What do these people in power do all day ? Sounds like it would be a rather drab situation no ?
Traditionally the first thing they do is not to follow their own rules. Happened already in this crisis with politicians going to the gym or hair dresser while locking down everybody else.
Anything they want to. Who would stop them?
The thing is, the powers of the government, in reality, are pitiful. The vast majority of crimes go unsolved. 80% in the best of places. For murders, a little over half (BUT, keep in mind that most murders are passion murders. Unplanned, heat of the moment, at least somewhat unplanned. E.g. someone brings a weapon to extort someone, but ends up killing them not-quite-accidentally-but-certainly-was-trying-to-avoid-it. "Real", planned, thought out murders mostly go unsolved).
Once we start talking theft, solve rates drop below 15%, and drop fast. It's also just not worth it to anyone to pursue those. Not that you get your stuff back if the police does solve the crime so I'm a bit unclear why anyone would want the police to solve most crimes. It doesn't help victims except perhaps in the revenge department.
And of course, this is actual, physical, what some people would call "real" crimes. Many other types of crimes ... An example: when it comes to tax evasion (sales tax evasion in California, for example, which is definitely illegal) they essentially catch 10 culprits per year, no more.
They want their power to actually apply, and ask the police brass how to do that. The answer is predictably: more surveillance, more automated access to private info for the state, more ways to attack individuals, more ways for the police/state to "do something" while avoiding the court system (or going through a court system without any rights for defendants, like youth courts. Did you know, kids can get legally locked up for decennia (yes, plural) for a crime they can prove they didn't commit).
For example, now there's a solid 30-40% of people flouting covid-19 restrictions. But in general people totally disregard most laws most of the time, especially youths (never mind that that's allowed for most laws: as long as there's no damage to anyone you're actually allowed to violate the law, or at least cannot be punished for it).
Everybody in the police force, justice system, FBI, NSA, ... wants these statistics to change drastically. They never do. Everywhere the police steps up enforcement, people immediately want them to stop. So the police brass wants automated enforcement, automated gathering of evidence. They want contact tracing so they can just charge the nearest suspicious individual and have something in court, like location. Or that "the suspect lied" about location to the police, for instance. Never mind that this can be defeated by someone planning a crime with a level of ease that's absurdly low.
They want a spy state so they "solve" crimes (that means they have an arrest, and a conviction, they do NOT mean solve, and certainly do not mean making victims whole, anyone with half a brain knows that criminals as a rule cannot make victims whole, and certainly cannot do so with the american justice system imposed on them).
Furthermore, under the table, they want to present these systems as a reward for their people, the people they hire, people in their department, etc. Ideally just for them to be "cool" (and not, like keeps happening, to enable police officers to stalk and rape their ex-girlfriend for years). They want to use it to get rid of "disturbances" (people that live close to "nice" people who act weird, or are noisy, but within the law, or ...). They want to use it to punish people who don't do things the right way, e.g. making a lot of money without a "proper job".
And of course they want to use this for racist purposes.
Surveillance is just one component of this. They also want ways to convict and lock up people without having to go through proper justice channels, where actual proof is required, and there's 10 layers checking if what people "in power" do is entirely legal. They want protection for themselves, and government itself, against the justice system (just look up damages and punishment for locking someone up with a wrongful conviction ... does that seem reasonable to you? Now compare to a private person imprisoning someone they don't like ...)
These people want power. So their "superiority" cannot be challenged in any way whatsoever, to enforce it using brutal violence. And the big problem always turns out to be the same: they're not actually superior. And then some kid born to a divorced ex-drug addict mother has a commercial success and seriously threatens the "decent" business interests of the local politicians ... Or has a relationship with their daughter "that will destroy her". Or ... That's what power is for.
Googling for it seems to be a long term project.
Riana Pfefferkorn of CIS did a lot better job objectively addressing the issues (sans the overt political cheap shots) in her article. It lays out why it may be unconstitutional on several grounds. I'd recommend reading it if you want more detail on the bill:
THE EARN IT ACT: HOW TO BAN END-TO-END ENCRYPTION WITHOUT ACTUALLY BANNING IT:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-ba...
the only tax seems to be, according to snowden, a /intelligence-community endpoint of some sort. that doesn't seem like a huge ask as i'm sure those endpoints largely exist anyway.
instead of allowing millions of entities the freedom to tackle the crisis from millions of vantage points, we let politicians collapse that down to essentially a few dozen governmental entities in charge, amassing power in people who have adverse incentives to the populace. we willingly gave up most of our optionality and diversity in tackling the challenge.
the better configuration, imho, is a set of governments primarily organized around gathering and disseminating crucial information openly and transparently for all (which they currently do as well). as the nexus of critical information, those governments would then also focus on connecting people and businesses who can advance the democratic goals of the polity. politicians are leaders of their departments and representatives of the electorate, not the other way around (as currently acceded).
I am willing to riot and destroy things over this loss of freedom.
Edit: original title was "Congress May Hand Bill Barr the Keys to Your Online Life"
