A Profile of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Somnus writes "MSNBC discusses the evolution and current criticisms of the EFF." From the article: "The EFF continues to tackle issues like anonymity, electronic voting, patents and copyright, but the Sept. 11 attacks nearly five years ago have forced the EFF to spend more time on surveillance. It has sought to require more evidence before law enforcement can legally track people's locations by their cell phones, and in January the group sued AT&T, saying the San Antonio-based company violated U.S. law and the privacy of its customers. AT&T and NSA officials declined comment for this article."

Comments

well...

[joe 155]

can I ask (and I'm not trolling; just not from the USA) is AT&T a government thing? they seem to be close to the NSA (is that a government thing...) but I don't get why a private company would be acting like this.

about the EFF... I don't always agree with how they do things but I'm glad that at least some people are trying to raise awareness of these issues, people often just see them as something tha will never affect them, but these issues concern everyone (or should). Once freedoms have gone they are hard to get back, if people know maybe we can try some prevention rather than cure before the idea that you don't have a right to your own privacy becomes ingrained through-out the world.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"but I don't get why a private company would be acting like this."

For the same reason private companies have helped any oppressive government throughout history: AT&T will gain private benefit from it. It may come as tax breaks, as lack of anti-monopoly action, as favorable legislation, etc. Whichever is the case, AT&T "cooperated" with the expectation of some financial benefit.

Re:well...

[pthisis]

AT&T is private. Much of their infrastructure was originally government funded (they are one of several companies that replaced Bell when Bell was broken up in the early 1980s). Partially because of that, and partially because of historical monopoly concerns, and partially because telcom is considered basic infrastructure, they are more heavily regulated than many private companies. Consequently, they tend to have an interest in making nice with the feds.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Constitution guarentees privacy, but it does not guarentee the ability to hide the truth"

You're playing with words here, and pretty poorly at that.

The Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Persons, houses, papers, and effects all may contain the truth in facts and statements. The Constitution explicitly gives you the right to hide these truths from the government. In order to learn these truths, the government must get a warrant based on probable cause.

"and especially not to do so in a manner that will lead to the deaths of thousands of people."

Oh, like the Bush administration hid the truth with blatantly false press releases, in order to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in two wars of vengeance -- vengeance upon parties who didn't commit the original offense?

This is your dishonest double standard. You pretend you're for "truth" and "protecting us," but in actuality you're only supporting these causes when they help your rulers. You want the (inexplicably, irrationally) trusted rulers to know everything that's going on, but do you also support our right to spy on the government? It doesn't sound like it.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge of intentions and actions gives you power to aid or prevent them. By advocating government knowledge of innocent people -- and make no mistake, you can't spy on "just the bad guys" because you don't know who they are -- you are advocating government power over those innocent people.

Your feigned support of "privacy" is pure bullshit; privacy is the right to hide information that is nobody else's business. It is the truth, yet you are permitted to hide it -- because it is nobody else's business.

Re:well...

[A. Bosch]

Just to add to the prior explanations, NSA is not just a goverment thing, it's a super-secretive government thing. The government for many years did not even officially acknowledge its existence. The joke was that NSA stood for "No Such Agency". Among other things, they are tasked with communications interception and decryption.

Re:well...

[pthisis]

AT&T was actually founded years earlier (in the mid-1870s) and was renamed to AT&T in the 1880s. When Vail took over he lobbied heavily for the "One Policy, One System" mantra and worked aggressively to get government rights of way and even for government usage of eminent domain power to sieze private rights of way to grant to his company. When the government began investigating the company under his watch for monopolistic practice, he compromised (around 1912 or so) on a "we can buy one phone company if we sell another" policy and promptly started acquiring geographic monopolies--if he held a company in LA and another in New York, and a large competitor did likewise, they'd swap so that one owned New York and the other owned LA and there was no messy competition to keep prices down.

The only reason they got the European system working was because of the AT&T/RCA/GE/Westinghouse compromise a year earlier that colluded to give each company a monopoly in a certain sector (and incidentally resulted in the formation of broadcasting powerhouse NBC)

Earlier, Vail lobbied heavily to get the federal government to "nationalize" phone service by giving AT&T a monopoly, and by 1918 that came to pass and they had a government-mandated control of the market which lasted until the early 1980s.

Ones they had that, they used it aggressively to exterminate small inventors. By the 1980s, they had banners hanging in corporate offices saying something like "There are 2 major forces in the US; one brought you phones, radios, radar, sonar, transistors, etc and the other brought you the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc--guess which one is trying to tell the other one what to do?"

That despite the fact that AT&T had been denied patents on the transistor because it was previously invented and refined by Lillienfield and Heil (although if you look up AT&T scietists Brattain, Bardeen, and Shockley in wikipedia, it lists them as the inventors with a straight face), they'd acted to bankrupt Tesla and leave Marconi as unknown as possible as the inventors of the radio, and they'd similar coopted the radar from Hulsmeyer and Bay.

