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Senate Antitrust Hearing Explores Big Tech’s Merger Mania The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights held a hearing last week to explore the competitive impacts of big tech companies’ massive string of mergers with smaller companies in the last handful of years. Before the Senate committee were experts in venture capital spending, the Federal Trade Commission (the agency tasked with merger reviews), and legal experts in antitrust law.  EFF believes a hard look and update of mergers and acquisitions policy is one of many actions needed to preserve the life cycle of competition that has been a hallmark of the Internet. In the past, the Internet was a place where a bright idea by someone with modest resources was able to be leveraged from their home into the next big innovation. We have lost track of that as a small number of corporations now control a vast array of Internet products and services we all depend on and now appear to hav

California: Tell Governor Newsom to Stop Face Surveillance on Police Body Cams Communities called for police officers to carry or wear cameras, with the hope that doing so would improve police accountability, not further mass surveillance. But today, we stand at a crossroads: face recognition technology is now capable of being interfaced with body-worn cameras in real-time—a development that has grave implications for privacy and free speech. If California Governor Gavin Newsom signs A.B. 1215 before October 13, he affirms California should take the opportunity to hit the brakes on police use of this troubling technology in the state. This gives legislators and citizens time to evaluate the dangers of face surveillance, and it prevents the threat of mass biometric surveillance from becoming the new normal. Take Action No Face Recognition on Body-Worn Cameras EFF joined a coalition of civil rights and civil liberties organizations to support A.B. 1215, authored by California Ass

The FISA Oversight Hearing Confirmed That Things Need to Change Section 215, the controversial law at the heart of the NSA’s massive telephone records surveillance program, is set to expire in December. Last week the House Committee on the Judiciary held an oversight hearing to investigate how the NSA, FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community are using and interpreting 215 and other expiring national security authorities.  Congress last looked at these laws in 2015 when it passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which sought to end bulk surveillance and to bring much-needed transparency to intelligence agency activities. However, NSA itself has revealed that it has been unable to stay within the limits USA FREEDOM put on Section 215’s “Call Detail Records” (CDR) authority. In response to these revelations, we’ve been calling for an end to the Call Details Records program, as well as additional transparency into the government’s use of Section 215. If last week’s hearing made anythi

Help EFF Find Our Next Development Director EFF’s member base is different from that of any other organization I know. I can’t count how many times someone has seen me in my EFF hoodie and excitedly approached me to show me their membership card. Our members are passionate about protecting civil liberties online, and being EFF members is part of their identity. They’re opinionated, thoughtful, and they understand the deeper moral issues behind today’s technology policy battles. Does that sound like the kind of community you’d like to help build? Then we have a job that might be perfect for you. We’re on the hunt for the newest member of EFF’s leadership team: a director for our fundraising team . Please help us get the word out to folks you know who might be a great fit and help us take our fundraising game to the next level. This is a dream job for the right candidate. You’ll be leading a rock-solid team of 10 fundraising professionals who have already built a community of over

South Africa Bans Bulk Collection. Will the U.S. Courts Follow Suit? The High Court in South Africa has issued a watershed ruling: holding that South African law currently does not authorize bulk surveillance. The decision is a model that we hope other courts, including those in the United States, will follow. Read the decision here . As an initial matter, the South African court had no trouble making a legal ruling despite the obvious need for secrecy when discussing the details of state surveillance.  This willingness to consider the merits of the case stands in sharp contrast to the overbroad secrecy claims of the U.S. government, which have, time and time again, successfully blocked consideration of the merits of bulk surveillance in open, public U.S. courts. The South African court based its ruling on a description of the surveillance provided by the government – no more detailed than the descriptions the U.S. government gives of its own  bulk surveillance -- as well as the

The Christchurch Call comes to the UN On Monday, EFF participated in the Christchurch Call Leaders’ Dialogue at the UN General Assembly in New York in our capacity as a member of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network. The meeting, chaired by the leaders of New Zealand, France, and Jordan, featured speeches from a diverse array of government and tech company leaders, and updates to the Christchurch Call process, including the announcement of the advisory network and reforms to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). As we noted back in May , we have serious concerns about some elements of the Call, including the lack of clarity around the definition of “terrorism” and the language of “eliminating” terrorist and violent extremist content online. This summer, we co-authored a whitepaper that speaks to the latter concern; in particular, the fact that elimination—particularly without preservation—of some content has led to the erasure of key documentation used b

European Court’s Decision in Right To Be Forgotten Case is a Win for Free Speech In a significant victory for free speech rights, the European Union’s highest court ruled that the EU’s Right to Be Forgotten does not require Google to delist search results globally, thus keeping the results available to be seen by users around the world. The EU standard , established in 2014, lets individuals in member states demand that search engines not show search results containing old information about them when their privacy rights outweigh the public’s interest in having continued access to the information. The question before the court was whether Google had to remove the results from all Google search platforms, including Google.com, or just the ones identified with either the individual’s state of residence, in this case Google.fr, or ones identified with the EU as a whole. The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) decided that the Right to Be Forgotten does not require such global deli

EFF to HUD: Algorithms Are No Excuse for Discrimination The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is considering adopting new rules that would effectively insulate landlords, banks, and insurance companies that use algorithmic models from lawsuits that claim their practices have an unjustified discriminatory effect. HUD’s proposal is flawed, and suggests that the agency doesn’t understand how machine learning and other algorithmic tools work in practice. Algorithmic tools are increasingly relied upon to make assessments of tenants’ creditworthiness and risk, and HUD’s proposed rules will make it all but impossible to enforce the Fair Housing Act into the future. What Is a Disparate Impact Claim? The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of seven protected classes: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status. The Act is one of several civil rights laws passed in the 1960s to counteract decades of government and

