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Submit Your Nominations for The Foilies 2019 EFF is now accepting nominations for The Foilies 2019, our fifth annual “anti-awards” program for government agencies that, whether by maliciousness or incompetence, interfere with the right to access public information. It’s a tongue-in-cheek affair celebrating Sunshine Week (March 10-16, 2019), when a coalition of transparency organizations raise public awareness of the open government laws that make democracy possible. Journalists, transparency advocates, and citizen watchdogs should recommend government agencies by Dec. 31, 2018 for consideration. Like a Santa Claus of bureaucratic accountability, we also keep our own running list of cases of over-redactions and ridiculous copying fees, culled from the #FOIAFriday Twitter hashtag thread and the National Freedom of Information Coalition’s FOI ListServ . The Foilies isn’t just limited to federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, but any state or municipal-level request f...

Power Up! Donations Automatically Matched This Week EFF’s Power Up Your Donation week has just begun. Every dollar up to $140,000 will be matched by a challenge fund created by a band of dedicated EFF supporters. Maximize your support when you join EFF or renew your annual membership today! Power Up week is a great opportunity to double the impact of a donation for online privacy and free speech. Every dollar given during Power Up means two dollars for EFF—that’s double the support for fighting online censorship , reclaiming the open Internet , developing user-empowering tools like Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere, helping technology users defend against mass surveillance , working toward user-focused copyright law , fighting for privacy in the courts , and much more. Check out the Power Up page and support this important work! Power Up! Donate today for an automatic match EFF is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax ID #04-3091431, with a consistent four-star rating from Chari...

Enterprises around the globe are deploying Augmented Reality (AR) solutions to bring a new level of productivity to a wide range of tasks, says the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA), a global non-profit dedicated to widespread adoption of interoperable AR systems. The technology is maturing and expanding rapidly, in fact, the AR market is expected to grow from USD 11.14 Billion in 2018 to USD 60.55 Billion by 2023 , at a CAGR of 40.29% according to a report by researchers Markets and Markets. AR also has powerful potential for colocation data center service providers. With easily demonstrable and highly visual benefits, AR is set to play an important role for colocation service providers by joining the dots connecting data center infrastructure management to maintenance and service operations. AR is an established and well accepted technology which has its origins as far back as 1968 when Ivan Sutherland developed the first display system. Today, Schneider Electri...

Executives responsible for managing Oil & Gas downstream operations are being tasked to come up with new ways to either cut costs or generate higher revenues over the life of their process plants. Although many rely on rising crude oil prices to drive revenues, this is a short-term strategy that should be supplemented with longer term efficiency improvement initiatives. Many are investing in new technologies to help streamline operations but are having difficulty in assessing the business value of that technology. Measurements in revenue gains or cost savings should not only be scrutinized by assessing the value of individual technology components, but as an integrated whole. In this way a metric such as Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) can be used to identify how much the new technology is contributing to the value to the operation. ROCE represents the percentage return that a company makes over its invested capital, a measure of the profitability and value-creating potential ...

A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules In a new proposal issued last week , the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set out a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections, ignoring the voices of millions of Internet users who weighed in to support those protections . The new rule would reclassify high-speed broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service” (remember, the FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services ). It would then eliminate the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play (as well as the more nebulous general conduct standard) in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement. In other words, your ISP would be free to set itself up as an Internet gatekeeper, as long as it is honest about it. This is a bad idea for many, many reasons. Here are a few. Net Neutrality Has Been a Pillar of the Open Internet The FCC’s decision to gut net n...

CBP Reveals How Agents Implement New Policy Not to Access Cloud Content President Trump’s nominee to be Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Kevin McAleenan, revealed during his confirmation process how the agency implements its new policy not to access cloud content during border searches of digital devices. In response to written questions for the record submitted by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and other members of the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. McAleenan explained that in accordance with CBP’s new policy to access only information that is “physically resident” on a device, border agents must “ensure that network connectivity is disabled to limit access to remote systems” (page 92). While Mr. McAleenan did not provide details, disabling network connectivity can mean a few things, such as putting a phone or other device into “airplane mode,” or individually toggling off cellular data and Wi-Fi. It could also mean making sure a laptop is not connected to an E...