Any argument that they (or Vail) were in favor of free-market private enterprise and against government subsidies and grants has a lot of evidence to the contrary that it needs to address.

MSNBC

[Adelbert]

MSNBC is criticising the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Now that's a turn up for the books!

Re:MSNBC

[Capt'n Hector]

Trust me on this, Microsoft has no editorial control at MSNBC.

Re:MSNBC

[lawpoop]

Why should we trust you on this? What do you know that we don't? How did you come to know this?

Go EFF!

[seanadams.com]

If you don't want to send the EFF money but would like to help the cause, consider just spreading the word a bit about what they're doing. I was shocked when I mentioned the AT&T case to a number of people whom I thought were pretty well informed on the tech industry (even if not privacy/post-911 issues) and was surprised how few have even heard of it. This is a $50 billion dollar suit! That billions with a "B"!

AT&T needs to feel some serious pain if they're found liable. This is way worse than the usual price gouging, deceptive billing, and anti-competitive behavior that people expect from the telcos. If they illegally dumped records to the NSA then I sure hope we see the execs on both sides serving some PMITA time on top of the 50 bil.

Need an EFF in the UK...

[celardore]

It probably wouldn't amount to shit, but I'm tracked everywhere I go. ID'd at work, the bank, the post office. Not to mention all the thousands of times I'm photographed going about my business every year. All that stuff is superflous though, ISPs in the UK tend to follow whatever rules America is following. They state it as 'policy'.

You can basically make your own laws, if you're an ISP, for this purpose. Just call them policies or put clauses in your terms of service.

Not just electronic

[Anonymous Coward]

The EFF is a vital orgnization in the ongoing fight to defend human liberty. Still, by concentrating on technological issues, the EFF calls attention away from the fact that the rights being fought over in court today concern not just internet wiretapping and music downloads, but are in fact a facet of the overall struggle for more basic rights like the right to free speech and the right to privacy.

The EFF should do more to call people's attention to the international struggle for human freedom. As long as they do not do this, they remain open to criticism that they are merely defending bourgeous privelege. Only when the worldwide proletariat is engaged in efforts to secure human rights will true progress be achieved. The enemy is not just a few misguided Bush administration functionaries, but is in fact the whole of the global ruling class.

When the day comes that people's revolution has overthrown the existing order and the means of production is in the hands of workers, then will humanity finally be free from the chains of the NSA, the RIAA, and their malignant ilk.

Re:Not just electronic

[xeithmazz]

if you read the article, it says that the EFF is somewhat an offshoot of the ACLU, which is the organization that is supposed to do what you're asking. the EFF was formed because the folks at the ACLU didn't have the expertise to handle high-tech civil liberties issues. furthermore, the EFF has offshoots that focus on lobbying rather than litigation, and now there is even the Pirate Party which tackles these issues from a legislation perspective. one organization can't do everything.

Re:Not just electronic

[iaminthetrunk]

Only when the worldwide proletariat is engaged in efforts to secure human rights will true progress be achieved.

That seems to me like saying that if everybody wanted peace instead of a color TV, there would be peace.

It isn't untrue, but it's unrealistic to the known facts of human nature and history. I donate to the EFF not because I desire them to tackle global human rights, but because I hope that they will prove an effective check against governmental abuse of the technological expression of my rights.

The EFF should do more to call people's attention to the international struggle for human freedom.

I don't want the vague desire to be a millionaire next week, it gets me nowhere - I want a sensible budget and automatic paycheck deduction to savings, because that actually helps me genuinely achieve wealth. The EFF's scope is fine, leave the global humanitarianism, worthy though it may be, out of this.

When the day comes that people's revolution has overthrown the existing order...

A fine day. However, you overlook that one of the problems is not the global ruling class, but privileged classes in general, and more notably privilege rather than class. i.e. When poor people become rich, they do not behave like the virtuous poor you imagine them to be, but promptly pick up the habits of rich, ruling, privileged class which you rail against. In other words, I admire your intent, but suspect that your direction is essentially tragic, seeking satisfaction by means which by their very nature cannot lead to satisfaction.

The sticky detail of privileged classes being emergent and inevitable is profound, as it implies that a simple revolution leading directly to utopia is misguided, and that more systemic proximal improvements to human social institutions are more useful. The gradual improvement of human history may be seen as such a slow sea change progress.

The enemy is not just a few misguided Bush administration functionaries, but is in fact the whole of the global ruling class.

A people has no enemies, though I appreciate your general intent. Marxism's proletariat was at it's best, perhaps, in it's invitation to join it, rather than in it's promise to sieze things, kill people and allegedly overthrow dystopia for paradise.

Tangentially, when fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross, not via a few misguided functionaries, nor even the ruling class. It will sweep up the general populace in it's flow and frenzy. They will participate.

Whether or not the EFF is defending 'bourgeois privilege', they appear to be checking fascism as a trend. Therefore they get my dollars. It's not that you weren't insightful or without worthy intent, it's just 'seizing the means of production' is an unworkable solution.

