Senate Bill Crafted With DEA Targets End-to-End Encryption, Requires Online Companies To Report Drug Activity (therecord.media) 144
A bill requiring social media companies, encrypted communications providers and other online services to report drug activity on their platforms to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) advanced to the Senate floor Thursday, alarming privacy advocates who say the legislation turns the companies into de facto drug enforcement agents and exposes many of them to liability for providing end-to-end encryption. From a report: The bipartisan Cooper Davis Act -- named for a Kansas teenager who died after unknowingly taking a fentanyl-laced pill he bought on Snapchat -- requires social media companies and other web communication providers to give the DEA users' names and other information when the companies have "actual knowledge" that illicit drugs are being distributed on their platforms.
Many privacy advocates caution that, if passed in its current form, the bill could be a death blow to end-to-end encryption services because it includes particularly controversial language holding companies accountable for conduct they don't report if they "deliberately blind" themselves to the violations. Officials from the DEA have spent several months honing the bill with key senators, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Thursday. Providers of encrypted services would face a difficult choice should the bill pass, said Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel & Director of Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "They could maintain end-to-end encryption and risk liability that they had willfully blinded themselves to illegal content on their service and face the music later," Nojeim said. "Or they could opt to remove end-to-end encryption and subject all of their users who used to be protected by one of the best cybersecurity tools available to new threats and new privacy violations."
Many privacy advocates caution that, if passed in its current form, the bill could be a death blow to end-to-end encryption services because it includes particularly controversial language holding companies accountable for conduct they don't report if they "deliberately blind" themselves to the violations. Officials from the DEA have spent several months honing the bill with key senators, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Thursday. Providers of encrypted services would face a difficult choice should the bill pass, said Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel & Director of Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "They could maintain end-to-end encryption and risk liability that they had willfully blinded themselves to illegal content on their service and face the music later," Nojeim said. "Or they could opt to remove end-to-end encryption and subject all of their users who used to be protected by one of the best cybersecurity tools available to new threats and new privacy violations."
children, drugs, terrorism, crime, "gun crime" (Score:5, Insightful)
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This.
Liberty is messy, sometimes ugly, but the only real option. Our Governance no longer supports Liberty as prime purpose, but rather to "protect" the people from each other. This creates conflict which leads to curtailing of liberties in the name of security. Insert Ben Franklin Quote here
Re:children, drugs, terrorism, crime, "gun crime" (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that these are opposites is, I believe, incorrect.
Anarchy is the ultimate "liberty"-- theoretically anyone can do anything, but practically, it sucks.
In reality you'd end up with less overall freedom/liberty, because you'd have to spend most of your time ensuring you don't die, your stuff isn't stolen, etc. As a result, you can't support nearly as much specialization (farmers can't just be farmers, they have to be farmers AND warriors to protect themselves), which means everything is less efficient/productive, and you end up with a lower quality of life, more death/starvation, and worse stuff overall.
The truth is that practical freedom/liberty comes from providing sufficient stability that specialization can happen, that not everyone has to be a warrior, and that you and the things in which you've invested time/effort are reasonable secure from being take from you.
If freedom is measured as being able to do things that you want a maximal %age of the time, then, by that metric, we must give up /some/ freedoms in order to get time with which to do the other things you'd want.
If anarchy is one end of the spectrum, then authoritarianism is one of those things at the other end. Authoritarianism also reduces your ability to do what you want a maximal %age of the time.
The "best" area is in the middle between these.
EZEKIEL: WARRIOR FARMER (Score:3)
You made a decent point, but you really lost me the moment that I imagined EZEKIEL: WARRIOR FARMER.
Someone call Hollywood, we have a pitch for the next summer blockbuster.
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I agree that the warrior-farmer is laughable (outside of fantasy novels, where they're fun!), because in the real world those folks would be out-competed by people who actually worked together and established some rules that were closer to the middle of that spectrum (or even the authoritarians, who will out-compete the anarchists, but still likely lose out to the middle of the spectrum governmental styles)!
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Authoritarianism also reduces your ability to do what you want a maximal %age of the time.