Nigeria Misuses Overbroad Cyberstalking Law: Levels Charges Against Political Protester Sowore EFF has long been concerned that—unless carefully drafted and limited—cyberstalking laws can be misused to criminalize political speech. In fact, earlier this year we celebrated a federal court decision in Washington State in the United States that tossed out an overbroad cyberstalking law.  In the case, the law had been used to silence a protester who used strong language and persistence in criticizing a public official. EFF filed an amicus brief in that case where we cautioned that such laws could be easily misused and the court agreed with us.  Now the problem has occurred in a high-profile political case in Nigeria. Just this week the Nigerian government formally filed “cyberstalking” charges against Omoyele Sowore, a longtime political activist and publisher of the respected Sahara Reporters  online news agency. Sowore had organized political protests in Nigeria under the hashtag

Carnegie Experts Should Know: Defending Encryption Isn't an "Absolutist" Position In the digital world, strong encryption is how private conversations stay private. It’s also what keeps our devices secure. Encryption is under a new set of attacks by law enforcement, who continue to seek a magic bullet—a technological backdoor that could circumvent encryption, but somehow not endanger privacy and security more broadly. But that circle can’t be squared, and at this point, the FBI and DOJ know that. That’s why as the government has pushed forward with this narrative, it’s been increasingly backed by false claims .  Now, a group of prominent academics and policy makers has signed on to a deeply misguided report that attempts to re-frame the debate along the lines that law enforcement agencies have long urged. The paper is the work of a small group convened by the Carnegie Institute for Peace, which claims to seek a more “pragmatic and constructive” debate about the “cha

How to Make Sure the Tech You Use and Build Reflects Your Values This article originally appeared in Mozilla's Internet Citizen blog. Technology should empower you. It should put you in control. You should not feel used by the company that provides it to you. And if you’re a builder of technologies, we believe you should always carry the responsibility to empower your users. Ultimately you should be able to say that you are proud of what you built. But when we regularly see headlines about how our phone company might have   sold our location to a stalker , or how Slack is   retaining all of our private messages , or how   Amazon ,   Vigilant Solutions , and   Palantir   are each individually working to provide data to ICE, it’s hard to feel like we’re in control of the technologies we use or build, much less that we have any power to change what is happening in front of us. It’s even harder to think that we have a voice when we hear of companies selling surveillance technolo

Innocent Users Have the Most to Lose in the Rush to Address Extremist Speech Online Internet Companies Must Adopt Consistent Rules and Transparent Moderation Practices Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms define terrorist content? What safeguards do they put in place to ensure that they don’t over-censor innocent people in the process? Again and again, social media companies are unable or unwilling to answer the questions. A recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing regarding violent extremism online illustrated this problem. Representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter each made claims about their companies’ efficacy at finding and removing terrorist content, but offered very little real transparency into their moderation processes. Facebook Head of Global Policy Management M

Facebook's Social Media Council Leaves Key Questions Unanswered Facebook took big step forward this week in its march to create an "oversight board" to help vet its more controversial takedown decisions, publishing more details about how it will work. Both Facebook and its users will be able to refer cases to the Board to request its review. Is this big step a big deal for online speech? Maybe not, but it's worth paying attention. A handful of tech companies govern a vast amount of speech online, including the platforms we use to get our news, form social bonds, and share our perspectives. That governance means, in practice, making choices about what users can say, to whom. Too often—on their own or under pressure—the speech police make bad choices, frequently at the expense of people who already struggle to make their voices heard and who are underrepresented in the leadership of these companies. EFF has proposed a few ways to improve the way speech is gover

EFF to Observe at United Nations General Assembly Leaders' Week Event EFF has joined the advisory committee of the Christchurch Call to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online and will be represented at meetings near the United Nations General Assembly early next week. We have been involved in the process since May, when the government of New Zealand convened more than forty civil society actors in Paris for an honest discussion of the Call’s goals and drawbacks. We are grateful to New Zealand’s government for working toward greater inclusion of civil society in the conversation around what to do about violent extremism. But, we remain concerned that some of the governments and corporations involved seek to rid the internet of terrorist content regardless of the human cost. As demonstrated by a paper we released this summer , in conjunction with Witness and Syrian Archive demonstrates, that cost is very real. At the moment, companies are scrambling to respo

Hearing Friday: Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Ask Court to Reinstate Lawsuit Seeking To Block Its Enforcement Risk of Prosecution Has Caused Groups to Self-Censor, Platforms to Shut Out Legal Services Washington D.C.—On Friday, Sept. 20, at 9:30 am, attorneys for five plaintiffs suing the government to block enforcement of FOSTA will ask a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s decision to dismiss the case. The plaintiffs—Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the Internet Archive, Human Rights Watch, and individuals Alex Andrews and Eric Koszyk—contend that FOSTA, a federal law passed in 2018 that expansively criminalizes online speech related to sex work and removes important protections for online intermediaries, violates their First Amendment rights. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is counsel for the plaintiffs along with co-counsel Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Walters Law Group, and Daphne Keller. FOSTA, or the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking

Thanks For Helping Us Defend the California Consumer Privacy Act The California Consumer Privacy Act will go into effect on January 1, 2020—having fended off a year of targeted efforts by technology giants who wanted to gut the bill. Most recently, industry tried to weaken its important privacy protections in the last days of the legislative session. Californians made history last year when, after 600,000 people signed petitions in support of a ballot initiative, the California State Legislature answered their constituents’ call for a new data privacy law. It’s been a long fight to defend the CCPA against a raft of amendments that would have weakened this law and the protections it enshrines for Californians. Big technology companies backed a number of bills that each would have weakened the CCPA’s protections. Taken together, this package would have significantly undermined this historic law. Fortunately, the worst provisions of these bills did not make it through the legislatu