EFF in the Press: 2024 in Review

EFF update
2 days 18 hours ago

EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists were media rockstars in 2024, informing the public about important issues that affect privacy, free speech, and innovation for people around the world. 

Perhaps the single most exciting media hit for EFF in 2024 was “Secrets in Your Data,” the NOVA PBS documentary episode exploring “what happens to all the data we’re shedding and explores the latest efforts to maximize benefits – without compromising personal privacy.” EFFers Hayley Tsukayama, Eva Galperin, and Cory Doctorow were among those interviewed.

One big-splash story in January demonstrated just how in-demand EFF can be when news breaks. Amazon’s Ring home doorbell unit announced that it would disable its Request For Assistance tool, the program that had let police seek footage from users on a voluntary basis – an issue on which EFF, and Matthew Guariglia in particular, have done extensive work. Matthew was quoted in Bloomberg, the Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, The Verge, The Guardian, TechCrunch, WIRED, Ars Technica, The Register, TechSpot, The Focus, American Wire News, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. The Bloomberg, AP, and CNN stories in turn were picked up by scores of media outlets across the country and around the world. Matthew also did interviews with local television stations in New York City, Oklahoma City, Allentown, PA, San Antonio, TX and Norfolk, VA. Matthew and Jason Kelley were quoted in Reason, and EFF was cited in reports by the New York Times, Engadget, The Messenger, the Washington Examiner, Silicon UK, Inc., the Daily Mail (UK), AfroTech, and KFSN ABC30 in Fresno, CA, as well as in an editorial in the Times Union of Albany, NY.

Other big stories for us this year – with similar numbers of EFF media mentions – included congressional debates over banning TikTok and censoring the internet in the name of protecting children, state age verification laws, Google’s backpedaling on its Privacy Sandbox promises, the Supreme Court’s Netchoice and Murthy rulings, the arrest of Telegram’s CEO, and X’s tangles with Australia and Brazil.

EFF is often cited in tech-oriented media, with 34 mentions this year in Ars Technica, 32 mentions in The Register, 23 mentions in WIRED, 23 mentions in The Verge, 20 mentions in TechCrunch, 10 mentions in The Record from Recorded Future, nine mentions in 404 Media, and six mentions in Gizmodo. We’re also all over the legal media, with 29 mentions in Law360 and 15 mentions in Bloomberg Law. 

But we’re also a big presence in major U.S. mainstream outlets, cited 38 times this year in the Washington Post, 11 times in the New York Times, 11 times in NBC News, 10 times in the Associated Press, 10 times in Reuters, 10 times in USA Today, and nine times in CNN. And we’re being heard by international audiences, with mentions in outlets including Germany’s Heise and Deutsche Welle, Canada’s Globe & Mail and Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Broadcasting Corp., the United Kingdom’s Telegraph and Silicon UK, and many more. 

We’re being heard in local communities too. For example, we talked about the rapid encroachment of police surveillance with media outlets in Sarasota, FL; the San Francisco Bay Area; Baton Rouge, LA; Columbus, OH; Grand Rapids, MI; San Diego, CA; Wichita, KS; Buffalo, NY; Seattle, WA; Chicago, IL;  Nashville, TN; and Sacramento, CA, among other localities. 

EFFers also spoke their minds directly in op-eds placed far and wide, including: 

And if you’re seeking some informative listening during the holidays, EFFers joined a slew of podcasts in 2024, including: 

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2024.

Josh Richman

Defending Encryption in the U.S. and Abroad: 2024 in Review

EFF update
2 days 18 hours ago

EFF supporters get that strong encryption is tied to one of our most basic rights: the right to have a private conversation. In the digital world, privacy is impossible without strong encryption. 

That’s why we’ve always got an eye out for attacks on encryption. This year, we pushed back—successfully—against anti-encryption laws proposed in the U.S., the U.K. and the E.U. And we had a stark reminder of just how dangerous backdoor access to our communications can be. 

U.S. Bills Pushing Mass File-Scanning Fail To Advance

The U.S. Senate’s EARN IT Bill is a wrongheaded proposal that would push companies away from using encryption and towards scanning our messages and photos. There’s no reason to enact such a proposal, which technical experts agree would turn our phones into bugs in our pockets. 

We were disappointed when EARN IT was voted out of committee last year, even though several senators did make clear they wanted to see additional changes before they support the bill. Since then, however, the bill has gone nowhere. That’s because so many people, including more than 100,000 EFF supporters, have voiced their opposition. 

People increasingly understand that encryption is vital to our security and privacy. And when politicians demand that tech companies install dangerous scanning software whether users like it or not, it’s clear to us all that they are attacking encryption, no matter how much obfuscation takes place. 

EFF has long encouraged companies to adopt policies that support encryption, privacy and security by default. When companies do the right thing, EFF supporters will side with them. EFF and other privacy advocates pushed Meta for years to make end-to-end encryption the default option in Messenger. When Meta implemented the change, they were sued by Nevada’s Attorney General. EFF filed a brief in that case arguing that Meta should not be forced to make its systems less secure. 

