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."
Small factual error? (Score:5, Informative)
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'.
Re:Small factual error? (Score:5, Informative)
I remember logging in the day after the raid. Strange message came up instead of their normal B.B.S. .
Then the stories from SJG about the raid. How the 'agents' ate the teams donuts, and broke open locks with the team standing there with the keys.
It was later found out that the warrant authorizing the raid really shouldn't have been granted in the first place, to put it mildly.
I know SJG has the story on their site. If you're interested, go check it out. I'm sure it's a lot better than my so called memory.
http://sjgames.com/SS/
Re:Small factual error? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
We can reasonably assert the equivalent of the Nuremberg Precedent as being one of those rights "retained by the people" (9th Amendment) and "reserved to the people" (10th Amendment). As such, all government officials have an individual, personal, and immediate responsibility to refuse to obey any orders or carry out any actions resulting from illegal laws, precedents, warrants, court orders, or executive orders. As a fundamental right, no act of Congress is required for this right to exist, and no law ne
Re:Small factual error? (Score:4, Informative)
Then the EFF's own page is wrong:
https://www.eff.org/about/history
"One of the alleged recipients of the E911 document was the systems operator at a small games book publisher out of Austin, Texas, named Steve Jackson Games."
the point is that they didn't publish videogames..
sure, some videogames were published out of the material. but not the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
No, EFF's own page is perfectly correct. Steve Jackson Games was (and is) a games book publisher. They are not, and have never been, a *video* games book publisher. Pen and paper, baby!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
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.
What's the matter? (Score:2)
If they are innocent then what to they have to hide? Funny how they don't like their own statements used against them.
Re:Money well spent (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, they want the police to protect them from their slaves
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, they're a Mickey Mouse party.
Re: (Score:2)
Limited to making sure teh gays can't get married
Except that the Libertarian Party supports gay marriage, and believes in marriage equality [lp.org].
pushing the LORD GOD OF CHRISTMAS AND ALL LIGHT AND ATHEISTS ARE MEAN doctrine on everyone.
Except that many Libertarians are atheists, and Ayn Rand was an avowed and outspoken atheist.
Sorry about the caps
Maybe next time, before you start shouting, you should check to see if what you are about to shout has any connection to the truth.
Re: (Score:1)
Libertarians=/=Anarchists. Libertarians want government, they just want it limited.
Libertarians are to Anarchists what nudists are to naked people. Libertarians and nudists are both just middle-class and well organized.
Re: (Score:2)
Libertarians are to Anarchists what nudists are to naked people. Libertarians and nudists are both just middle-class and well organized.
Anarchists are to nudists what wild-men are to naked people. Anarchists are organized for the purpose of returning responsibility to the individual absolutely, as if everyone was growing up alone in the jungle like Tarzan or Mowgli
Libertarians are to swimsuit models as anarchists are to nudists. Neither wants a lot of government (clothes), but one group wants none whatsoever. Libertarians don't want to abolish Federal or State Constitutions. Anarchists do.
Re:Money well spent (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Donate Here! [eff.org]
Thanks. Done. They have some nice shirts you can get, and the credit card payment process was about as streamlined as I've seen (not even a confirmation page, or even button. Almost too almost to help them out!). Email updates opted out by default, very prompt payment processing, and their TLS settings selection is great.
Re: (Score:2)
I found it a little annoying that I had to scroll all the way down the page (offscreen) to deselect off the checkbox that enables download/install of the EFF/Stallman Browser toolbar, though.
j/k
Re: (Score:1)
Thanks for the link, I just completed my donation. After reading the EFF page with their accomplishments, this donation was a no brainer. Best $100 I have spent to protect all of our rights.
Re: (Score:2)
You are free not to set off bombs in people's shops, and you are free not to use GPL.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That AC is either a little insane or at least a major drama queen. The only freedom GPL takes away from him is his "freedom" to take away other people's freedom. If that does not suit him - fine. But calling that "evil by definition" or "all such freedoms end" is ridiculous.
Re: (Score:2)
I wish people would stop using terms like "parasitic" and the more popular term... "viral".
