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Fighting Back Against Face Surveillance in the Skies: 2019 Year in Review While cities and municipalities made clear strides to limit the use of face surveillance technology throughout 2019, airlines and government agencies tasked with identifying travelers have spent much of the year trying to expand its use. But while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), along with several different airlines, did launch or conclude pilot programs that tested the waters of face recognition technology on travelers this year, they also saw significant push back—and in some cases, retreated.  Airports Fight Back Just this month, officials at Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport halted a planned implementation of face recognition by Delta, voting unanimously to pause the use of face recognition until the Port of Seattle Commission, which manages the airport, can create policies to protect traveler privacy.  Delta had planned to implement face recognition at ...

EFF Enters the Competition Fray: 2019 Year in Review None of us signed up for an Internet composed of “a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four” , but here we are, watching as hyper-concentrated industries rack up catastrophic victories against net neutrality , right to repair , security auditing , and a host of other issues. These gains come at the expense of the public interest, and endanger the public interest Internet: the parts of the net that let anyone, anywhere collaborate with anyone, anywhere without permission from someone who has interposed themselves between them. They represent a triumph of lobbying over evidence, and such lobbying is only possible because the industries behind it are so fantastically concentrated that their top executives literally fit around a modest boardroom table . In 2019, EFF became part of a global movement to restore competition to our markets. Our competition work cuts across so many of the issu...

Victories and Disappointments in AI and Algorithmic Decision-Making: 2019 Year in Review AI and algorithmic decision-making raised important civil liberties issues in 2019, with developments good, bad, and in-between. Starting off in the “disappointing” category, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced in August that it was considering new rules that would insulate landlords, banks, and insurance companies that use algorithmic models from lawsuits over discriminatory impacts. In response, we told HUD that their proposal was seriously flawed and sought to educate them about the ways that machine learning and other algorithmic tools work in practice. Far from being intrinsically neutral, these tools must be approached very carefully to avoid entrenching and concealing historical discrimination. HUD’s proposed affirmative defenses are dangerous, inconsistent with how machine learning actually works, and would upend enforcement of the Fair Housing Act...

At the end of every year, people share predictions about the next big thing for the coming year. They examine trends and sales forecasts then form their opinions and throw the dice. After all, isn’t a prediction just an informed gamble? Instead of gambling, I’d rather reflect on 2018 and comment on what Schneider is working on for 2019. Let’s usher in the new year with a roadmap of the technology and solutions we are offering and implementing to make business simpler and better for our customers. Here’s my preview for how we will be driving success for clients as we continue to master our brave new age of digital transformation this year, next year, and every year that follows. Battery Energy Storage Systems One trend we are seeing a lot of is decarbonization and it has driven the proliferation of renewable energy derived from wind and solar. For the grid to remain stable, we need the addition of energy storage. Benefits of energy storage include the ability to smooth out the...

Victories in the State Legislatures: 2018 In Review States are often the “laboratories of democracy,” to borrow a phrase from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. They lead the way to react quickly to technological advances, establish important rights, and sometimes pass laws that serve as a template for others across the country. This year, EFF worked—and fought—alongside state legislators in California and across the country to pass legislation that promotes innovation and digital freedoms. Increased Transparency into Local Law Enforcement Thanks to the passage of S.B. 978 , California police departments and sheriff’s offices must post their policies and training materials online. This will encourage better and more open relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. Californians also now have new rights to access recordings from police-worn body cameras, with the passage of A.B. 748 , which EFF supported . Starting in July 2019, the publi...

Year in Review: Airport Surveillance Takes Off in a New, Dangerous Direction In 2018, we learned that expanded biometric surveillance is coming to an airport near you. This includes face recognition, iris scans, and fingerprints. And government agencies aren’t saying anything about how they will protect this highly sensitive information. This fall, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)  published  their  Biometrics Roadmap for Aviation Security and the Passenger Experience , detailing plans to work with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to roll out increased biometric collection and screening for all passengers, including Americans traveling domestically. Basically, CBP and TSA want to use face recognition and other biometric data to track everyone from check-in, through security, into airport lounges, and onto flights. If implemented, there might not be much you can do to avoid it: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that the only way we ...

Keeping Copyright Site-Blocking At Bay: 2017 In Review In 2017, major entertainment companies continued their quest for power to edit the Internet by blocking entire websites for copyright enforcement—and we’ve continued to push back. Website blocking is a particularly worrisome form of enforcement because it’s a blunt instrument, always likely to censor more speech than necessary. Co-opting the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) as a tool for website blocking also threatens the stability of the Internet by inviting ever more special interests and governments to use the system for censorship. This year, we’ve kept pressure on ICANN , the nonprofit body that makes domain name policy, to keep copyright enforcement out of their governing documents. And we’ve called out domain name registry companies who bypassed ICANN policy to create (or propose) their own private copyright enforcement machines. Public Interest Registry (PIR), the organization that manages the .org and .ngo top...

Nation-State Hacking: 2017 in Review If 2016 was the year government hacking went mainstream , 2017 is the year government hacking played the Super Bowl halftime show. It’s not Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear making headlines. This week, the Trump administration publicly attributed the WannaCry ransomware attack to the Lazarus Group, which allegedly works on behalf of the North Korean government. As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump famously dismissed allegations that the Russian government broke into email accounts belonging to John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, saying it could easily have been the work of a “400 lb hacker” or China. The public calling-out of North Korean hacking appears to signal a very different attitude towards attribution. Lazarus Group may be hot right now, but Russian hacking has continued to make headlines. Shortly after the release of WannaCry, there came another wave of ransomware infections, Petya/NotPetya (or, this author’s favorite nam...

The previous posts in this series have covered the goals , benefits and installation of arc flash protection in medium voltage equipment. In this final post, I’m going to cover best practices for testing and commissioning, which panel builders and contractors should do before energizing an installation. This is critical because as the panel builder or contractor, you are responsible for the proper operation of a medium voltage installation. So you need to make sure that the installed arc flash mitigation equipment is going to play its needed role. First , make sure you follow lockout/tag out procedures and are wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). You may think there is no chance for an arc flash, but it is better to be safe. In North American, for example, NFPA Standard 70E defines where and when PPE must be used. Second , inspect the arc flash protection installation to ensure that it has been done as specified by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). T...