この本は日本消費者連盟が発行するブックレットの最新刊で、一読してすごい本だなと思いました。内外の最新の知見と著者の実践を踏まえ、わかりやすく明快に、今何が起こっているか、その原因はどこにあるのか、ではどうすればいいのかが説かれている。おすすめの一冊です。著者は過敏症患者会「いのち環境ネットワーク」代表も務める環境ジャーナリストの加藤やすこさん。(大野和興)

EFF, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Mississippi, filed an amicus brief on Thursday asking a federal appellate court to continue to block Mississippi’s HB 1126—a bill that imposes age verification mandates on social media services across the internet.

Our friend-of-the-court brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argues that HB 1126 is “an extraordinary censorship law that violates all internet users’ First Amendment rights to speak and to access protected speech” online.

HB 1126 forces social media sites to verify the age of every user and requires minors to get explicit parental consent before accessing online spaces. It also pressures them to monitor and censor content  on broad, vaguely defined topics—many of which involve constitutionally protected speech. These sweeping provisions create significant barriers to the free and open internet and “force adults and minors alike to sacrifice anonymity, privacy, and security to engage in protected online expression.” A federal district court already prevented HB 1126 from going into effect, ruling that it likely violated the First Amendment.

Blocking Minors from Vital Online Spaces

At the heart of our opposition to HB 1126 is its dangerous impact on young people’s free expression. Minors enjoy the same First Amendment right as adults to access and engage in protected speech online.

“No legal authority permits lawmakers to burden adults’ access to political, religious, educational, and artistic speech with restrictive age-verification regimes out of a concern for what minors might see. Nor is there any legal authority that permits lawmakers to block minors categorically from engaging in protected expression on general purpose internet sites like those regulated by HB 1126.”

Social media sites are not just entertainment hubs; they are diverse and important spaces where minors can explore their identities—whether by creating and sharing art, practicing religion, or engaging in politics. As our brief explains, minors’ access to these online spaces “is essential to their growth into productive members of adult society because it helps them develop their own ideas, learn to express themselves, and engage productively with others in our democratic public sphere.” 

Social media also “enables individuals whose voices would otherwise not be heard to make vital and even lifesaving connections with one another, and to share their unique perspectives more widely.” LGBTQ+ youth, for example, turn to social media for community, exploration, and support, while others find help in forums that discuss mental health, disability, eating disorders, or domestic violence.

HB 1126’s age-verification regime places unnecessary barriers between young people and these crucial resources. The law compels platforms to broadly restrict minors’ access to a vague list of topics—the majority of which concern constitutionally protected speech—that Mississippi deems “harmful” for minors.

First Amendment Rights: Protection for All

The impact of HB 1126 is not limited to minors—it also places unnecessary and unconstitutional restrictions on adults’ speech. The law requires all users to verify their age before accessing social media, which could entirely block access for the millions of U.S. adults who lack government-issued ID. Should a person who takes public transit every day need to get a driver’s license just to get online? Would you want everything you do online to be linked to your government-issued ID?

HB 1126 also strips away users’ protected right to online anonymity, leaving them vulnerable to exposure and harassment and chilling them from speaking freely on social media. As our brief recounts, the vast majority of internet users have taken steps to minimize their digital footprints and even to “avoid observation by specific people, organizations, or the government.”

“By forcibly tying internet users’ online interactions to their real-world identities, HB 1126 will chill their ability to engage in dissent, discuss sensitive, personal, controversial, or stigmatized content, or seek help from online communities.”

Online Age Verification: A Privacy Nightmare

Finally, HB 1126 forces social media sites to collect users’ most sensitive and immutable data, turning them into prime targets for hackers. In an era where data breaches and identity theft are alarmingly common, HB 1126 puts every user’s personal data at risk. Furthermore, the process of age verification often involves third-party services that profit from collecting and selling user data. This means that the sensitive personal information on your ID—such as your name, home address, and date of birth—could be shared with a web of data brokers, advertisers, and other intermediary entities.

“Under the plain language of HB 1126, those intermediaries are not required to delete users’ identifying data and, unlike the online service providers themselves, they are also not restricted from sharing, disclosing, or selling that sensitive data. Indeed, the incentives are the opposite: to share the data widely.”

No one—neither minors nor adults—should have to sacrifice their privacy or anonymity in order to exercise their free speech rights online.

Courts Continue To Block Laws Like Mississippi’s

Online age verification laws like HB 1126 are not new, and courts across the country have consistently ruled them unconstitutional. In cases from Arkansas to Ohio to Utah, courts have struck down similar online age-verification mandates because they burden users’ access to, and ability to engage with, protected speech.

While Mississippi may have a legitimate interest in protecting children from harm, as the Supreme Court has held, “that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” By imposing age verification requirements on all users, laws like HB 1126 undermine the First Amendment rights of both minors and adults, pose serious privacy and security risks, and chill users from accessing one of the most powerful expressive mediums of our time.