CBP Reveals How Agency Implements New Policy Not to Access Cloud Content President Trump’s nominee to be Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Kevin McAleenan, revealed during his confirmation process how the agency implements its new policy not to access cloud content during border searches of digital devices. In response to written questions for the record submitted by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and other members of the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. McAleenan explained that in accordance with CBP’s new policy to access only information that is “physically resident” on a device, border agents must “ensure that network connectivity is disabled to limit access to remote systems” (page 92). While Mr. McAleenan did not provide details, disabling network connectivity can mean a few things, such as putting a phone or other device into “airplane mode,” or individually toggling off cellular data and Wi-Fi. It could also mean making sure a laptop is not connected to an ...

DRM’s dead canary: how we just lost the web, what we learned from it, and what we need to do next EFF has been fighting against DRM and the laws behind it for a decade and a half, intervening in the US Broadcast Flag , the UN Broadcasting Treaty , the European DVB CPCM standard , the W3C EME standard and many other skirmishes, battles and even wars over the years. With that long history behind us, there are two things we want you to know about DRM: Everybody on the inside secretly knows that DRM technology is irrelevant, but DRM law is everything ; and The reason companies want DRM has nothing to do with copyright. These two points have just been demonstrated in a messy, drawn-out fight over the standardization of DRM in browsers, and since we threw a lot of blood and treasure at that fight, one thing we hope to salvage is an object lesson that will drive these two points home and provide a roadmap for the future of DRM fighting. DRM IS TECHNOLOGICALLY BANKRUPT; DRM LAW IS...

Evolving customer needs and the impact of digital transformation has introduced a significant amount of complexity to the machine design and building process. OEM machine builders need to go beyond the traditional machine design process to profitably deliver “smart” machines with higher throughput, reduced operating cost, and increased safety. Fortunately, new technologies are emerging in the marketplace that act as a counterbalance to this complexity.  These technologies are specifically designed to optimize the digitization aspects of the new generation of “smart” machines by powering greater operational efficiencies to shorten time to market, optimize use of expertise, increase in productivity and reduction of downtime. Benefits throughout the machine lifecycle Below are examples of how some of these new technologies are enhancing OEM machine builder productivity, shortening development while delivering on the promises of the smart machine concept through the three critical...

EFF at Cyberspace Events in Delhi: Protecting the Public Core of the Internet Last week EFF attended the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS) in New Delhi, India, as one of a small handful of nonprofit organizations invited to participate. This was the fifth in a series of conferences sometimes called the London Process, after the first event that was held in London in 2011. Focusing on international cybersecurity issues, it is a counterpart to other regular government-organized Internet conferences, such as the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) conference which focuses on Internet freedom and human rights, China’s World Internet Conference which focuses on the digital economy, and the International Telecommunications Union’s WSIS Forum which tracks Internet for development goals. What these government-led conferences have in common are a lot of long speeches by dignitaries, a schedule of panels or workshops, and usually the issuance of a fairly anodyne closing statement or set...

How are you maximizing grid efficiency? Reducing electricity network losses requires smart strategies that improve active and passive energy efficiency. By planning, measuring, and improving transmission and distribution (T&D) efficiency and installing digital technology that is more accurate and connected, electric utilities take a big step toward increasing energy efficiency and trimming operating costs. In part one of this blog series, we’ve established why efficient operations are crucial for staying in compliance, integrating distributed energy resources (DER), and saving money. Now let’s take a closer look at how utilities and distribution system operators (DSOs) can modernize operations to accommodate regulations and reduce costs. Advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) can be implemented for tasks such as estimating and minimizing losses, managing peak demand, and automated fault location, isolation, and service restoration. An ADMS simulates the impact on reliab...

As a technology enthusiast I love to try new things, whatever the latest new gadgets happens to be, and play around with them. And one of the amazing things about the current digital transformation is that things have become so inexpensive that they are accessible to almost anyone with the curiosity to check them out.  In fact, just last week I found a special deal on the web – a BOGO deal (Buy One Get One free) – for some remote web security cameras and they were really fun and easy to play with. But the really interesting thing to me is taking them and seeing what other ways they can be used, together or in combination with other existing technology, and trying to make them work together in new ways that haven’t been thought of before.  Of course, I’ve purchased a lot of useless things too.  They aren’t all a success!  But that’s a story for another blog. I’ve had some things running through my mind lately about this marriage of cool, new technology with many of...