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In our 711 issue:
The digital rights landscape shifted dramatically in 2016. From the very first week, when EFF confirmed that T-Mobile was throttling customers’ video streams, to our year-end call to the tech community to protect users in the face of the incoming Trump administration, 2016 saw no shortage of threats to Internet users’ fundamental rights to privacy, free speech, and the freedom to access information online around the world.
In 2017, we are likely to see new efforts to ratchet up surveillance using increasingly sophisticated tools, attempts to silence dissent and expression, and attacks on the rights of users and innovators. Defending digital civil liberties is as essential as it's ever been, and our movement has never been as strong as it is now.
Check out these articles from our year in review series:
- HTTPS Deployment Growing by Leaps and Bounds
- Protecting Net Neutrality and the Open Internet
- Defending Student Data from Classrooms to the Cloud
- Censorship on Social Media
- Open Access Rewards Passionate Curiosity
- Technical developments in Cryptography
- This Year in U.S. Copyright Policy
- The Year in Government Hacking
- What Happened to Unlocking the Box?
- Top 5 Threats to Transparency
- DRM vs. Civil Liberties
- The Fight to Rein in NSA Surveillance
- The Patent Troll Abides
- Our Fight to Rein In the CFAA
- Dark Skies for International Copyright
- Congress Gives FOIA a Modest but Important Update For Its 50th Birthday
- Most Young Gig Economy Companies Way Behind On Protecting User Data
- Fighting for Fair Use and Safer Harbors
- Secure Messaging Takes Some Steps Forward, Some Steps Back
- Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Wide Web)
- Chipping Away at National Security Letters
- Shining a Spotlight on Shadow Regulation of the Internet
- Ringing in the New Year with Resistance
- Passing, Defeating, and Leveraging Legislation in California
- The Year We Went on Offense Against DRM
- Surveillance in Latin America
- The State of Crypto Law
EFF Updates
EFF Ad in Wired: Tech Community Must Secure Networks Against Trump Administration
In a full-page advertisement in Wired magazine, EFF published an open letter calling on technologists to secure computer networks against overreaches by the upcoming Trump administration and to protect a free, secure, and open Internet. The letter outlines four major ways the technology community can help: using encryption for every user transaction; practicing routine deletion of data logs; revealing publicly any government request to improperly monitor users or censor speech; and joining the fight for user rights in court, in Congress, and beyond.
Whistleblowers Don’t Need Elite Credentials To Help Protect Us from Government Overreach
Author Malcolm Gladwell recently name-checked EFF in an article published in The New Yorker explaining what he sees as the differences between whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg and concluding that Snowden doesn’t deserve the respect (or apparently the same legal protection) that Ellsberg does. As an organization that has extensive experience with trying to make change with whistleblower information, we sharply disagree with Mr. Gladwell’s conclusion, and even more so with how he gets there.
USTR Gets Piracy Website Listing Notoriously Wrong
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has just released another edition of its periodic Notorious Markets List, a spotlight on websites and physical markets that it claims facilitate copyright or trademark infringement. This year, the focus is on stream ripping sites that take the audio from a YouTube video and makes it available for you to download—which is, in many cases, a legitimate and lawful activity. Also in the firing line are several cyberlocker sites, intermediary domain registrars, and online libraries Bookfi and Library Genesis.
Stupid Patent of the Month: Carrying Trays on a Cart
December’s Stupid Patent of the Month was especially relevant as people traveled home for the holidays: advertising trays for security screening, a patent so broad it covers almost any system of using trays and carts at a checkpoint. The owner of this patent, SecurityPoint Holdings, Inc., has sued the United States government for infringement and recently won a trial on validity. Together with Public Knowledge, we recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to consider the obviousness standard in patent law.
miniLinks
New York Times: Cyberwar for Sale
The New York Times Magazine looks at the rise of private contractors selling hacking tools to governments. The article is based on leaked documents from a surveillance software maker showing just how dangerous and profitable the industry is.
Op-Ed: Why Trump must Save the Government's Privacy Board
An op-ed in POLITICO argues that incoming President Trump should save the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the five-member panel that is set to dwindle down to one member, leaving it without the ability to conduct its oversight of the U.S. intelligence community.
The Intercept: The U.S. Government Thinks that Thousands of Russian Hackers May Be Reading My Blog. They Aren’t.
The Intercept looked into a recent government report about Russian hackers and their supposedly identifying IP address and found flaws in the report because it didn’t account for the use of Tor.
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Administrivia
Editor:
Dave Maass, Investigative Researcher
editor@eff.org
EFFector is a publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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