What does Storj say to EARN IT Act US upcoming law

What does Storj say to EARN IT Act US upcoming law

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It is not certain this is an upcoming law or that it will remain in its current form. Some elements are considered controversial. Let’s hope the law does not pass as written since end to end encryption is critical to cyber security and backdoors are a fundamental weakness that the wrong people would exploit.

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One thing to understand about Storj is that the uploader is the one with the keys to the encryption, not Storj itself.

Think of it like this, you have a file on your computer. You encrypt that file on your computer. You then upload that file to an online location, such as Drop Box. If the Government goes to Drop Box and says, “Unlock that file!” Drop Box is going to be like, “We didn’t encrypt it, so we can’t unencrypt it.” And that’s the end of it. Storj works effectively the same way. The Government could ask Storj Labs to delete the file from its servers, but Storj cannot release the contents of the file because they don’t have the key. The Government would have to go to your house and force you to unlock your file.

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What happens if “Agent Smith” force to shutdown one satellite? :slight_smile:

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Be sure to have a 2nd backup in Russia :wink: (with a Russian company)

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But government can disallowe with this law end to end encryption

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That would break the Internet. SSL/TLS which you know as https is end to end encryption. So, that’s not going to happen, obviously. And Storj isn’t encrypting files and sending them to you where they are unencrypted like end to end. They remain encrypted until you, the person who uploaded them, unencrypt them.

Also, this isn’t a law right now, so speculating on what it may or may-not do in relation to Storj isn’t useful, and we aren’t lawyers. Storj Labs has a legal team that will advise the company if new laws impact their business model and if any changes have to be made.

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A law banning encryption is unenforceable.

Strong encryption is mathematics and most implementations are open source. There’s simply no way to eliminate the use of strong encryption by criminals. This proposed law, like many other laws the US has passed since 2001, will only result in spying on innocent citizens.

Strangely, criminals don’t care about breaking laws.

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Yes, but even if encrypted locally, it is carried out by the Storj software unless the user uploads only encrypted data. So if Storj was forced to open a backdoor, this is where it would be.

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There is no way to hide that in open source software. And anyone could just take it out and build an uplink for themselves without the backdoor.
But realistically, Storj simply won’t be the first target and even if this ever becomes law, that law breaks down long before Storj is ever targeted for it.

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