This needs to be said: Your statement is only true for those not in a position of authority within the Authoritarian state. Those in authority get to do whatever they want, whenever they want (within limits set by Reality).
Re: Exactly (Score:2)
Think of liberty not as an absolute, but a sliding scale between anarchy and totalitarianism (phew!). What we are arguing about is where the slider should be located, obviously not too near either end.
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Exactly this, I'm not sure why anarchy was even touch on tbh, I don't think GP was alluding to it.
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Re:children, drugs, terrorism, crime, "gun crime" (Score:4, Insightful)
Our overlords will seek excuse after excuse to destroy liberty. Don't let them. Stop voting for your political party NOW.
Politicians are leveraging the "Think of the children" line to tug at our hearts and take away our freedoms.
Just a way of saying "When you got'em by the heartstrings their balls and minds will follow."
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The solution to the drug problem is to take the profit out of it, not to give the DEA more power.
Re:children, drugs, terrorism, crime, "gun crime" (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop voting for your political party NOW.
Nice sentiment, but unfortunately there is only ONE party. It has two divisions, "Team Blue" and "Team Red" and there are no other choices.
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Instead vote for the candidate most like what you want, and then go backwards. Or submit a blank ballot but make sure you email each candidate a nicely worded letter (so they can't justify ignoring it because of profanity) explaining why they didn't earn your vote. Without some
Ehh one more criminal (Score:3)
Pass that shit and I will happily tell them to fuck off. So many bills coming up recently that are hills that I *WILL* die on.
They can piss the fuck off.
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Does a restaurant willfully blind itself... (Score:5, Interesting)
Due to not looking for, or reporting on prostitution or securities fraud going on inside?
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Stop using logic they're counting on none of us seeing through that BS excuse.
moderated content (Score:4, Interesting)
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That is the concern with E2E as far as they are concerned, because they can't see what's going on.
Me personally, if you die because of drugs (illega
Re:Doesn't matter since all content is moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
Also if you knew anything about history and the Nazis you would probably be against censorship laws. When the Nazis started to gain power they used censorship laws put in place to stop them against anyone who would speak out against them.
Re:Doesn't matter since all content is moderated (Score:4, Informative)
Libertarians are just republicans that don’t want to pay taxes. They should be calling out government overreach from BOTH parties. But they remain silent.
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Not entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You support Section 230 then? (Score:2)
I'm aware there are a handful of people who actually fit the definition you're talking about. A YouTube named "Adam Something" has a good serious explaining why those ideas don't work (it's called "anarcho-capitalism").
But 99% of libertarians are right wingers who don't like being called that because it's too close to White supremacy in most places.
As for the Nazis, they used the same "freeze peach" arguments to keep spreading hate speech until they m
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And yes most libertarians would say that in a free market a private firm shouldn't be forced to carry content that runs contrary to its own publ
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We have a shitload of right wing extremists because we keep just sweeping em under the rug and hopping they go away, instead of actually studying their rhetoric to stop people from joining the thing in first place.
You're not paying attention (Score:2)
Nobody wants to do it. Boomers and older Gen Xers (boomers mostly, Gen X gets passed over) are in charge and any serious attempt at reigning them in doesn't last long before one of them gets put in the White House and goes back to packing the courts.
Eventually one of two things is gonna happen, and it's just a race to see which happens first
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It's a weird attitude you have with your ageism, there's a lot of boomers who's pensions aren't covering their rent, little well food and medicine and there's a lot of youngsters with shitty jobs that don't pay the rent, little well food. It's these youngsters who are supporting the fascists. The old wealthy boomers are more old style conservationists, the middle class boomers are center to center left and the poor ones even more likely to vote towards the left of the spectrum.
All the old boomers I know vot
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You may be right, especially if considering regional differences, I'm in BC and the west coast is much more left then the prairies for example. The Toronto region is also a large chunk of voters that generally stick to the middle. Unluckily I can't find anything newer then 2019, for example this, https://threehundredthirtyeigh... [threehundr...yeight.com] does show the younger voters, especially the mid aged, moving more and more to the right. This, https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/ne... [ipsos.com] shows the gender gap where women are much more lef
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There's a pretty easy line in the sand for defining if a movement is extremist or not, the "are they considering killing people?"
