 Okay, hi, I'm Scott Jones. I'm acting director of electronic frontiers, Georgia. My pronouns are he him and I want to welcome you tonight to our presentation. It's Earned act is it could it possibly be an in run around encryption or could it discourage us from using encryption at all? You know what is going on and what is the relationship to encryption and really? What is the internet act? In the first place Our speaker tonight is Joe Mullen from the EFF. We're very happy to have Joe visiting us again if only virtually and So let's see we should be ready to go go ahead and take it away Joe Okay, thanks a lot for having me and yeah one of the things that is maybe a silver lining to all these virtual events We've been having the past couple years is that it enables me to talk to groups like yours that are really interested in earn it and how we can protect encryption for everyone and really Put some meaning behind phrases like you know privacy should be a human right Um, so I'm happy to talk to you guys about this I am a senior policy analyst on EFF's activism team and I've been working on earn it since we first heard about it Uh, well since a couple months after we first heard about it in january of 2020 Um, so tonight let's talk a little bit about what is the earn it bill? Why does it keep coming back? Uh, and how could it affect encryption and why do we need to fight it because at EFF? We definitely think we need to fight it. It's not a good idea It never has been and we intend to keep on fighting against it and A whole lot of people agree with us um But it's it's a battle so i'm going to start with a little bit of uh history so The earn it bill was introduced in 2020 Uh, we first heard about it in january of 2020 when a draft bill was basically leaked to the press and in its original form in 2020 The earn it bill would have created a commission um That would have been dominated by law enforcement that it was called and still is called The national commission on online child exploitation prevention uh, and it would have created a series of best practices around preventing online child exploitation and it would have also given the commission a lot of power To uh, and that basically it would have stripped away key legal protections for companies that didn't follow those best practices So this commission would have had an incredible amount of power um To you know, essentially regulate the internet and it was it was very much a law enforcement dominated commission We could get into kind of how the commission was uh, composed Which actually hasn't hasn't changed that much. It's a 19 person commission um, but i'm going to kind of I want to get us up to where the debate is today. The commission has become a lot less important um because of our activism against the bill The sponsors of the bill have had to change a lot of things about it Including downgrading the role of this commission and making all of these best practices to now essentially be You know truly best practices their recommendations and they don't carry the force of law anymore But uh, I think it's it's important to know about how this bill was originally created Because some of the ideas and intentions behind the bill really haven't changed that much so in 2020 there was this, um It was formed around this idea of a commission and the commission essentially companies that didn't Follow the rules of the commission would have lost their Key legal protections under uh section 230. So what is what is section 230? It's a part of what was once called the communications decency act But it's a critical uh internet law that essentially says you're not responsible for the speech of other people online So you're responsible for your own speech and your own actions But if you run something as big as facebook or twitter or as small as a small interest website about knitting or cars or politics or whatever You are not responsible for what all those users say in the forums if they say something that is defamatory or invade someone privacy Then the appropriate target for a lawsuit is the um the user who created that content not the person who runs the online forum Um, and there are some important exceptions. First of all, uh, it doesn't cover federal criminal law at all Section 230 so you can be federally prosecuted as the owner of a forum And section 230 is not a protection against that and there's other important exceptions too like uh intellectual property violations Are not covered by section 230 So if a bunch of users on your small web forum infringe copyright You can get in trouble for the behavior of the users even if you didn't do it yourself um But that's a very basic outline But that is the nature of the the hammer That the law was wielding it was going to strip away those protections And without those protections it can become Uh, very hard to operate online Um without you know in some way Very closely watching your users or censoring your users or just limiting what the ways they can Communicate and that's why one of the you know the key Uh a really important book that was written written about section 230 is um Notice i've read it it's by jeth coughs of the 26 words that created the internet It's it's hard to exaggerate the importance of section 230 In creating the internet as we know it today now Of course, it's a lot the internet's a lot bigger Than today and the especially the biggest services have become Not just big but you know problematically big in a lot of ways So that's some background that we all know but that's it's important to understand That was the hammer that the law was going to use was to strip away section 230 protections For websites that didn't follow the