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Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance

Commentary

Commentary

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Platforms Want To Be Utilities, Self-Govern Like Empires

Whether it’s “bringing the world closer together” (Facebook), “organizing the world’s information” (Google), to be a market “where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Amazon) or “to make personal computing accessible to each and every individual” (Apple), the founding missions of tech giants reveal...

The Cryptocurrency Surveillance Provision Buried in the Infrastructure Bill is a Disaster for Digital Privacy

The forthcoming Senate draft of Biden's infrastructure bill—a 2,000+ page bill designed to update the United States’ roads, highways, and digital infrastructure—contains a poorly crafted provision that could create new surveillance requirements for many within the blockchain ecosystem. This could include developers and others who do not control digital...

It’s Time for Police to Stop Using ShotSpotter

Update (October 22): Earlier this month, SpotSpotter filed a lawsuit alleging that the Vice report linked below contains false and defamatory statements.Court documents recently reviewed by VICE have revealed that ShotSpotter, a company that makes and sells audio gunshot detection to cities and police departments, may not...

A striped cat opines using a megaphone.

Disentangling Disinformation: Not as Easy as it Looks

Body bags claiming that “disinformation kills” line the streets today in front of Facebook’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. A group of protesters, affiliated with “The Real Facebook Oversight Board” (an organization that is, confusingly, not affiliated with Facebook or its Oversight Board), is urging Facebook’s shareholders to ban so-called...

Law Enforcement Octopus Conference

Council of Europe’s Actions Belie its Pledges to Involve Civil Society in Development of Cross Border Police Powers Treaty

As the Council of Europe’s flawed cross border surveillance treaty moves through its final phases of approval, time is running out to ensure cross-border investigations occur with robust privacy and human rights safeguards in place. The innocuously named “Second Additional Protocol” to the Council of Europe’s (CoE)...

Pegasus Project Shows the Need for Real Device Security, Accountability, and Redress for Those Facing State-Sponsored Malware

EFF has warned for years of the danger of the misuse of powerful state-sponsored malware. Until governments around the world get out of the way and actually support security for all of us, including accountability and redress for victims, these outrages will continue.

Right or Left, You Should Be Worried About Big Tech Censorship

Claiming that “right-wing voices are being censored,” Republican-led legislatures in Florida and Texas have introduced legislation to “end Big Tech censorship.” They’re right. Conservatives are being censored. But it’s not just conservatives who have their political speech blocked by social media giants.
A bustling digital town square

The Tower of Babel: How Public Interest Internet is Trying to Save Messaging and Banish Big Social Media

This blog post is part of a series, looking at the public interest internet—the parts of the internet that don’t garner the headlines of Facebook or Google, but quietly provide public goods and useful services without requiring the scale or the business practices of the tech giants. Read our ...

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