Stanford CIS Blog

I presume you are talking about WK 10235/2022 ADD 10[0], as I found many blogs and journals[1] talking about Lithuania's position there and how it is anti-E2EE, pro-Chat Control. Some things should be clarified:

Firstly, it is a working document that someone obtained through a FOI request. So it is important to understand that this was not meant for the public, and therefore the opinion Lithuanian representatives provided there was not scrutinized as such prior to release. This is not a comprehensive position of Lithuania's government or any of its branches.

Secondly, the document follows positions expressed in and around a police (LEWP) meeting. It is difficult to imagine that law enforcement would support E2EE or stand against Chat Control in principle, because it makes their daily work more difficult. This context should be kept in mind and is also pointed out by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society article I linked.

Thirdly, the opinion of a limited group of Lithuania's law enforcement workers does not impact Lithuania's constitution, nor culture. I also believe that it is not an opinion shared by many Lithuanians who have some distrust of authority following years of state surveillance, persecution, and the trauma this entailed. So it is important to understand that the culture, the constitution, and the opinion of law enforcement workers contributed to this working document are three distinct things.

Finally, this "let's sacrifice anything and everything to…

The statement contains no new news, it was already reported that there was an ultimatum from the prosecution for him to either plead guilty to all 13 counts, or go to trial where he faced a sentence of up to 50 years in prison.

Attorney Jennifer Granick, the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, pointed out that plea offers are not binding on the court and are presented as optional suggestions for the judge to consider during sentencing. Normally the judge goes with the "neutral" sentencing guidelines, regardless of any deals.

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2

In this case, neutral guidelines are capped at 5 years per count, for a potential sentence of 65 years in prison, with the guilty plea deal.

As Granick states:

> [T]he court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No…

Now you're being dishonest. The 6-month sentence was a plea deal he declined. It was a 35-50 year sentence if he fought and lost all charges.

It remained to be seen if he were actually guilty.

> Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor who hounded Aaron Swartz in the months before his Friday suicide, has released a statement arguing that "this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case." She says that she recognized that Swartz's crimes were not serious, and as a result she sought "an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting."

> That's funny because the press release her office released in 2011 says that Swartz "faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." And she apparently didn't think even that was enough, because last year her office piled on even more charges, for a theoretical maximum of more than 50 years in jail.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron-swartz-and-the-corrupt-practice-of-plea-bargaining/

> Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. Felons have trouble getting jobs, aren't allowed to vote (though that right may be restored) and cannot own firearms (though Aaron wasn't the type for that, anyway). More…

I'm always puzzled by these articles looking at the Great Firewall of China as if it is an alien thing. Much of it was designed in the US, by American engineers, working for companies like Cisco ( http://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do ). So just ask them. People have even sued companies like Cisco about this ( http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/suit-over-ciscos-role-in-chinas-great-firewall-must-proceed-advocacy-group-says/ ), but the US government dismissed those cases ( http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2015/03/china%E2%80%99s-golden-shield-cisco-systems-complicit ).

I read bizarre pieces from New York Times columnists ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/18kristof.html ) which say "If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an “Internet freedom initiative” pending in Congress. This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it."

Huh? US corporations built it. The US courts have OK'd it. Why should US taxpayers pay to circumvent the technology that S&P 500 companies like Cisco are building?

Here is some more criticism of the EARN IT Act supporting that
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/the_earn-it_act.html

Lindsay Graham has repeatedly sought to weaken encryption and mandate backdoors and key escrow. Also in June this year following the EARN IT Act he introduced the Lawful Access To Encrypted Data Act (LAED) which would mandate backdoors:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/06/there%E2%80%99s-now-even-worse-anti-encryption-bill-earn-it-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-earn-it-bill-ok

LEAD is extreme and has little support. It is widely believed that the LAED was not intended to be passed but is meant to help pass the EARN IT Act by making the EARN IT Act seem like a more moderate and reasonable piece of legislation.

The EARN IT Act is really a ploy by Lindsay Graham and others to bypass Congress on this issue which they cannot otherwise get passed, and allow a small group of people who are not even security experts to develop regulation and mandates (which will probably be against encryption) under the guise of fighting child porn.

Some more details on the photograph experiment from https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2007/09/how-lucky-people-think-differently-unlucky-people

---- [Experimenter]: They'd go through, and after about three pages, there'd be a massive half-page advert saying, STOP COUNTING. THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER. It was next to a photo, so we knew they were looking at that area. A few pages later, there was another massive advert -- I mean, we're talking big -- that said, STOP COUNTING. TELL THE EXPERIMENTER YOU'VE SEEN THIS AND WIN 150 POUNDS [about $235].

For the most part, the unlucky would just flip past these things. Lucky people would flip through and laugh and say, "There are 43 photos. That's what it says. Do you want me to bother counting?" We'd say, "Yeah, carry on." They'd flip some more and say, "Do I get my 150 pounds?" Most of the unlucky people didn't notice.