commission's rules But we said this we immediately saw this was going to be a big problem for both free speech and for privacy and encryption Or why was that well at the time? The attorney general was bill bar who had made pretty clear his views on encryption Um, which is that he thought law enforcement should have special access to those messages He didn't like the idea that there was a you know an uncrackable safe is sometimes a law enforcement metaphor that gets used that they thought that well if they have the um If they have the proper judicial warrant Or maybe even if they don't they should be able to uh, there shouldn't be a message online That's totally out of the reach of law enforcement Um, and this has been an ongoing battle in the crypto wars Which eff has been involved in going back to 1990. So I see bill bar I mean he was he was certainly a proponent at this point of view, but it's not been limited to him It's not been limited to one party And um, we have fbi directors going back, uh, a good generation now that has said things like going dark or You know implying or stating that law enforcement is becoming Impossible because they can't get easy access to certain encrypted messages uh, despite the fact that federal law federal local and state law enforcement have access to unprecedented amounts of digital data and unprecedented ways to in fact break into devices and other things like that so, um We thought that the best practices would pretty clearly include a way to provide special access because Law enforcement had been talking about that for like I said, uh a generation So we created a campaign and I will show you now one of the links for 2020 earnit campaign once I find it and um So this is an example an important example of the activism we started doing at the beginning Of earnit. So this is from march of 2020 and it's it's a link to our action Um, this is after we got the text of the bill We said the earnit bill is the government's plan to scan every message online that they should have to get special access And they said well, we're doing this just for scanning for what they're calling csam child sexual abuse material Which uh in an earlier period was it's cut it's a new term for child pornography and um, in fact one of the aspects of the earnit bill is to change a lot of the terminology in the law from child pornography, which is a legal phrase For these images going going way back to child sexual abuse material We don't have an issue with that linguistic change language changes That is not in any way the part of the bill that is spurred EFF concern and activism But I want you to know that that that term and what they're talking about so The idea behind this bill was that um Companies should follow the best practices and if they don't they would lose section 230 protections um But we said, you know, you can't have uh an internet where messages are screened on moss and also have End-to-end encryption. They just don't go together even though the folks who want to scan the messages have um Come up with a lot of different ways to do it. Uh, there's always kind of a new terminology or strategy at one point we were talking about Having ghosts in people's messaging software And then the thing that is really being talked about a lot now is Some version of what's called client side scanning and i'm also going to Put a an important EFF link about client side scanning in there So what client side scanning is is it's like a piece of software That would be on your phone or on your computer that would Look at content and look for certain content and then issue some kind of report to a third party and In a very strictly technical sense It could do this without breaking encryption In a technical sense, which is important because um You know, it's really a linguistic trick It's it's not that different than saying well, you uh, you know, let's say, um You know two users here, uh You know scott you could talk to someone over an An end-to-end encrypted message My only condition is that I want my friend to be in the room with you and look over your shoulder While you write the message only to look for certain words or certain images That would obviously be of grave concern to everyone Um, we all agree that that needs to be checked for but it's still an encrypted message Well, EFF's view on that is it's just not an encrypted message It breaks the promise of end-to-end encryption Even if in a very technical sense that is still an encrypted message You couldn't you couldn't collect it or read it in transit, right? So We became pretty confident that this was what the commission was intending to um impose The bill changed as a result of overwhelming public opposition Just from EFF site We had hundreds of thousands of messages that were sent to congress and we had allies that were working on this as well So the bill went through a big change and it then it changed to the form that it is mostly in today So they added a at the senate judiciary committee had a hearing on the bill They added an amendment meant to protect encryption basically to say that you could not be suit or prosecuted for offering an end-to-end encrypted product We felt the way that was written really wasn't sufficient and They also made a big change to the enforcement structure of the bill They said the commission would just be recommendations But they empowered states so all 50 states and also u.s. Territories They empowered those legislatures to create and enforce laws That could go around section 230 So essentially regulate internet speech as long as those laws had to do with c-sand as long as they had to do with child sexual abuse material And that's largely the