Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

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...

The Supreme Court Finally Takes on Law Enforcement Access to Cell Phone Location Data: 2017 in Review Protecting the highly personal location data stored on or generated by digital devices is one of the 21st century’s most important privacy issues. In 2017, the Supreme Court finally took on the question of how law enforcement can get ahold of this sensitive information. Whenever you use a cell phone, whether to make calls, send or receive texts, or browse the Internet, your phone automatically generates “cell site location information” (CSLI) through its interactions with cell towers. This means that cell providers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have records of everywhere your phone has been, going back months and even years. And since almost everyone has a cell phone, cell providers have these records for nearly everyone. The government has long argued that it doesn’t need a warrant to obtain CSLI from cell providers because of two 1970’s Supreme Court cases, Smith v. Mary...

The Supreme Court Finally Takes on Law Enforcement Access to Cell Phone Location Data: 2017 in Review Protecting the highly personal location data stored on or generated by digital devices is one of the 21st century’s most important privacy issues. In 2017, the Supreme Court finally took on the question of how law enforcement can get ahold of this sensitive information. Whenever you use a cell phone, whether to make calls, send or receive texts, or browse the Internet, your phone automatically generates “cell site location information” (CSLI) through its interactions with cell towers. This means that cell providers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have records of everywhere your phone has been, going back months and even years. And since almost everyone has a cell phone, cell providers have these records for nearly everyone. The government has long argued that it doesn’t need a warrant to obtain CSLI from cell providers because of two 1970’s Supreme Court cases, Smith v. Mary...

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...

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...

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...