Both connote that the GPL component got there without your intervention and parasitic implies that it is draining you without providing any benefits... like a tapeworm. The author explicitly chose to use GPL component because it had value and when the rules it sets forth presented an acceptable price or better, an alignment with one's own values. A GPL component is neither like a real virus nor a computer virus. It is
Re: (Score:2)
The GPL is a restrictive license and was made to impose restrictions on its users,
Define "users". From the context, "publishers" is the only word that makes sense, but few would consider publishers to be users. I think that disconnect is where the rift is. What "harm" is pushed on the end user of a GPL'd software?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He's trolling and a ridiculous amount of /. users fell for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Aye. Heartily seconded. See my sig.
A state wherein only the government is entitled to privacy is not a nation of free men.
EFFail (Score:1, Informative)
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. Surveillanc
Re:EFFail (Score:4, Interesting)
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: (Score:2)
They won the case, but looking at the current state of computer communications and unwarranted government invasion, they've lost the war.
Did SJG ever get back their seized hardware?
Re:EFFail (Score:4, Informative)
Most of it, and they got paid too.
EFF you (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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)
Re: (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 v
Re: (Score:1)
Mod parent up.
Re: (Score:1)
No, it's our fault -- the fault of the people who know why freedom is worth something.
We haven't made the case for freedom. We've been content to sit back and wring our hands as it dribbles away while complaining to each other that "the age of freedom is over", as though that were something that had just happened by itself. On the rare occasions where we actually try to convince people that fr
Re: (Score:2)
By the Dog Gorgias (for Gorgias is what I shall call you, AC), you must be on to something! And clearly, you're the 'persuasive' fellow to do it, with your emotionally 'appealing' arguments and clear 'thinking'. But tell me, if people are 'worthless', as you s
Re: (Score:1)
Don't be too dramatic. People do not care because they have a good life. Wait till that ends, unless they have killbots handy, and a lot of them, what was known as the French Revolution will seem like a Sunday afternoon picnic. The information out there is on everyone, including those who will get the blame. I know this first hand, I used such information, available from commercial sources, to do background investigations on the 1% for a huge bank. And this was a decade ago. The amount of info that th
Re: (Score:2)
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.
The EFF is also given to inane publicity stunts that divert resources and make it look faintly ridiculous. Windows 7 Sins [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
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.
In what universe is that not a civil liberties case?
Re: (Score:1)
Quite possibly in the one in which you didn't miss the words "work computer".
Re:Different focus these days (Score:5, Informative)
Are you insane? EFF has been at the *forefront* of the tracking/surveillance issue. Who did AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein choose to receive his inside information about how his employer was colluding with the NSA to spy on Americans? Why, that would be the EFF, who then proceeded to bring it to public attention and sue both AT&T (Hepting v. AT&T) and the NSA (Jewel v. NSA), beginning SEVEN YEARS AGO in 2006. Fuck, read a single webpage [eff.org] and learn something, instead of ignorantly trashing one of the biggest forces for good that we have.
NSA already knows (Score:1)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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 propo
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:1)
...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'.
Valid (Score:2)
But Scary.
'defending your rights in the digital world' (Score:2)
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 p
Re: (Score:1)
At least they do something..
What have YOU done to stop this?
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/
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would help a little if the use of TOR wasn't so obvious. TOR needs to do something to disguise itself a bit better. Slashdot (or anybody else) shouldn't know when you're using it.
Re: (Score:2)
How much you wanna bet the NSA and FBI have their fingers all over this site and its logs? This place is a hotbed of independent thinkers (relatively speaking, if 1 in 100 was the norm, it'd be 1 in 10 here), and we all know that independent thoughts are dangerous and must be monitored closely.
EFF is a mixed bag (Score:2)
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 [eff.org]
(Old document, but still their current position).
Re:EFF is a mixed bag (Score:4, Informative)
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 [eff.org]
(Old document, but still their current position).
Now that is a very creative (i.e. totally fucked up) interpretation of the EFF's clearly stated stance on spam. In point of fact, the EFF explicitly supports "your spam filters". To wit, "On a larger scale, EFF supports combatting spam by providing end-users with adequate tools to filter unwanted messages on the receiving end."
Re: (Score:2)
"Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients."
That's impossible to do, other than by delivering all messages to their intended recipients - whether that be spam, malware, or legitimate email.