form that the bill is in today It is instead of directly saying you can't encrypt a message It says to the states you're empowered to create and enforce laws and i'm going to get the exact language here That So any charge in it there's a section says any charge in a criminal prosecution brought against a provider of an interactive computer service under state law regarding the advertisement promotion presentation distribution or solicitation of child sexual abuse material and so Our concern is that that leaves a lot of Band width for saying things like well if you allow Users to communicate if you don't check essentially if you don't create a proactive type of checking for this material Then you're in trouble and you could be prosecuted or sued Well, so well, why do we think this? Why don't we think just that? well Maybe we should you know that the sponsors of this bill are saying that companies aren't doing enough to look for this material And they're not helping law enforcement, right? They're saying they're not doing their jobs In the way we want to help with law enforcement Well, that's that's just not really true. I mean, I can't speak for every company But there's a legal regime out there. CCM is completely illegal There is very clear and strict laws in place. It is not illegal to View it to produce it to distribute it. It's a very serious crime and the punishments are are quite serious, too and section 230 is not a Protection from those laws. It's not a protection from federal criminal law at all actually So our concern is that they would really try to mandate some type of proactive Checking and I would say that now what I'd like to do is maybe talk for a minute about What has changed in the new version of earn it that we saw it come back in 2022 One of the big changes is The sponsors have they've kind of laid their cards on the table And they've told us essentially what they want to do They not only did they put the law back in the same form But they also distributed with it a myths and facts document, which I will Here's our I want to share our blog posts against the new earn it act This is from 2022 a blog post written by me and With help from my team It's back senators want the earn it built and scan online messages It's about how we could have new internet rules from from juneau to jackson really is just a All 50 states would be empowered to do that They'll do it under the guidance. You're not mandated but under the guidance of this law enforcement dominated commission And um in this interesting myths and facts document the sponsors kind of admit what they're after Uh, you know in the previous iteration of the bill There was a little You know, we were making to some degree an inference Based off their statements. We felt we had a very strong grounds for it But an inference about what would happen, right? And to some degree we still are because they this is not a bill that bans encryption outright Why doesn't it just do that if that's what they want? Because the sponsors of the bills were the bill were they're smart And if they tried to just ban encryption There'd be a major constitutional problem with that And also I don't really think they'd get that far because the public would see what they're doing and there would be an enormous outcry against it So they um are just empowering states to do this And they kind of are hoping well, we'll think that the something good will happen But what they want to happen is kind of given away in this myths and facts document where they you know, uh, not only do they talk about Scanning messages they talk about how they believe any tech company has plenty quote Plenty of tools and options available to prevent this crime Without hindering their options or creating significant costs So no significant cost then the next bullet point is The detection report prevention and reporting of cesium is one of the most easily addressed abuses in crimes in the digital era There are readily accessible and often free software and cloud services such as photo dna To automate the detection of known cesium material and report it to nicknick that nicknick is the ncm ec the national center for missing and exploited children It is a quasi government agency that was created by congress in the 1980s and it is the um The organization that Runs the cyber tip line. So if you encounter ccm, you are mandated to report it it to nicknick and Most of the information in their database comes from law enforcement agencies and nicknick is also the group that would alert law enforcement Agencies to take action about the database So it's verified that's considered verified ccm if it's in that database um So I mean, you know in this I think what's happened in this iteration among other things is They have sort of said that they do expect proactive scanning They want to install a type of proactive scanning. They have said falsely that it's free and easy to proactively scan user messages And they've suggested the kind of software that they want to scan user messages. And again, what's the purpose it is to um compare them all to images in a government database um that is Not auditable So You know this this raises a lot of concerns. It's it is just at the end of the day. It's a form of mass surveillance and um In the us we already have we have this database that can't really be checked or audited That then all user messages will be checked against But the us is not going to be the only country that engages in this Strategy and I'll go more into the the international ramifications of this In a minute, but I want to leave a moment for questions before I kind of skip to the next section but um You know authoritarian countries are