Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Communities from Coast to Coast Fight for Control Over Police Surveillance: 2017 in Review Americans in 2017 lived under a threat of constant surveillance, both online and offline. While the battle to curtail unaccountable and unconstitutional NSA surveillance continued this year with only limited  opportunities appearing in Congress, the struggle to secure community control over surveillance by local police has made dramatic and expanding strides across the country at the local level. In July, Seattle passed a law making it the nation’s second jurisdiction to require law enforcement agencies to seek community approval before acquiring surveillance technology. Santa Clara County in California, which encompasses most of Silicon Valley, pioneered this reform in spring 2016 before similar proposals later spread across the country. Two other jurisdictions in the San Francisco Bay Area—the cities of  Oakland and Berkeley —have conducted multiple public hearings on proposed refor

Communities from Coast to Coast Fight for Control Over Police Surveillance: 2017 in Review Americans in 2017 lived under a threat of constant surveillance, both online and offline. While the battle to curtail unaccountable and unconstitutional NSA surveillance continued this year with only limited  opportunities appearing in Congress, the struggle to secure community control over surveillance by local police has made dramatic and expanding strides across the country at the local level. In July, Seattle passed a law making it the nation’s second jurisdiction to require law enforcement agencies to seek community approval before acquiring surveillance technology. Santa Clara County in California, which encompasses most of Silicon Valley, pioneered this reform in spring 2016 before similar proposals later spread across the country. Two other jurisdictions in the San Francisco Bay Area—the cities of  Oakland and Berkeley —have conducted multiple public hearings on proposed refor

Tipping the Scales on HTTPS: 2017 in Review The movement to encrypt the web reached milestone after milestone in 2017. The web is in the middle of a massive change from non-secure HTTP to the more secure, encrypted HTTPS protocol. All web servers use one of these two protocols to get web pages from the server to your browser. HTTP has serious problems that make it vulnerable to eavesdropping and content hijacking. By adding Transport Layer Security (or TLS, a prior version of which was known as Secure Sockets Layer or SSL) HTTPS fixes most of these problems. That’s why EFF, and many like-minded supporters, have been pushing for web sites to adopt HTTPS by default. In February, the scales tipped. For the first time, approximately half of Internet traffic was protected by HTTPS . Now, as 2017 comes to a close, an average of 66% of page loads on Firefox and are encrypted , and Chrome shows even higher numbers . At the beginning of the year, Let’s Encrypt had issued about 28 million

Tipping the Scales on HTTPS: 2017 in Review The movement to encrypt the web reached milestone after milestone in 2017. The web is in the middle of a massive change from non-secure HTTP to the more secure, encrypted HTTPS protocol. All web servers use one of these two protocols to get web pages from the server to your browser. HTTP has serious problems that make it vulnerable to eavesdropping and content hijacking. By adding Transport Layer Security (or TLS, a prior version of which was known as Secure Sockets Layer or SSL) HTTPS fixes most of these problems. That’s why EFF, and many like-minded supporters, have been pushing for web sites to adopt HTTPS by default. In February, the scales tipped. For the first time, approximately half of Internet traffic was protected by HTTPS . Now, as 2017 comes to a close, an average of 66% of page loads on Firefox and are encrypted , and Chrome shows even higher numbers . At the beginning of the year, Let’s Encrypt had issued about 28 million

Seven Times Journalists Were Censored: 2017 in Review Social media platforms have developed into incredibly useful resources for professional and citizen journalists, and have allowed people to learn about and read stories that may never have been published in traditional media. Sharing on just one of a few large platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may mean the difference between a story being read by a few hundred versus tens of thousands of people. Unfortunately, these same platforms have taken on the role of censor. They have created moderation policies to increase polite speech on their platforms, but simply put: they are not very good at it. These moderation policies are applied in imbalanced ways, often without an appeal process, sometimes relying on artificial intelligence to flag content, and usually without transparency into the decision-making process. This results in the censorship and blocking of content of all types. Globally, these content takedown process

Seven Times Journalists Were Censored: 2017 in Review Social media platforms have developed into incredibly useful resources for professional and citizen journalists, and have allowed people to learn about and read stories that may never have been published in traditional media. Sharing on just one of a few large platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may mean the difference between a story being read by a few hundred versus tens of thousands of people. Unfortunately, these same platforms have taken on the role of censor. They have created moderation policies to increase polite speech on their platforms, but simply put: they are not very good at it. These moderation policies are applied in imbalanced ways, often without an appeal process, sometimes relying on artificial intelligence to flag content, and usually without transparency into the decision-making process. This results in the censorship and blocking of content of all types. Globally, these content takedown process