If yes, then it's extremist, regardless of left, right, sega, nintendo..
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Ah the big lie. Right wingers don't do what you are talking about - its the left wing playbook since the sixties when it was literally published as a playbook.
The Nazi bar isn't a thread, the Antifa-tenure track, and your kids pussy hat wearing Kindergarten teacher is.
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As long as all DEA communication is reported. (Score:3, Interesting)
Drug dealers ? (Score:2)
I thought that attacking encryption was to catch paedophiles ? No matter, it will be terrorists next week.
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No it's to catch anyone that thinks differently...
ODSC (Score:2)
In the old days ... (Score:3)
Did the postal service or phone company get held liable if mail or phone calls were used to plan or commit a crime?
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Did the postal service or phone company get held liable if mail or phone calls were used to plan or commit a crime?
No, but those don't (or didn't) have end-to-end encryption built in, so if the authorities decided that you were using them to plan or commit a crime, it was relatively easy for them to find out what you were writing or saying.
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"End-to-end encryption" normally implies that the service provides encryption for its users' messages, but doesn't keep any of the keys on any servers that it controls. Keys are held only on users' devices, and encryption and decryption happens there. So if law enforcement want to read a user's messages, they either have to seize the user's device (and defeat its security), or find a flaw in the implementation of the encryption, or brute-force the encryption.
That's the sort of encryption that this bill is a
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Blatant violation of free speech rights (Score:5, Insightful)
A bill requiring social media companies, encrypted communications providers and other online services to report drug activity on their platforms
Whoever floated the bill should be ashamed of themselves.
You know.. We have a constitution in the US, and one of the most important rights is the Freedom of Speech? It is JUST a vital a fundamental right and essential liberty that the government Cannot punish you for not saying something as it is that they can't punish you for saying something.
You cannot have a law requiring mandating that someone report something to the government - You especially can't require that someone report their friend or neighbor's "Violative speech" -- that's a violation of the peoples' constitutional rights. It is Also the method of tyrannical governments to do so (Enlist the people to report thoughtcrime neighbors, etc reveal themself as having)
Re: Blatant violation of free speech rights (Score:2)
I wonder if the tech companies could sue the government for punishing them when they say n272lGr3VWkJgG6G9lM68eRgsoTPeh9tV8GvAnGGK== to my mate Steve. I suspect the answer is yes.
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What if my buddy and I create a made up language, and use it. That's giving us "the ability to hide what you are saying".
Should THAT be illegal?
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I was just thinking this same thing.
Machine translation is getting pretty good. So there's no reason you can't translate a message into Spanish, send it to your friend, and have them translate it into English. But where does the government draw the line? German? Welsh? Navajo? Klingon? Egyptian hieroglyphics? A custom language? How about a custom language using numbers and letters and symbols which require a one-time-pad to read?
"You can talk to your friend on the internet, but you can't use Welsh because w
Language policy of Xbox Live Indie Games (Score:2)
"You can talk to your friend on the internet, but you can't use Welsh because we can't understand it and you might be talking about drugs." is fucking ridiculous.
It's ridiculous. It was also the policy of one well-known American company. In the Xbox 360 era, Microsoft's policy for Xbox Live Indie Games required all in-game text to be in one of a half dozen supported languages, and text in a language in which fewer reviewers were fluent could delay a game's approval.
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The difference here is that Microsoft is a private entity, and thus may create whatever rules it wishes for the use of its "property".
The US Government, however, is constrained by the Constitution -- in this case, the First Amendment -- and may not impose such restrictions.
There is no "War on Drugs" (Score:5, Insightful)
There is only a War on Civil Liberties.
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A service isn't needed for end to end encryption (Score:2)
End-to-end encryption (Score:5, Informative)
104.18.29.86
104.18.28.86
> whois 104.18.29.86
CIDR: 104.16.0.0/12
NetName: CLOUDFLARENET
The man in the middle is already reading everything.
Fuck The DEA (Score:2)
With a chainsaw. That is all.