For these reasons, we urge the Fifth Circuit to follow suit and continue to block Mississippi HB 1126.

In honor of Digital Inclusion Week, October 7-11th 2024, it’s an honor to uplift one of our Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) members who is doing great work making sure technology benefits everyone by addressing the digital divide: CCTV Cambridge. This year they partnered to host a Digital Navigator program. Its aim is to assist in bridging the digital divide in Cambridge by assessing the needs of the community and acting as a technological social worker. Digital Navigators (DN’s) have led to better outreach, assessment, and community connection. 

Making a difference in communities affected by the digital divide is impactful work. So far the DN’s have helped many people access resources online, distributed 50 Thinkpad laptops installed with Windows 10 and Microsoft Office,  and distributed 15 hotspots for wifi with two years paid by T-mobile. This is groundbreaking because typically people are getting chromebooks on loan that have limited capabilities. The beauty of these devices is that you can work and learn on them with reliable, high-speed internet access, and they are able to be used anywhere.

Samara Murrell, Coordinator of CCTV’s Digital Navigator Program states:

"Being part of a solution that attempts to ensure that everyone has equal access to information, education and job opportunities, so that we can all fully participate in our society, is some of the best, most inspiring and honorable work that one can do."

Left to Right: DN Coordinator Samara Murrell and DN’s Lida Griffin, Dana Grotenstein, and Eden Wagayehu

CCTV Cambridge is also slated to start hosting classes in 2025. They hope to offer intermediate Windows and Microsoft Office to the cohort as the first step, and then advanced Excel as the second part for returning members of the cohort.

Maritza Grooms, CCTV Cambridge’s Associate Director of Community Relations, says:

"CCTV is incredibly grateful and honored to be the hub and headquarters of the Digital Navigator Pilot Program in partnership with the City of Cambridge, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge Public School Department, and Just-A-Start. This program is crucial to serving Cambridge's most vulnerable and marginalized communities and ensuring they have the access to resources they need to be able to fully participate in society in this digital age. We appreciate any and all support to help us make the Digital Navigator Program a continued sustainable program beyond the pilot. Please contact me at maritza@cctvcambridge.org to find out how you can support this program or visit cctvcambridge.org/support to support today."

There are countless examples of the impact CCTV’s DN’s have had already. One patron of the library who came in to take a tech class, had their own laptop because of the DNs. That enabled her to take a tech support class and advance her career. A young college student studying bioengineering needed a laptop and hotspot to continue his studies, and he recently got them from CCTV Cambridge.

Kudos to CCTV Cambridge for addressing the disparities of the digital divide in your community with your awesome digital inclusion work!
To connect with other members of the EFA doing impactful work in your area, please check out our allies page: https://efa.eff.org/allies

Did you know the City of Portland, Oregon, already owns and operates a fiber-optic broadband network? It's called IRNE (Integrated Regional Network Enterprise), and despite having it in place Portlanders are forced to pay through the nose for internet access because of a lack of meaningful competition. Even after 24 years of IRNE, too many in PDX struggle to afford and access fast internet service in their homes and small businesses.

EFF and local Electronic Frontier Alliance members, Personal TelCo Project and Community Broadband PDX, are calling on city council & mayoral candidates to sign a pledge to support an open-access business model, where the city owns and leases the "dark" fiber. That way services can be run by local non profits, local businesses, or community cooperatives. The hope is these local services can then grow to support retail service and meet the needs of more residents.

This change will only happen if we show our support, join the campaign today to stay up to date and find volunteer opportunities.  Also come out for fun and learning at The People’s Digital Safety Fair Saturday October 19th, for talks and workshops from the local coalition. Let’s break the private ISP monopoly power in Portland!

Leading this campaign is Community Broadband PDX, with the mission to ‘guide Portlanders to create a new option for fast internet access: Publicly owned and transparently operated, affordable, secure, fast and reliable broadband infrastructure that is always available to every neighborhood and community.’ According to Jennifer Redman, President, Board of Directors, and Campaign Manager of Community Broadband PDX, (who also formerly served as the Community Broadband Planning Manager in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability with the City of Portland) when asked about the campaign to expand IRNE into affordable accessible internet for all Portlanders, she said:

“Expanding access to the Integrated Regional Network Enterprise (IRNE) is the current campaign focus because within municipal government it is often easier to expand existing programs rather than create entirely new ones - especially if there is a major capital investment required. IRNE is staffed, there are regional partners and the program is highly effective. Yes it is limited in scope but there are active expansion plans.   

Leveraging IRNE allows us to advocate for policies like “Dig Once Dig Smart” every time the ground is open for any type of development in the City of Portland - publicly owned-fiber conduit must be included. The current governmental structure has made implementing these policies extremely difficult because of the siloed nature of how the City is run. For example, the water bureau doesn’t want to be told what to do by the technology services bureau. This should significantly improve with our charter change. Currently the City of Portland really operates as a group of disparate systems that sometimes work together. I hope that under a real city manager, the City is run as one system.

