leahy that was intended to reduce the impact on the ability of online services to provide end-to-end encryption to users. Unfortunately, the amendment does not alleviate the risks to encryption, since services will still face extensive litigation concerning whether the shield created by the Leahy Amendment applies. CDT is continuing to share these and other concerns with congressional offices.

In Case You Missed It

CDT has a number of open positions: we're hiring a Research Manager, a Free Expression Policy Counsel/Analyst, a Director of European Affairs, and a Senior Technologist for Elections & Democracy. Find more information and apply to work with us at cdt.org/careers.

We joined the fight to protect the Open Technology Fund (OTF), whose projects have improved privacy and security for every user of the internet the world over. OTF recently came under existential threat when President Trump appointed Michael Pack as the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which has supported OTF over the past ten years. This is the latest assault by the President on free speech and internet openness; in Pack's first weeks, he fired OTF's leadership and board, along with the leadership of Radio Free Asia and other outlets, in a stunning partisan attack. Congress should protect OTF and support efforts to sustain open-source technologies that preserve an open internet in repressive regimes around the world.

CDT and a group of over 100 other civil rights and civil liberties organizations urged Congress to drop federal funding of surveillance technologies that are being used against protesters to militarize communities and criminalize dissent. Congress must address the unconstitutional and dangerous use of surveillance by state, local, and federal police officers against demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd and so many others perpetuated by systemic police brutality.

CDT in the Press

Alexandra Givens, CDT President & CEO, joined Voice of America last month for a discussion about free speech and censorship in social media. The video is available to watch here.

Greg Nojeim, Director of CDT's Freedom, Security and Technology Project, was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on cell phone-based contact tracing: "If adoption is high among 20-year-olds and low among seniors and in nursing homes, we probably don't want the result to be that seniors and nursing homes don't get the attention they should through contact-tracing efforts."

Emma Llansó, Director of CDT's Free Expression Project, was on TechDirt's podcast discussing the latest attacks on Section 230.

Avery Gardiner, CDT's General Counsel and Senior Fellow for Competition, Data, and Power, joined S&P's Media Talk podcast to talk about the state of antitrust in tech.

CDT "in Person"

Looking for something to do on these long summer nights? If you missed CDT's recent webinars, the recordings are available to view. Watch the latest episodes on student privacy and education technology amidst COVID, contact tracing across the globe, and digital privacy during protests.

If podcasts are more your speed, CDT's Tech Talk — hosted by our own Jamal Magby — features episodes on election security and location data sharing in the time of COVID.

Partner Spotlight

Last month, Airbnb announced an initiative to use data to combat discrimination on the platform — an effort nearly two years in the making. CDT was pleased to partner with Color of Change and other civil rights and privacy rights groups to help the platform address key anti-discrimination and privacy issues. You can learn more about the initiative, as well as Airbnb's anti-discrimination commitment, here.

Staff Spotlight
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Policy Counsel, Privacy and Data Project

How long have you been working in digital rights? I've been working in digital rights in a formal way since 2019, but have been passionate about privacy, security, and civil liberties in tech and data since high school — when I first learned about the bureaucratic monstrosity that is the Patriot Act.

What is your proudest moment while here at CDT? I was incredibly proud to co-present my project work on disability rights and algorithmic justice to Darren Walker, the President of the Ford Foundation, last month.

What is the best book you've read recently? Jesmyn Ward's book Sing, Unburied, Sing was gutting. A literary masterpiece. Otherwise, I'm still poring over Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.

What is the most recent cultural activity you've been to? My partner Shain and I were part of Lab/Shul's Sayder this year — a social justice-oriented, multicultural, and interfaith seder led by an artistic Jewish collective with a radical bent in New York.

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