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Now. Why does the government have any say in what I choose to put in my body? They make it a crime to do so if they don't approve of a particular chemical. We should take the money out of enforcement, then move it to education, and recovery. I am not saying a free for all either. You can still prevent drugs you don't like from being imported or produced. If someone wants to risk
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I'm okay if you want to put paint thinner in your system, just sign a release stating you do not wish to receive any social or medical services in the future and you're forfeiting any money paid into the social welfare system.
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I'm okay if you want to put paint thinner in your system, just sign a release stating you do not wish to receive any social or medical services in the future and you're forfeiting any money paid into the social welfare system.
They should not have to pay for services they are not eligible to receive. What are you a communist?
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Why does the government have any say in what I choose to put in my body?
The right is all about telling you what you can do with your body. Drugs, prostitution, medically assisted dying, pornography, abortion, gender treatments, etc.
I assume because they truly believe your body should only be controlled by God, and he obviously desperately needs their help. LOL.
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That's fine and good until someone OD's and the paramedics have to show up and save their addicted ass. That makes it all our problem.
And how is that different than what we have today?
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What is the difference if we have to save them from a defective parachute or hang glider? Bad decisions are bad decisions.
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You just banned coffee (Score:2)
On the other hand I think if you added some provision like "once a mind altering drug is taken, with consent, all actions taken while under the influence are considered with consent and premeditation"
That would harness the anti-caffeine vote more than anything.
Hold On Let Me Clutch My Pearls (Score:2)
Here's a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Abolish the DEA, end the drug war
Create a new agency that uses evidence-based strategies to reduce drug abuse
Treat it as a health problem, not a crime
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Yes. This. With a chainsaw.
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I will worry about drug abuse after we stop child abuse, spousal abuse, car wrecks, bank robberies, rapes, greed, murder, and pineapple pizza.
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We need to talk about Pineapple Pizza.... 0.o
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No we don't. We need to hunt down the inventor and publicly execute him. I am just surprised we don't have fetus pizza yet.
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I was just thinking the other day, how the world has changed when it comes to Marijuana. My state was first to legalize it in 2013, because suddenly if people paid a "tax", that was enough to elevate it from a life ruining addictive drug into something society is okay with. Over the last 10 years of legal Marijuana, the money was great in the beginning but now it's starting to evaporate as more states have legalized, causing local headlines to read "Weed Recession is here". I think people are starting to re
See Facebook marketplace (Score:2)
The idiots don't use encryption.
This will be a footnuke situation for the US (Score:2)
Watch as every industry which involves communicating loads of sensitive information among companies all of a sudden quits the US after this bill passes.
In Europe all those nice, sweet, juicy money bringing tech companies could have access to companies like ASML, Siemens, and Philips really nearby. We most certainly wouldn't mind some of them coming here.
We'd even help those skilled American tech workers emigrate, provided they leave their guns at home.
None of you get it (Score:2)
It's only "money laundering" if you're not on the S&P 500 (literally the law)
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Ahem, I assume you're talking about HSBC... er wait JP Morgan? Deutsche Bank?
Nothing is illegal with enough money.
with chainsaws... somehow (Score:2)
Nothing is illegal with enough money.
hell, they'll even put pineapple on a pizza if you've got the money to pay for it...
Decouple clients from services (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate this, and love it, at the same time.
The reason these companies are sitting ducks for this type of abuse, is that they run services but also insist that their users use a particular proprietary client. If you were to RE their services and make a compatible client, they would freak out and sue you, because your client doesn't show their ads to the user (and wouldn't reliably count those impressions if it did). So fuck 'em.
But if you don't unnaturally tie the service and the endpoint software together, then you can have a resilient system which is able resist government interference (or at least the boundaries of legal US government interference, until we get around to repealing the 1st Amendment).
Let service providers pass around the ciphertext you give them. This is how PGP and email worked. Yes, it has problems. Laypeople couldn't figure out PGP (and it seems the market has decided that laypeople simply can't figure out key exchange in general), and having the envelope in plaintext means you have to avoid the dreaded "Subject: Your cocaine has shipped" header. But the basic idea is great, in that the service providers really are innocent and have no practical way to stop criminal uses, so it's hard to pretend they're responsible. Holding a generic email provider responsible for what is said in an encrypted email is as silly as holding a road construction crew responsible for a bank heist getaway.
