Face Recognition Is So Toxic, Facebook Is Dumping It
Facebook announced it is, for now, shutting down its face recognition program, which created face prints of users and automatically recognized them in uploaded photos. The decision to end the program comes at a time when face recognition technology is receiving push back, criticisms, and legislative bans across the...
PDX Privacy: Building Community Defenses in Difficult Times
The Electronic Frontier Alliance is made up of more than seventy groups of concerned community members, often including workers in the tech industry who see issues of the industry from the inside. One of the Alliance’s most active members is PDX Privacy, a Portland-based privacy group whose membership advocates for...
Copyright Regulator Eases Restrictions on Research, Education, and Repair
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has interfered with a staggering array of speech and innovation, from security research to accessibility for those with disabilities to remix and even repair. By forbidding unauthorized access to a copyrighted work—even for purposes that don’t infringe copyright—the DMCA effectively erased over a century...
Inequitable Access: An Anti-Competitive Scheme by Textbook Publishers
Update: An earlier version of this post described the UC Davis 'Equitable Access' program as it was implemented in Fall 2020. We have updated this post to clarify the changes made to the program in August 2021.It goes by many names, but no matter how you cut it, the new...
The Internet Archive Transforms Access to Books in a Digital World
In honor of Open Access Week, and particularly this year’s theme of structural equity, we wanted to highlight a project from the Internet Archive that is doing extraordinary work promoting access to knowledge. The bad news: that project is also under legal threat. The good news: the Archive,...
Europe's Digital Services Act: On a Collision Course With Human Rights
Last year, the EU introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), an ambitious and thoughtful project to rein in the power of Big Tech and give European internet users more control over their digital lives. It was an exciting moment, as the world’s largest trading bloc seemed poised to end a...
A Universal Gigabit Future Depends on Open Access Fiber
Open Access Fiber Networks Will Bring Much-Needed High-Speed Internet Service and Competition to Communities More Efficiently and Economically: Report
San Francisco—Public investments in open access fiber networks, instead of more subsidies for broadband carriers, will bring high-speed internet on a more cost-efficient basis to millions of Americans and create an infrastructure that can handle internet growth for decades, according to a new report.Commissioned by EFF, “Wholesale Fiber is...
Resisting the Menace of Face Recognition
Face recognition technology is a special menace to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. Our faces are unique identifiers, and most of us expose them everywhere we go. And unlike our passwords and identification numbers, we can’t get a new face. So, governments and businesses, often working in...
