Inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation 98
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."
Money well spent (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [boingboing.net]
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.
Re:EFFail (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service Case Archive
"EFF set one of the first precedents protecting computer communications from unwarranted government invasion."
I guess you're too young to remember that, or to have had all your friends whining they aren't getting their game updates because the Secret Service thought role playing games were real.
Plus grokster, broadcast flag, etc
Re:Firearms (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:EFF you (Score:2, Insightful)
You're one of those folks who complains that his friends have terrible politics but can't manage to persuade them, who is confident about the power of money in politics but never donates to the causes he favors himself, who complains that the world doesn't boycott antisocial companies but doesn't boycott them himself, who complains that the people never rise up but never rises up himself, who complains that politicians are corrupt but never runs for office, and who complains that the masses believe in the voting system yet whose only concrete participation in politics is by ticking the box next to his favored third-party candidate, aren't you?
Shame that Slashdot blocks Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Https too (Score:2, Insightful)
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/