IRNE already partners with Link Oregon - which provides the “retail” network services for many statewide educational and other non-profit institutions.  The City is comfortable with this model - IRNE builds and manages the dark fiber network while partners provide the retail or “lit" service. Let’s grow local ISPs that keep dollars in Portland as opposed to corporate out-of-state providers like Comcast and Century Link.”

The time is now to move Portland forward and make access to the publicly owned fiber optic network available to everyone. As explained by Russell Senior, President and member of the Board of Directors of Personal TelCo Project, this would bring major economic and workforce development advantages to Portland:

“Our private internet access providers exploit their power to gouge us all with arbitrary prices, because our only alternative to paying them whatever they ask is to do without. The funds we pay these companies ends up with far away investors, on the order of $500 million per year in Multnomah County alone. Much of that money could be staying in our pockets and circulating locally if we had access they couldn't choke off.

I learned most of my professional skills from information I found on the Internet. I got a good job, and have a successful career because of the open source software tools that I received from people who shared it on the internet. The internet is an immense store of human knowledge, and ready access to it is an essential part of developing into a fruitful, socially useful and fulfilled person.”

Portland is currently an island of expensive, privately owned internet service infrastructure, as every county surrounding Portland is building or operating affordable publicly owned and publicly available super-fast fiber-optic broadband networks. Fast internet access in Portland remains expensive and limited to neighborhoods that provide the highest profits for the few private internet service providers (ISPs). Individual prosperity and a robust local economy are driven by UNIVERSAL affordable access to fast internet service.  A climate resilient city needs robust publicly owned and available fiber-optic broadband infrastructure. Creating a digitally equitable and just city is dependent upon providing access to fast internet service at an affordable cost for everyone. That is why we are calling city officials to take the pledge that they will support open-access internet in Portland.

Join the campaign to make access to the city owned fiber optic network available to everyone. Let’s break the private ISP monopoly power in Portland!

　　1980年代だったか、「ユダヤがわかれば世界が見えてくる」というタイトルのトンデモ本がベストセラーとなって、国際的に物議を醸したことがあった。その後もユダヤ人問題やイスラエル国家に関する日本人の無知蒙昧が世界中に晒された。　これら偏見に満ちた極彩色の世迷言とは次元が異なるが、最近でも長崎での平和記念式典にイスラエル大使が招待されず、これに反発した米英など西側主要国大使も事実上式典をボイコットした。日本人の多くは、これを過剰反応とか政治利用とみなしたようだが、こうした解釈そ..

The Public Safety Committee of Oakland’s City Council will meet on October 8, 2024 to decide whether to renew its contract for ShotSpotter technology. This acoustic gunshot technology is flawed and highly controversial. It erroneously deploys armed officers expecting gunfire and thereby endangers innocent people. It listens in on marginalized neighborhoods that already receive the lion’s share of police harassment and surveillance.

ShotSpotter has received a tremendous amount of well-deserved bad press. The Mayor of Chicago recently called the technology “walkie-talkies on a pole,” because of their limited utility to a city that has been trying to find solutions to gun violence. A number of cities have let their contracts expire. The U.S. Department of Justice has been urged to investigate why this technology is put up predominantly in Black neighborhoods, even in places that have little history of gun violence. And earlier this year, police in Chicago alerted by ShotSpotter responded to what they believed might be gun violence–only to open fire on a child playing with fireworks.

Oakland has a chance to act now to cut ties with this dangerous technology. It does not address the root causes of gun violence, but instead adds another layer of surveillance on minority communities, which get the majority of (possibly incorrect) alerts. Tell the City Council now: end Oakland’s relationship with ShotSpotter!

2024年9月末日、久しぶりに＜西サハラ＞という言葉を、国連事務総長報道官が発しました。　が、記者陣の反応はゼロでした。　世界の関心は、イスラエルの暗殺に報復するイランと、お門違いの報復を繰り返すイスラエルに集中しています。

SUBNET Solutionsが提供するPowerSYSTEM Centerには、複数の脆弱性が存在します。

Delta Electronicsが提供するDIAEnergieには、複数の脆弱性が存在します。

昨日の東京新聞が動物界でこれまで当たり前だったことに異変が起こっていると報じていた。環境庁調査で、希少種ではないスズメやオナガ、チョウチョなど普通にみられた動物が急速に減っているというのだ。そういえば思い当たることが多い。棚田の田んぼでコメをつくったり、山の畑で雑穀を手がけたりしているが、ここ３，４年、スズメ除けの網掛けをしない。肝心のスズメが来ないのだ。（大野和興）

電波監理審議会（第1133回）会議資料

村上総務大臣閣議後記者会見の概要