also that already some of which already have regimes of surveillance and censorship In place online are going to want Equivalent privileges To this so they will also want client-side uh scanners um to compare to their own databases that that will be run by their own organizations and So those are that's kind of where it stands right now and then let me let me talk briefly about where the politics of Of earn it are right now um And I should mention actually importantly last fall Uh, we also saw a move by apple Which was pressured by nick mick nick mick has its own Uh advocates and lobbyists who do a lot of work to get companies To scan and run images against their database to submit to them reports They also really pushed hard to get apple to install a form of client-side scanning software on um every device And apple announced that it planned to do that and we also opposed that said that apple was betraying its promise to users Apple has said that privacy is a human right. They've put that up in billboards not just in the u.s but in germany and dubai uh in countries where you can get in All kinds of trouble that you might not get into in the us depending on what's on your phone And that they should keep that promise to users And that installing a client-side scanner for for any purpose when you're reporting it to a Government agency is is not appropriate and it's a violation of the promise of end to end encryption So at least for now apple has withdrawn that plan But the reason I bring that up and earn it coming right after it is that it really does seem like we're in an era of um You know increasing pressure From governments where the plan is to use private companies to really put overwhelming pressure on them to be an intermediary and to have them Essentially not use effective end to end encryption or to give some kind of out some kind of scanner Before the encrypted message gets transmitted or after or both where the government gets to do a check against their own database and We said that that's just you know, you can they you can have a million blue ribbon panels about how to combine A universal scanning system with end to end encryption But you know our position isn't going to change you can also have a million blue ribbon panels about How to raise the dead, but the question would be you know How effective is it going to be you're not really going to find a way to do that and as we've said You know just dozens at hundreds of times and you have the blog posts There is no backdoor To encrypted messages that works only for the good guys It always will also work for Criminals it will work for the authoritarian governments It will work for the rogue employee in a position of privilege at one of these companies and So it's better to just maintain the integrity of end to end encryption So I think those are some of the anyhow, let me give you the short version of what happened in 2022 Uh, we opposed the bill. I should say I'm skipping some political things here that are important in 2020 Uh, we created a lot of opposition to the bill It was still voted out of the senate judiciary committee But it never went to the senate floor and it was never voted on by any house committee Now in 2022 Faced with a similar version of the bill We opposed it again and we've had the same result Which is that it got passed out of the senate judiciary committee And but it has not received a vote on the house floor and has not received a hearing in a house committee and We expect that at least in this congress Uh, it won't advance but it's come back. It's of concern to us um The sponsors aren't going to stop trying And so I wanted to kind of go over with this group and it looks like we have a pretty small group So I'd be happy to answer some questions. You guys might be interested in some of the the inside Baseball as it were about this um But it it's kind of a different political dynamic this year Uh in in both good and bad ways But we are sort of in the same position With this bill When it was passed out of the senate judiciary committee This year which happened um In the last several weeks, uh There were several, um senators that expressed some real concerns which we were happy to see Uh, sometimes that's how Opposition pays off in the senate the senate is a is a strange beast that i'm still only Learning about how it really operates um We were happy to hear uh some senators in the committee say some critical things We wished it would have gotten them to the right position, which was actually to vote no on the bill Uh, we didn't quite get there, but in the world of lobbying sometimes these expressions of concern Are important because they they are ways of senators Indicating to their colleagues that they're not going to be ready to push this over the finish line And that it's not right for a for vote. So some examples of the opposition we heard This time around were, you know, uh senator pedia of california who's a relatively new senator Took kamala harris a seat said that he was concerned about possible effects on the lgbq community He wanted to see that stuff addressed Senator john ossoff from georgia actually introduced eff's opposition letter into the record along with a coalition letter From the center for democracy and technology, which had i think 60 plus human rights and civil rights groups Listed on it. Um, so we have we actually have a broader coalition of opposition This year than we did in 2020 Senator lee is a republican from utah said he talked about several amendments he'd like to see before the bill moves Um, and senator coons from delaware a democrat said that He saw it as still having some problems with encryption that he wanted to see