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Data Privacy Scandals and Public Policy Picking Up Speed: 2018 in Review 2018 may be remembered as the Year of the Facebook Scandal, and rightly so. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco , Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony , a massive hack , and revelations of corporate smear campaigns were only the tip of the iceberg . But many more companies mishandled consumer privacy in 2018, too. From the Strava heatmap exposing military locations in January to the gigantic Marriot hack discovered in November, companies across Silicon Valley and beyond made big mistakes with consumer data this year—and lawmakers and the public have taken notice. Tech Companies Putting Their Profits Before Your Privacy The problem that came into focus in 2018 was not just hacks , breaches , or unauthorized bad guys breaking into systems. Instead, 2018’s worst privacy actors were the tech companies themselves, harvesting of mountains of users’ data and employing flawed systems to use and sha...

Wrangling With Monopolies: 2018 in Review This year has brought numerous stories of large Internet companies using their dominance of key Internet functions in ways that harm users and shut out competitors. From Google’s treatment of competing search companies in its results, to Facebook’s playing favorites with its developer APIs, to AT&T and Comcast’s ongoing quest to charge websites for the privilege of reaching you, monopoly power and its abuses are on vivid display. Worse, unlike in previous technology cycles, the dominance of these companies has proven to be sticky. The world has taken notice, with voices from across the political spectrum calling for new approaches. Market concentration and monopoly power in the online world have always shaped EFF’s work. This year, we’ve begun to tackle competition issues head-on. One focus is the legal doctrine that deals directly with problems of monopoly power—antitrust law. This year, we’ve given comment and testimony to the Fe...

The world is making meaningful progress in building the “new energy” workforce needed to end energy poverty. Schneider Electric can proudly say that we’ve already helped train almost 20% of the 1 million solar technicians we’ve pledged to train by 2025. Yet, we must also acknowledge that there is a growing gap in the human capital — workers and entrepreneurs — needed to deliver electricity to the 1 billion people globally without it, two-thirds of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s estimated that scaling off-grid renewables can create 4.5 million jobs by 2030. But of the 10.3 million renewable energy jobs in the world today, just 76,000 are in Africa. In other words, less than 1% of the jobs worldwide are in the region that most urgently needs them. The same trend holds true for energy-poor communities in Asia and elsewhere. That is why Schneider Electric is supporting the launch of the #PoweringJobs campaign, a global effort to ensure the creation of an energy access workforce...

EFF Wins DMCA Exemption Petitions for Tinkering With Echos and Repairing Appliances, But New Circumvention Rules Still Too Narrow To Benefit Most Technology Users Library of Congress Denied Petition for Exemption Permitting Repair of All Software-Enabled Devices Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation won petitions submitted to the Library of Congress that will make it easier for people to legally remove or repair software in the Amazon Echo, in cars, and in personal digital devices, but the library refused to issue the kind of broad, simple and robust exemptions to copyright rules that would benefit millions of technology users. The Library of Congress, through its subsidiary, the Copyright Office, yesterday granted several new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ). Section 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent the computer code that prevents copying or modifying in most software-controlled products—which nowadays includes ev...

Corporate Speech Police Are Not the Answer to Online Hate A coalition of civil rights and public interest groups issued recommendations today on policies they believe Internet intermediaries should adopt to try to address hate online. While there’s much of value in these recommendations, EFF does not and cannot support the full document. Because we deeply respect these organizations, the work they do, and the work we often do together; and because we think the discussion over how to support online expression—including ensuring that some voices aren’t drowned out by harassment or threats—is an important one, we want to explain our position. We agree that online speech is not always pretty—sometimes it’s extremely ugly and causes real world harm. The effects of this kind of speech are often disproportionately felt by communities for whom the Internet has also provided invaluable tools to organize, educate, and connect. Systemic discrimination does not disappear and can even be ampl...