Big Tech Pay-Outs to European ISPs Would Just Concentrate Their Power
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/big-tech-pay-outs-european-isps-would-just-concentrate-their-power
March 10, 2022, 11:36 PM
As the debate about how to rein in Big Tech and its anti-competitive practices continues, news publishers and telecommunications providers are increasingly calling for large pay-outs from major platforms. However, these proposals risk restricting users into ever-smaller walled gardens and cementing the dominance of a few big players.
On Valentine’s day, an open letter from the CEOs of Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Vodafone, and Orange surfaced. In the letter, the heads of Europe’s biggest t...
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Federal Court in Virginia Holds Geofence Warrant Violates Constitution
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/federal-court-virginia-holds-geofence-warrant-violates-constitution
March 10, 2022, 10:32 PM
In the first order of its kind, a federal district court has held that a warrant used to identify all devices in the area of a bank robbery, including the defendant’s, “plainly violates the rights enshrined in [the Fourth] Amendment.” The court questioned whether similar warrants could ever be constitutional.
The case is United States v. Chatrie, and addresses a controversial tool called a geofence warrant. The police issued the warrant to Google seeking information on every device within ...
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Utah: Urge Governor Cox to Veto This Weak Data Privacy Bill
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/utah-urge-governor-cox-veto-weak-data-privacy-bill
March 10, 2022, 8:48 PM
EFF fights for strong data privacy laws in statehouses across the country. That’s why we joined a coalition of privacy advocates in urging Utah's lawmakers to stop the bill. Now we're asking Gov. Spencer J. Cox to veto SB227, which passed quickly through the state’s legislature last week. This bill protects privacy in name only, and lacks real protections or teeth. By setting such a low bar for privacy, and blessing some anti-privacy company tactics, it does not set a strong foundation for f...
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Here’s How ICE Illegally Obtained Bulk Financial Records from Western Union
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/heres-how-ice-illegally-obtained-bulk-financial-records-western-union
March 10, 2022, 7:29 PM
Senator Ron Wyden has released a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General voicing his concern over a previously-unknown bulk data collection program that was carried out by Homeland Security Investigations(HSI), a unit within DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For more than two  years, HSI used administrative subpoenas to acquire millions of financial records from two companies involved in money transfers, Western Union and Maxitransfer...
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How the NTIA Can Fund Future-Proof Open Access Fiber
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/how-ntia-can-fund-future-proof-open-access-fiber
March 10, 2022, 6:09 PM
EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann contributed to the corresponding comment.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has big decisions to make in its effort to implement the new federal broadband infrastructure program. If done right, and with the right state policies in place, a great number of Americans will obtain access to multi-gigabit broadband in the coming years. EFF sent comments to the NTIA urging them to fund the deployment of open access fiber networks, p...
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Using Your Phone in Times of Crisis
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/using-your-phone-times-crisis
March 9, 2022, 10:35 PM
Secure communications are especially important in times of crisis. Just being aware of surveillance has chilling effects in how we exercise speech, which is often under attack by all sorts of actors from criminals to our own governments. With war in Ukraine and political crackdowns in Russia, it is critical for Russians and Ukrainians alike to let their loved ones know they're ok, to stay informed, and to organize.
It is not surprising that in times of crisis many people default to the most wide...
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EFF to European Court: “Right to be Forgotten” Shouldn’t Stop The Public From Reading The News
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/right-be-forgotten-must-be-balanced-publics-interest-online-media-archives
March 7, 2022, 5:23 PM
The “right to be forgotten," which exists in European Union member states and allows for mandatory delisting of results from search engines, must be balanced against the rights of the public to read media archives. EFF joined together with more than a dozen other media and free expression groups to make that point clear in a recent case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
In Hurbain v. Belgium, the applicant, the editor-in-chief of Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, argued that his ...
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Telegram Harm Reduction for Users in Russia and Ukraine
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/telegram-harm-reduction-users-russia-and-ukraine
March 4, 2022, 7:09 PM
Update March 8, 2022: EFF has clarified that Channels and Groups are not fully encrypted, end-to-end, updated our post to link to Telegram’s FAQ for Cloud and Secret chats, updated to clarify that auto-delete is available for group and channel admins, and added some additional links.
Russians and Ukrainians are both prolific users of Telegram. They rely on the app for channels that act as newsfeeds, group chats (both public and private), and one-to-one communication. Since the Russian invasion...
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Negotiations Over UN Cybercrime Treaty Under Way in New York, With EFF and Partners Urging Focus on Human Rights
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/negotiations-over-international-police-powers-agreement-must-keep-human-rights
March 3, 2022, 11:16 PM
While tensions run high across the globe over the invasion of Ukraine, the world’s governments are meeting at the UN this week and next to find common ground on a proposed treaty to facilitate international cooperation and coordination in computer crime investigations. The treaty, if approved, may reshape criminal laws and bolster cross-border police surveillance powers to access and share user data, implicating the privacy and human rights of billions of people worldwide. Earlier this week, E...
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Wartime Is a Bad Time To Mess With the Internet
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/wartime-bad-time-mess-internet
March 3, 2022, 9:44 PM
Like most people, we at EFF are horrified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Also like most people, we are not experts on military strategy or international diplomacy. But we do have some expertise with the internet and civil liberties, which is why we are deeply concerned that governments around the world are pressuring internet companies to interfere with fundamental internet infrastructure. Tinkering with the internet as part of a political or military response is likely to backfire in multip...
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The Campaign to Shut Down Crucial Documentary Tool youtube-dl Continues – And So Does the Fight to Save It
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/campaign-shut-down-crucial-documentary-tool-youtube-dl-continues-and-so-does-fight
March 3, 2022, 7:34 PM
Copyright maximalists just don’t know when to stop. Having failed in their 2020 attempt to use U.S. law to force GitHub to permanently cut off access to youtube-dl, an open source tool that allows users to download and preserve videos, on the theory that the tool can also be used for infringing purposes, the music publishers have turned to the German courts instead. But one small German hosting provider, represented by the German Society for Civil Rights (GFF), is fighting back.
The saga start...
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Cybersecurity Experts Urge EU Lawmakers to Fix Website Authentication Proposal That Puts Internet Users’ Security and Privacy at Risk
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/cybersecurity-experts-urge-eu-lawmakers-fix-website-authentication-proposal-puts
March 3, 2022, 8:42 AM
Proposed Amendment Will Expose Users to CyberattacksSAN FRANCISCO—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) technologists, along with 36 of the world’s top cybersecurity experts, today urged European lawmakers to reject proposed changes to European Union (EU) regulations for securing electronic payments and other online transactions that will dramatically weaken web security and expose internet users to increased risk of attacks by cybercriminals.The ill-conceived proposed amendment to Article 45...

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