When the day comes that humanity throws off it's chains, it will discover that chasing freedom is itself unfree. In the meanwhile, could you set the global proletariat down and help with local matters at hand ?

A bit premature....

[Itninja]

FTA (regarding the lawsuit with AT&T):
"It's quite possibly the most important privacy and free speech issue in the 21st century"

Since the 21st century is only about 6 years old, isn't a statement like that just a little premature? Maybe the most important of the year, or even the decade. But the century?? I doubt it.

Smear Story.

[twitter]

The criticism:

Despite its many legal victories, critics charge the EFF with idealism ... and sometimes extremist.

The article starts by describing the offices as informal and some fights within the organization, then descends into name calling and empty propaganda by some of the companies who's practices have been challenged by the EFF. The article is essentially a feel bad piece and people who want to know about the EFF would be better off visiting the site themselves.

Idealism, what a lame complaint. The nebulous ideals of "Intellectual Property" and "Competition" (nice M$ buzzword tie-in there M$NBC!) touted by the "critics" are much less concrete and practical than any the EFF stands for. The headline might as well have read, "The EFF, though it's success, has detractors."

Criticisms?

[Stephen Tennant]

Despite its many legal victories, critics charge the EFF with idealism

and

That focus has left the group open to criticisms that by refusing to play the Washington game of compromising, its views are idealistic and sometimes extremist.

It seems that, when a "critic" thinks you're "idealistic," that means you're hitting close to home, and if you're an "extremist," you're probably kicking major ass. Quite simply, the EFF would rather pay their money for litigating lawyers instead of lobbying lawyers, and that's spooking the "critics," because it works.

Re:Are we really taking this seriously?

[mikeal]

Ownership has much to do with the slant and general trends in any media organization. I suggest you read any of the dominant literature on media from the last 20 years, beginning with Manufacturing Consent by Chosmsky and Hermand.

On your point about the EFF being "over-rated" on slashdot i really don't see your point. The EFF has done nothing but persue civil liberties legislation and litigation since they were founded, slashdot tends to speak of them highly becuase they've protected and persued their rights and never betrayed that. Also the EFF doesn't really do "fund-raising drives", they have plenty of grants and funding coming from all over, including companies that share the same incentive we do as citizens to keep our rights protected.

But I do enjoy the ramblings of insane people who know nothing about which they speak.

Re:Great

[qnetter]

It's an Associated Press article, transmitted on MSNBC.

I can't help but think that's a good thing -- no matter what I think of the article itself.

Which, by the way, as a long-time supporter of EFF, is this: it's a good survey, accurate in its description and not excessively focused on repoting criticisms.

Re:Done with the EFF

[linuxwrangler]

Wow! I feel like I'm feeding the trolls here but just in case...

JUST collecting call records? Like the ones the government was using to locate reporters' sources to chill media access to information? Like government attempts to expand easier-to-obtain pen-register warrants to cover not only the traditional who dialed whom info but also any touch-tone data within the call (PIN numbers, etc.). Who calls me, whom I call, when we call and how long we talk is absolutely nobody's business but mine and the phone company and the phone company has no business using it for anything but billing.

Full public disclosure of all call data, indeed. I can see it now. "Your resume looks perfect for the position, Joan. Unfortunately when we ran your call-records we saw numerous calls to a shrink and a drug-rehab center. And with your husband apparently having an affair, we can't risk the possibility of family stress interfering with your work..."

Even if EFF completely fails in the AT&T lawsuit, it has brought the issue into the public's awareness and that alone is worthwhile.

Add to that their work on DRM, Internet governance issues, etc. and I'm more happy than ever to send them several hundred dollars every year.

That's what you get in a culture of fear.

[FatSean]

Irrational fear of terrorism when you are far more likely to die in an automobile accident...yet people are afraid of these threats and willingly give up their protections, as witnessed by the jury in your example.

It is a sad state of affairs, but I see no way out of it. As long as the government can claim "We're at war, some rights are abridged" and just say "Whale Biologist!" whenever they're caught breaking the laws they are sworn to uphold...these things will continue to happen.

My only hope is that people will become immune from these fear-based control techniques over time, and decide that they want their old rights back.

I can't think of too many times in history that a population has successfully reclaimed a right taken by their government. Prohibition comes to mind...

CHARGING the EFF with idealism?

[starseeker]

Is anyone else disturbed that idealism is something that critics are now charging people with? I thought the holding of ideals and living up to them was a virtue. Things like liberty, individual responsibility, honor? Or trying to make the nation we live in be something worth standing up for?

Governments cannot be trusted. Ever. If we must pay a price for that, so be it - the price we pay for being trusting will be larger in the long run. There is never a good reason to trust a government, unless it is unite or die as a nation. (Terrorism doesn't count - they do not fundamentally threaten the survival of a nation as a nation, at least not in the case of the US.) Ideals are NECESSARY - what else do we strive for as human beings?