UK Backs Off Encryption-Breaking Language 

In the U.K., we fought against the wrongheaded Online Safety Act, which included language that would have let the U.K. government strongarm companies away from using encryption. After pressure from EFF supporters and others, the U.K. government gave last-minute assurances that the bill wouldn’t be applied to encrypted messages. The U.K. agency in charge of implementing the Online Safety Act, Ofcom, has now said that the Act will not apply to end-to-end encrypted messages. That’s an important distinction, and we have urged Ofcom to make that even more clear in its written guidance. 

EU Residents Do Not Want “Chat Control” 

Some E.U. politicians have sought to advance a message-scanning bill that was even more extreme than the U.S. anti-encryption bills. We’re glad to say the EU proposal, which has been dubbed “Chat Control” by its opponents, has also been stalled because of strong opposition. 

Even though the European Parliament last year adopted a compromise proposal that would protect our rights to encrypted communications, a few key member states at the EU Council spent much of 2024 pushing forward the old, privacy-smashing version of Chat Control. But they haven’t advanced. In a public hearing earlier this month, 10 EU member states, including Germany and Poland, made clear they would not vote for this proposal. 

Courts in the E.U., like the public at large, increasingly recognize that online private communications are human rights, and the encryption required to facilitate them cannot be grabbed away. The European Court of Human Rights recognized this in a milestone judgment earlier this year, Podchasov v. Russia, which specifically held that weakening encryption put at risk the human rights of all internet users. 

A Powerful Reminder on Backdoors

All three of the above proposals are based on a flawed idea: that it’s possible to give some form of special access to peoples’ private data that will never be exploited by a bad actor. But that’s never been true–there is no backdoor that works only for the “good guys.” 

In October, the U.S. public learned about a major breach of telecom systems stemming from Salt Typhoon, a sophisticated Chinese-government backed hacking group. This hack infiltrated the same systems that major ISPs like Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies had set up for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to get “lawful access” to user data. It’s still unknown how extensive the damage is from this hack, which included people under surveillance by U.S. agencies but went far beyond that. 

If there’s any upside to a terrible breach like Salt Typhoon, it’s that it is waking up some officials to understand that encryption is vital to both individual and national security. Earlier this month, a top U.S. cybersecurity chief said “encryption is your friend,” making a welcome break with the messaging we’ve seen over the years at EFF.  Unfortunately, other agencies, including the FBI, continue to push the idea that strong encryption can be coupled with easy access by law enforcement. 

Whatever happens, EFF will continue to stand up for our right to use encryption to have secure and private online communications.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2024.

Joe Mullin

【焦点】世界の原発建設費コストは今や数兆円、日本はわざと過小に評価＝橋詰雅博

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）
2 days 18 hours ago
　経済産業省が１２月１７日に発表した第７次エネルギー基本計画（エネ基）原案で最大限活用に転じた原子力発電所だが、肝心の原発建設費はどうなっているのか。今の物価高騰に伴い建設費も大幅にアップしている情勢を鑑みると相当に上がっているのは予想がつくが、具体的な数字を見てみたいと思い調べてみた。国際環境NGO「FｏE Ｊａｐａｎ」のブログ（２４年１０月１０日）によると、原発建設費は当初予算の数倍の数倍も膨らみ、今や数兆円は当たり前と報告している。各国の実例はこうだ。●２０２３年本格稼..
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2024 Year in Review

EFF update
2 days 19 hours ago

It is our end-of-year tradition at EFF to look back at the last 12 months of digital rights. This year, the number and diversity of our reflections attest that 2024 was a big year. 

If there is something uniting all the disparate threads of work EFF has done this year, it is this: that law and policy should be careful, precise, practical, and technologically neutral. We do not care if a cop is using a glass pressed against your door or the most advanced microphone: they need a warrant.  

For example, much of the public discourse this year was taken up by generative AI. It seemed that this issue was a Rorschach test for everyone’s anxieties about technology - be they privacy, replacement of workers, surveillance, or intellectual property. Ultimately, it matters little what the specific technology is: whenever technology is being used against our rights, EFF will oppose that use. It’s a future-proof way of protecting us. If we have privacy protections, labor protections, and protections against government invasions, then it does not matter what technology takes over the public imagination, we will have recourse against its harms. 

But AI was only one of the issues we took on this past year. We’ve worked on ensuring that the EU’s new rules regarding large online platforms respect human rights. We’ve filed countless briefs in support of free expression online and represented plaintiffs in cases where bad actors have sought to silence them, including citizen journalists who were targeted for posting clips of city council meetings online.  

With your help, we have let the United States Congress know that its citizens are for protecting the free press and against laws that would cut kids off from vital sources of information. We’ve spoken to legislators, reporters, and the public to make sure everyone is informed about the benefits and dangers of new technologies, new proposed laws, and legal precedent.  

Even all of that does not capture everything we did this year. And we did not—indeed, we cannot—do it without you. Your support keeps the lights on and ensures we are not speaking just for EFF as an organization but for our thousands of tireless members. Thank you, as always.  

We will update this page with new stories about digital rights in 2024 every day between now and the new year. 

Defending Encryption in the U.S. and Abroad
EFF in the Press
The U.S. Supreme Court Continues its Foray into Free Speech and Tech
The Atlas of Surveillance Expands Its Data on Police Surveillance Technology
EFF Continued to Champion Users’ Online Speech and Fought Efforts to Curtail It
We Stood Up for Access to the Law and Congress Listened
Police Surveillance in San Francisco
Fighting For Progress On Patents

Cindy Cohn