Time to Rethink Copyright Safe Harbors? 2017 in Review Platform safe harbors have been in the crosshairs of copyright industry lobbyists throughout 2017. All year EFF has observed them advancing their plans around the world to weaken or eliminate the legal protections that have enabled the operation of platforms as diverse as YouTube, the Internet Archive, Reddit, Medium, and many thousands more. Copyright safe harbor rules empower these platforms by ensuring that they are free to host user-uploaded content, without manually vetting it (or, worse, automatically filtering it) for possible copyright infringements. Without that legal protection, it would be impossible for such platforms to operate as they do today. In May this year we heard recording industry representatives call copyright safe harbor a greater threat to their industry than piracy . But that alarming claim isn’t based in reality. In most countries that have copyright safe harbors, a platform comes under a responsibil

Time to Rethink Copyright Safe Harbors? 2017 in Review Platform safe harbors have been in the crosshairs of copyright industry lobbyists throughout 2017. All year EFF has observed them advancing their plans around the world to weaken or eliminate the legal protections that have enabled the operation of platforms as diverse as YouTube, the Internet Archive, Reddit, Medium, and many thousands more. Copyright safe harbor rules empower these platforms by ensuring that they are free to host user-uploaded content, without manually vetting it (or, worse, automatically filtering it) for possible copyright infringements. Without that legal protection, it would be impossible for such platforms to operate as they do today. In May this year we heard recording industry representatives call copyright safe harbor a greater threat to their industry than piracy . But that alarming claim isn't based in reality. In most countries that have copyright safe harbors, a platform comes under a respons

The Worst Law in Technology Strikes Again: 2017 in Review The latest on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ? It’s still terrible. And this year, the detrimental impacts of the notoriously vague and outdated criminal computer crime statute showed themselves loud and clear. The statute lies at the heart of the Equifax breach, which might have been averted if our laws didn’t criminalize security research. And it’s at the center of a court case pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, hiQ v. LinkedIn , which threatens a hallmark of today’s Internet: free and open access to publicly available information. At EFF, we’ve spent 2017 working to make sure that courts and policy makers understand the role the CFAA has played in undermining security research, and that the Ninth Circuit rejects LinkedIn’s attempt to transform a criminal law meant to target serious computer break-ins into a tool for enforcing corporate computer use policies. We’ve also continued our work to protect programm

The Worst Law in Technology Strikes Again: 2017 in Review The latest on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ? It’s still terrible. And this year, the detrimental impacts of the notoriously vague and outdated criminal computer crime statute showed themselves loud and clear. The statute lies at the heart of the Equifax breach, which might have been averted if our laws didn’t criminalize security research. And it’s at the center of a court case pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, hiQ v. LinkedIn , which threatens a hallmark of today’s Internet: free and open access to publicly available information. At EFF, we’ve spent 2017 working to make sure that courts and policy makers understand the role the CFAA has played in undermining security research, and that the Ninth Circuit rejects LinkedIn’s attempt to transform a criminal law meant to target serious computer break-ins into a tool for enforcing corporate computer use policies. We’ve also continued our work to protect programm

New Places, New Faces in Patents: 2017 in Review This year was once again active in terms of patent law and policy. Throughout it all, EFF worked to protect end user and innovator rights. We pushed for a rule that would end the Eastern District of Texas’ unwarranted dominance as a forum for patent litigation. We also defended processes at the Patent Office that give it the opportunity to correct mistakes (many, many mistakes) made in issuing patents. And we fought to prevent new patent owner tactics that would increase consumer costs. New Places First, because of recent developments both at the Supreme Court and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, this year we finally saw a shift away from the dominance of the Eastern District of Texas as the primary forum for patent litigation. The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods , finding that patent cases are subject to a special statute when determining where they can be f

New Places, New Faces in Patents: 2017 in Review This year was once again active in terms of patent law and policy. Throughout it all, EFF worked to protect end user and innovator rights. We pushed for a rule that would end the Eastern District of Texas’ unwarranted dominance as a forum for patent litigation. We also defended processes at the Patent Office that give it the opportunity to correct mistakes (many, many mistakes) made in issuing patents. And we fought to prevent new patent owner tactics that would increase consumer costs. New Places First, because of recent developments both at the Supreme Court and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, this year we finally saw a shift away from the dominance of the Eastern District of Texas as the primary forum for patent litigation. The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods , finding that patent cases are subject to a special statute when determining where they can be f

Court Challenges to NSA Surveillance: 2017 in Review One of the government’s most powerful surveillance tools is scheduled to sunset in less than three weeks, and, for months, EFF has fought multiple legislative attempts to either extend or expand the NSA’s spying powers—warning the public, Representatives, and Senators about circling bills that threaten Americans’ privacy. But the frenetic, deadline-pressure environment on Capitol Hill betrays the slow, years-long progress that EFF has made elsewhere: the courts. 2017 was a year for slow, procedural breakthroughs. Here is an update on the lawsuits that EFF and other organizations have against broad NSA surveillance powers. Jewel v. NSA EFF began 2017 with significant leverage in our signature lawsuit against NSA surveillance, Jewel v. NSA . The year prior, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, ordered the U.S. government to comply with EFF’s “discovery” requests—which are inquiries for evidence when l