Please vote AGAINST the EARN IT act - Protect Section 230

Good evening! I am writing to you today to talk about the EARN IT act, a recent bill introduced into the US Senate. Its stated purpose is supposedly to stop the proliferation of child pornography, but reading between the lines of the bill shows that what it actually would do is force companies to remove end-to-end encryption. I believe this is a bad move, and I urge you to vote AGAINST the EARN IT act if it comes to debate. Let me explain. End-to-end encryption is used by services like test messaging and the like to ensure that only you and the person you communicate with have access to what you’re talking about. This prevents people from, say, hacking the text message service and reading all your text messages. We have had instances where hackers have broken into company servers to take user information, which they can use for nefarious purposes. End-to-end encryption prevents this. Now, what EARN IT does is, instead of asking tech firms to provide confidential information only in serious criminal circumstances with a search warrant, forcing them to just remove encryption and allow everyone - the government included - to view people’s personal messages whenever they choose. There are many ways to combat child abuse, but this is very clearly just an attempt to force companies to remove encryption without outright banning it. And as we’ve seen time and time again, removing privacy will inevitably be abused for power or profit. I hope I have made my point to how important encryption is, and how a bill like EARN IT would be detrimental for our country. There are other ways for us to stop child trafficking and abuse, but airing the dirty laundry of every American for the world to see is not the way to do it. That’s why I ask that you oppose the EARN IT bill, and make sure it never passes a ratification vote. Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a great day.