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Inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation
First time accepted submitter qwerdf writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation's goal is 'defending your rights in the digital world', and its activities span the full gamut of freedom fighting: providing help with court cases; issuing white papers that explain current threats; running campaigns to spread awareness of various issues; and developing technologies that make our online activities safer from prying eyes. Here's a short history of how the EFF came together, what it has done so far, and how it's preparing for upcoming battles."
Taking on the United States Secret Service is a pretty risky venture... But that’s exactly what the EFF did, shortly after it was founded in July 1990. The Secret Service had raided a small videogames book publisher, looking for a stolen technical document that might fall into the wrong hands.
If it's referring to the raid on Steve Jackson Games, SJG wasn't a 'videogames book publisher'.
Send some dough to the EFF. Right this second. If there ever was a time we need those guys, it's now.
I'm a tightwad, and if I can buy some cheaper beer for a few weeks so I can send them a few bucks, so can you, goddamit.
This week, we found out that we've got a secret court that's acting as a "shadow Supreme Court" that's deciding the constitutionality of electronic snooping laws and then keeping their fucking rulings secret.
http://boingboing.net/2013/07/07/secret-rulings-from-americas.html
So before you curse the darkness, go light a fucking candle. Give to the EFF. I've got a paypal window open right now and am giving another twenty, which means I'll be drinking cheap beer for the rest of the month. But at least I'll know there's someone out there who's not completely focused on the reality tv show that is Edward Snowden instead of the fact that we've got a privatized police state that's grown up around us in only about a decade.
And make no mistake: it's too late to start loading your shootin' iron unless you've decided your solution is to eat it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately, as with all freedom-seeking organizations, the EFFs scorecard consists of losses which have already occurred, partial losses, and losses which will occur in the future. DMCA? Total loss. Copyright extensions? Total loss. CISPA? Stopped for now, we'll see it in the future. Broadcast flag? Delay, then loss -- the FCC now allows cable companies to encrypt everything, and the government is attempting to end TV broadcasting entirely to give the spectrum to cell phone companies. Surveillance? Total loss, as a Snowden has revealed. Lawsuits against corporate leakers? They may have won on paper, but the chilling effect appears to have ended the juicy leaks.
Not really their fault; it's just that the age of freedom is over. Few care, and those who do are mostly against it.
The EFF seems to be more interested in defending copyright cases than defending other civil liberties. Almost completely silent on tracking and surveillance - but if some 30 year old is seeding copies of the latest Pixar movie off his work computer and gets fired, the EFF will be in there faster than you can say Stallman. At least the ACLU gives a shit. The EFF has just become a Google trade group.
NSA already knows their plans, they're already flagged as domestic extremists. Already has the power and technical ability to watch every URL they research, every article of law they read online.
Having that power means they can practice arguments against those laws, and fashion evidence to back their case prior to the hearing.
I bet the NSA goes further, I bet they even has the secrets of the judges that will hear the cases, and dirt on the lawyers involved. Because lying to Congress is nothing to them, so a Judge is nickle and dime stuff.
Thanks Snowden, we owe you.
If they are innocent then what to they have to hide? Funny how they don't like their own statements used against them.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Jesus, don't call it in the fucking air. At the very least, don't call it FOR THE OTHER SIDE. Cynicism here does nothing but rationalize not doing anything to stop it. "losses which will occur in the future" if everyone who should be standing up to it says "Ah, it's going to happen eventually, fuck it."
CISPA was a big win. No, they didn't stop it forever, but if you expected that to happen you're an idiot. What was the EFF supposed to do? Murder every CEO who wanted something similar to it, murder every lobbyist who would take their money, and murder every legislator who would take their meetings? Maintaining freedom is an active process, not a one time thing.
You list about four other losses. Summarize their full list of litigation if you're going to say they do nothing but lose.
This is not me shooting the messenger either. What you're doing is more akin to a football player in a close game screaming "We're going to lose! Repent! Defeat is inevitable! We can't win, they're going to hurt us, we may as well forfeit because our QB sucks!!!"