fixed before it moved to the floor senator booker a democrat from new jersey Also rated less specific concerns that he still had about the bill Um, and so that is where it stands right now I have a few thoughts about Some of the things we're seeing internationally But before I do that, I've talked a lot. So I actually because we have a small group here I want to make sure we have a chance to be Interactive and I thought I would stop there and ask If there are questions at this point about This bill or eff's work on the bill Um Love to take a few and I'm going to skin over the chat which I haven't been looking at but um Yeah, and feel free to use the chat or or to turn on your microphone if you want to to ask the question Uh on the microphone We have a pretty small group tonight Yeah, I mean George George asked how is encryption online different than writing something on a paper with a secret code Law enforcement can't make me reveal what the code is if it's evidence against me nicer It might fit the amendment rights. I mean, yeah, there's so I should clarify I'm not a lawyer. I'm a policy analyst and I work in the activism team So nothing I say is lawyerly but it comes from my experience working around the law in In both my career at eff and my career as a as a tech and legal journalist before I was at eff Uh, yeah in general, you know, there's really sharp limits on the way that you can Be forced to testify against yourself, right? And that includes things like giving up a password to your computer or the password to your phone Um, and now that's entering a new and complicated area, right with biometrics Like is the law saying, you know that the police can't make you give up your password the same as You know, whether they could use your your thumbprint or your your face image And that's getting into kind of new territory that our that our lawyers handle But um, yeah in general, I mean There is no law, right saying We have to break encryption. That's really important to know and so that helps you frame where this debate stands, which is One we're seeing an overwhelming political Pressure campaign, right to get the companies to break it so because they can't just pass a law saying Break the darn encryption, right? There are multiple constitutional problems with that and like I said I don't think it would get that far because the public would express outrage would see what congress is is doing I don't think the public would accept that um And so in some ways, you know, it's like our The law of encryption, right, which is that you are allowed to use it Um, you're allowed to write code. You're allowed to write strong encryption You're allowed to use math to protect your communications Is the status quo? So it's it's one of these fights where it's there's a lot of laws that need to change in our society From from we all have opinions about what should There ought to be a law and eff has established positions about some things that should change But you're allowed to use encryption right now and it's it's a good way to protect yourself so in some ways our fight to protect encryption is a Fight to not change the law. We don't need a law to protect encryption actually um, and so eff does other kinds of activism around encryption like we do We have a you know surveillance self-defense, uh, and You know when when world politics or situations change Uh, we write about sometimes the best way to protect yourself like when there were protests in 2020 and we've had a couple posts up about the the war in ukraine even though we're not geopolitical experts we have wanted to let um Users connected to those areas of the world know what they need to do to protect themselves so Yeah, it's it's not that different right then then using a code on a piece of paper Which is something that you would do to protect your privacy and have a private conversation We've always felt that the right metaphor right for encryption is not this thing of Well, you know, they're just safe with a bunch of documents in it And why shouldn't the cops be able to get access to that? With any tools they have just like they could with a safe the real metaphor is um It's a private conversation. So You know, there's no doubt that the police would be able to solve more crimes if they were able to Record every private conversation. We're having in our own homes But it's not worth it. We all know it's not worth it, right? I mean the damage is much greater than the benefit so, um I have to be careful about how I use metaphors, but uh You know, the we need to have a way to have private conversations in the world both online and offline. It's important for democracy and it's important just for human culture to create new art to create new writing new thoughts, you know The you know, we don't need uh The wrong way to frame the debate is like do you have you know? Well, do you have something to hide? Right? Well, you know, no, but I mean, I've been a journalist and uh It's not anyone's business. What the the first second third and fourth Drafts of a story I worked on that were never published That were only communications between me and my editor That might have had things that a lot of things that we agreed needed to be changed um No, just like the you know, we've all written things and and I think thought better of them even even messages to friends or family members, you know I don't want to send the first version of this Maybe I shouldn't send this at all Uh or something I want to be kept very private just between a couple members of my family and um That's how the world should change and the the need to Fight crimes even terrible crimes like uh sea sam. It doesn't it's not enough of an