But tie the two together, and the client author can put in whatever weaknesses the government wants, knowing they have a captive audience who has no choice but to either use a deliberately-insecure client, or don't use the service at all.
So in the name of increased privacy for everyone, I'm fine with a "death blow to end-to-end encryption services", because the very idea of an end-to-end encryption service is ridiculous. Run encryption outside of the service. The service doesn't need to know anything about how the user generated the message body.
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This would immediately make people who use PGP a target of increased government interest.
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This would immediately make people who use PGP a target of increased government interest.
As if they aren't already???
This is why everyone should use encryption, no matter if they need it or not. People not using it should be the ones who stand out.
"Actual knowledge" (Score:2)
The two sides can't agree on anything other than.. (Score:2)
Funny how the Republicans and Democrats can't agree on much of anything - except when it gives more power to the government. (this bill is sponsored by two Republicans and three Democrats)
This bill == NO ENCRYPTION AT ALL (Score:2)
Cocaine in the White House (Score:2)
These tyrants have no shame.
Why bother? (Score:2)
I met UPS drivers who had side hustles selling vapes and edibles and he straight out told me that he hasn't gone more than 30 minutes of waking hours without vaping THC in a long time. He's vaping constantly while delivering packages.
I drove past vape shops near schools and day care centers. I went to a grocery store in
E2E is too easy. It doesn't require big players. (Score:2)
Now I know this is short of what e.g. Signal provides. But as a thought experiment, suppose we have a shared key-value store somewhere. Any LAMP stack anywhere will do. There is some cookie based authentication
to allow users to read/write. Then (this is a quick and dirty sketch, to needs a little work)
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Well there's a post that's a complete load of bullshit. A simple google search shows that drownings and car accidents are the #1 cause of death for people under the age of 18.
https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/f... [cdc.gov]
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The data suggests you are wrong. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org]
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Except after 2020 that was no longer true. [cnn.com]
Parent's post would still be accurate however as this bill is in response to a single child dying, although I would certainly allow for argument that many other kids of died similarly which represents a real problem with social media marketplaces.
As gun culture has become increasingly extreme, so to has gun violence. Parents often give even young kids access to firearms which goes way beyond teaching kids how they work and why they are dangerous. Think pictures
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Playing a little Devil's Advocate here: Say you're a landlord who owns an apartment building. In most jurisdictions, if you knowingly and willingly allow drug sales, prostitution, and other criminal activity in those apartment units, you can be held liable for that. Is it totally unreasonable for lawmakers to view online drug sales in the same light?
Yes, it is totally unreasonable. Your example is for activity that takes place fully in the physical world. There is no such thing as "completely online drug sales." The physical drug cannot be given to the intended purchaser online, unless someone has developed a teleportation method I haven't heard of. The drug itself must still be distributed in the physical world.
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Maybe I just need more coffee, but I'm not sure what you're saying. Yes, somebody needs to get the drugs in the physical world. Whether that's done by knocking on a door or ordering it online, what's the difference?
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I'm surprised you are on slashdot, yet didn't understand the technology being discussed to make a more accurate analogy. Interesting audience here.
Re: I kinda get the concept (Score:2)
That's an even more inaccurate analogy...
This is pretty straightforward, by their logic:
Landlords are expected to report suspicions of illegal behavior on the premises.
Some landlords upgraded their units with noise isolation and private entrances - and promoted "privacy" as a market differentiator.
Therefore - henceforth landlords are responsible for 24x7 surveillance of their residents and expected to submit recordings of any criminal behavior.
If they are unwilling to setup surveillance cameras and micropho
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This bill is analogous to requiring the landlord to put video cameras inside the apartments, monitor those cameras and report any illegal activity.
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Wellllll, you gotta be a little careful, there. Here we are (once again) venturing into the concept of the "common carrier," which is a fraught topic and one, ultimately, that the courts are going to need to decide.
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That's up to them. But it does stop them from committing crimes while they're in.