(Note that I never played football, but I'm pretty sure that's a good way to help the other team win)
Are you putting "The NSA spying on everything you type into a computer" and "SOPA and other attempts to kill off the internet" in the same league as "Google not showing guns in their online store?"
Am I missing something here? Did google become the only way to buy guns? Do you have a constitutional right to get the most relevant search results from every search engine out there when it comes to guns? Was the NSA right the first time when they promised they don't do any spying ever and were SOPA's proponents right when they said they thought no, it would never cause slashdot, reddit, and basically every other internet site out there to shut down?
You're not indulging in selective outrage, you're just a moron.
You do know it's possible for an interest group to focus on an interest, don't you? I'm pro-2nd amendment and pro-freedom on the internet (and elsewhere). I do not, however, expect the NRA to expend a large amount of its resources defending the 4th amendment, the ACLU to devote itself to the 2nd amendment, and the EFF to be crying "State's rights!" at every violation of the 10th amendment. There're simply too many violations of the Bill of Rights for any one of these organizations with their limited resources and dependence on donations to focus on them all.
Besides, you make a significant category error when you equate the actions of Google to those of the government. Google may be a monopolistic pain in the ass from time to time, but they haven't the monopoly on force the government has. If you can't distinguish between the two, then you don't understand what we civil libertarians are worked up about (and this is coming from a guy who won't be shopping with Cheaper-Than-Dirt in the future on account of their cowardice in the wake of this gun business).
But Scary.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
You're right. It was kind of him/her to give an example of someone thoughtfully questioning a rather confused, groundless, and scurrilous attack. It's a credit to those defending the EFF if he/she exemplifies the type. But, I must ask, concerning the use of ad hominem attacks such as you've appended to your words of thanks: Of what mindset is this exemplary?
Let's review.
The government is monitoring my every digital footprint whilst advertising companies are gathering more data about me than I knew existed. Google is constantly pushing me to drop my anonymity, sites like Facebook are rampantly collecting my private information and claiming ownership over it (without recourse) then on-selling that information with blatant disregard for personal privacy. Minors are being cajoled into legal agreements which are illegal without any parental oversight. Software patents are choking free software to death. Companies regularly disregard basic security and have no respect for my credit card details, personal details etc. Governments are passing privacy legislation which blatently supports all of this.
What would the EFF consider to be an epic fail of their stated goal?
If Slashdot wants to promote and help EFF, they should stop censoring users from reading news on their own website.
At the moment, many attempts to access Slashdot via Tor give a blocked IP address message. So many Tor users can't read Slashdot at all.
I might be a little bit sympathetic if Slashdot temporarily banned IPs from posting when abuse is detected, but it's a real shame that IPs blocked by Slashdot can't read the news at all.
They should be https SSL encrypted traffic too. How can we be free to comment if the NSA records everything we say for later use against us?
The whole anonymous coward system is under threat if you can't post anonymously.
To be safe https with a non-USA and non-UK certification authority, as grimoire points out there's some serious issues with SSL if the malicious actor is a rogue faction of any government:
https://we.riseup.net/debian/what-is-wrong-with-ssl-certificates
How about CACert?
https://www.cacert.org/
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is made up of superheroes who wear their underpands on the outside of their trousers.
Interesting. I've been looking for some underpands. Are they available at WalMart?
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The EFF want to ban your spam filters - they consider them to be "censorship", and unacceptable (unless there's never, ever a legitimate email accidentally blocked for any user - which isn't possibly, even theoretically).
http://w2.eff.org/spam/position_on_junk_email.php
(Old document, but still their current position).
...they haven't the monopoly on force the government has.
Yes they do, through copyrights and patents they are renting a piece of that government force. A monopoly no, they share this force with other corporations like Facebook, Disney, etc. But overall they do have a monopoly in that they are the few that have the resources to pay the 'rent'.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In 2008 the EFF has once announced a competition with a prize for the person, who calculates the biggest prime number. I have participated but until today I have not got any letter about my second place. My calculation ( was sent as fax ) instead was handed out to a group of scientists in Los Alamos - and they made the first place then ?! - then the hobby math from Germany in Northrhine-Westfalia ( me myself ) made the second place, but has up to today not got a letter, because I lost my flat during the assessment of this competition.