excuse to um To watch us all all the time. There are ways to fight those crimes and it's it's unfortunate that this is that these crime kind of crimes against children are being used in a way that's somewhat cynical here Because we saw some of the same stuff really frankly being used around when terrorism was kind of the big reason why uh encryption had to be broken and That frankly didn't work Like and you look just at the example of apple You know EFF was protesting in favor of apple actually back in 2016 When they wouldn't break encryption for all users when the FBI wanted to get into at that time It was the same brand, you know Shooting and the the FBI wanted some special access to that Shooters phone which they already had and it turned out access to um And you know the rhetoric over the years has changed um, so Go back to some of the questions here. Should I just address the questions in the channel or if someone wants to ask though? Yeah, I wanted to to go back with uh, george hampton's first question About how is uh encryption online different than writing something on paper? And I think you I think you mentioned it, but I just wanted to emphasize it Again, one of the biggest differences is the private third party that acts as the intermediate as the intermediary and that would be the social media company or uh, some other company maybe a platform provider or something like that and that Party isn't covered by the constitution because the constitution applies to the government So I think we're in a situation where we're trying to figure out We used to have whenever we were having the conversation about privacy and our rights in general There were two people in the room There was the there was the citizen and there was the government And now we have a third person in the room and that's a third party that is private In general that's almost always private and uh corporate um, and what is their relationship and uh to The other two and it is kind of a modifier. Um To how our rights work And so I think that this is the big debate here is Now that there's this this third presence in the room How does that affect our rights and how does it affect the constitution? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean and that's why the that question of intermediaries, you know That is kind of the question because we all experience the online world through intermediaries So what how do they behave? And what are their rights and responsibilities that ends up affecting us all as users? And that's why we need it's important and you know the companies that do What we view as pro user and pro privacy moves like use end-to-end encryption um We will support that and uh, you know, there's There have been many instances where EFF has You know praise the company from a privacy point of view and criticize them From say an intellectual property point of view and vice versa You can think a lot of examples of that just with big companies like like google and apple Um, but that question of what are who the intermediaries and how do they behave is critical And on this issue of you know scanning messages A big player in the room here is facebook Now meta, but i'm just going to say facebook because then everyone knows what i'm talking about. Um but you know, they are They own what's app. What's app is encrypted end-to-end and they are trying to integrate their messengers And like facebook messenger And i guess instagram messaging would be there two other types of messengers um And they have said that they are Committed to end-to-end encryption, which we've said is a good thing and we want them to stand by that promise um At the same time facebook's non encrypted messaging systems Scan a massive amount of user messages right now and nick mick the national center for missing exploited children has really, um Planted a lot of misleading information based on the enormous number of Tips that they get from largely from one company's automated scanners um, so nick mick has said things and they they have managed to get a story about this on the front page of the new york times, which is kind of amazing, um That they get, you know over 20 million Reports a year and that there is just this explosion of child abuse material on the internet The truth is We don't really know What's going on there what we do know is that facebook installed scanning software on all user messages on that feature Because nick mick and the government requested it and they used a broad definition of See sam and they started sending millions and millions of reports Those report numbers are worldwide by the way. There's this the overwhelming majority are from outside the u.s And what was going on with those scans? Well, we've learned more about that too. That's another thing that's changed since 2020 What's going on with those scans is they're inaccurate. I'm going to post a link in the channel right now That's actually from facebook's research group So they took a look at Um, it's very hard to do these studies you can imagine for a lot of reasons They took a look at some of the material that they were sending to nick mick a sample of it And they found that 75 percent of it was what they called non malicious So ie Not really see sam in the way that the public is thinking about it. Okay So let me just read. I don't I you know at eff. We're very careful where we tread here So we're not child safety experts. We don't know all the details of that field We have allies in that field who we work with but it's not our field So i'm just going to read directly from the facebook report here But they found that more than 75 percent Of the material that they flagged and sent to nick mick was in these three categories of non-malicious users So unintentional offenders Example user shares a c-sam meme of a child's genitals being bitten by an animal because they think it's funny Apparently something that happens millions of times around the world um Very bad taste But not malicious c-sam the way people think of it Minor non exploitative users for example two 16 year olds who send sexual imagery to each other They know each other from school and are currently in a relationship And the third example is situational risky offenders, which may be a user has received c-sam that depicts a 17 year old They didn't know that that makes it c-sam and they reshare it unknowingly All those situations You could argue Are bad I'm really not going to get into that But I think it's concerning That we are faced with multiple government agencies telling us that they're looking for the worst of the worst and the evidence is um It's An assertion that's low on evidence To the extent that we do have evidence From things like this facebook study They are It's not an accurate scanning system And they're making it sound like there's just this explosion of um online crime The explosion is an explosion of reports And they created the explosion And uh, it's not a reason to watch to watch everyone I want to just briefly say on the international front. There's also It's this is happening starting to happen in multiple countries around the world um In the uk they're paving the way for what's called an online safety act, which we're concerned will have an anti-encryption component to it Again, the strategy is going to be to pressure private companies to do it This is a blog post we put up about a weird Advertising campaign in the uk to make people turn against encryption and actually convince people that encryption is bad Uh, I don't think that's going to work, but we want to call that out as Uh, something that's happening um Here is actually a this is if you want to get an idea of the extent of our This is We we have a nice letter against that. It's reflective of our growing. Sorry. I just posted the same link twice Here's a letter we that responded to that UK ad campaign the letter wasn't written by us, but we signed it and it's just a there There's also an increasingly large coalition Of groups that are ready to fight for encryption. So we have allies Not just in the u.s. But abroad too and that is really good And that's that's a bigger coalition than in 2020. So I think that's also changed the landscape And the last thing that I wanted to flag about the international angle is This last blog post I'll put here Which is that we have heard that there is going to be a proposal coming from the eu commission the european union commission Um that could make government scanning of user messages and photos mandatory throughout the european union and again The excuse is they have to look for c-samp everywhere um We're not sure that this is going to happen that the proposal As it is described right now is in a kind of a very vague Just a few sentences. It's not clear that that it will mandate that and the rollout of the official language of the proposal has now been delayed until possibly may Which is which is probably a good sign because it means that They are listening to concerns from the ff and and related groups But yeah, there are it's you know, there's governments in multiple states that seem to be Kind of pushing in the same direction and this idea that uh really getting private companies to walk away from From encryption and commitments to encryption and privacy um So I think i'm going to sort of end my that's that's uh Yeah, and keith says bulk searches for c-samp seems like the camels knows under the tent to search all messages for any illegal content I mean we we think that's true and um that'll happen Pretty fast I think and um We don't know where but uh, that's the case And actually i'm going to share one more blog post and this is about um This is about apples program This is written by kurt who's our eff general counsel um But he's saying how you know countries around the world have asked for access to and control over encrypted messages and they're asking technology companies to Nerve harder to somehow make things both encrypted but also in a format so that they can read it um and You know getting at some of some of the dangers of that Okay, I think I'll take the um Uh official q and a out about five more minutes unless we have no more questions and then We can go into the the the informal part and I'll turn off the recording How's that? Sounds good to me Are there any more questions or would anybody like to turn on their microphone or Put something else in the chat Oh, thank you guys for saying you appreciate the work I mean I I really enjoy working on this because uh, even though it's it's frustrating in some ways because We repeat ourselves um, it is Uh, I think what's not frustrating about it and what's heartening is that um it is an issue where I think more and more people at it and We have kind of a growing group of Of people that are that are with us on this issue and um Well, it's been great talking to you guys. Um, do you want me to uh, scott? Do you want me to? Hang out for another minute or how do you want to? Wrap up. Yeah, let me go ahead and wrap this up as far as the recording Uh, and then if you could just hang out a few more minutes. Um, yeah, I'm happy to yeah Yeah, again, I want I want to thank you very much for for um coming out virtually at least and Uh, it does it does broaden the uh the audience and the the range of speakers So thank you very much for this. I'm going to go ahead and end the Recording in the stream at this time