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2010年、中国深センにあるiPhoneの巨大製造工場「富士康Foxconn（フォックスコン）」で13人もの若い労働者が、宿舎の屋上などから飛び降り自殺する事件が13件も相次ぎました。ドキュメント映画《飛昇》は、2010年に飛び降り自殺した13人のうち何とか命を取り留めた17歳の田玉さんを撮った作品で、2014年に私家版として公開されました。iPhoneがどのような過酷な労働者管理下で製造されているのか、そしてそこで働く労働者らの心の声が記録されています。

Safe trick-or-treating this Halloween means being aware of the real monsters of street-level surveillance. You might not always see these menaces, but they are watching you. The real-world harms of these terrors wreak havoc on our communities. Here, we highlight just a few of the beasts. To learn more about all of the street-level surveillance creeps in your community, check out our even-spookier resource, sls.eff.org. 

If your blood runs too cold, take a break with our favorite digital rights legends— the Encryptids.

The Face Stealer

Careful where you look. Around any corner may loom the Face Stealer, an arachnid mimic that captures your likeness with just a glance. Is that your mother in the woods? Your roommate down the alley? The Stealer thrives on your dread and confusion, luring you into its web. Everywhere you go, strangers and loved ones alike recoil, convinced you’re something monstrous. Survival means adapting to a world where your face is no longer yours—it’s a lure for the horror that claimed it.

The Real Monster

Face recognition technology (FRT) might not jump out at you, but the impacts of this monster are all too real. EFF wants to banish this monster with a full ban on government use, and prohibit companies from feeding on this data without permission. FRT is a tool for mass surveillance, snooping on protesters, and deepening social inequalities.

Three-eyed Beast

Freeze! In your weakest moment, you may  encounter the Three-Eyed Beast—and you don’t want to make any sudden movements. As it snarls, its third eye cracks open and sends a chill through your soul. This magical gaze illuminates your every move, identifying every flaw and mistake. The rest of the world is shrouded in darkness as its piercing squeals of delight turn you into a spectacle—sometimes calling in foes like the Face Stealer. The real fear sets in when the eye closes once more, leaving you alone in the shadows as you realize its gaze was the last to ever find you. 

The Real Monster

Body-worn cameras are marketed as a fix for police transparency, but instead our communities get another surveillance tool pointed at us. Officers often decide when to record and what happens to the footage, leading to selective use that shields misconduct rather than exposes it. Even worse, these cameras can house other surveillance threats like Face Recognition Technology. Without strict safeguards, and community control of whether to adopt them in the first place, these cameras do more harm than good.

Shrapnel Wraith

If you spot this whirring abomination, it’s likely too late. The Shrapnel Wraith circles, unleashed on our most under-served and over-terrorized communities. This twisted heap of bolts and gears, puppeted by spiteful spirits into this gestalt form of a vulture. It watches your most private moments, but don’t mistake it for a mere voyeur; it also strikes with lethal force. Its junkyard shrapnel explodes through the air, only for two more vultures to rise from the wreckage. Its shadow swallows the streets, its buzzing sinking through your skin. Danger is circling just overhead.

The Real Monster

Drones and robots give law enforcement constant and often unchecked surveillance power. Frequently equipped with tools like high-definition cameras, heat sensors, and license plate readers, these products can extend surveillance into seemingly private spaces like one’s own backyard.  Worse, some can be armed with explosives and other weapons making them a potentially lethal threat.  Drone and robot use must have strong protections for people’s privacy, and we strongly oppose arming them with any weapons.

Doorstep Creep

Candy-seekers, watch which doors you ring this Halloween, as the Doorstep Creep lurks  at more and more homes. Slinking by the door, this ghoul fosters fear and mistrust in communities, transforming cozy entries into a fortress of suspicion. Your visit feels judged, unwanted, and in a shadow of loathing. As you walk away,  slanderous whispers echo in the home and down the street. You are not welcome here. Doors lock, blinds close, and the Creeps' dark eyes remind you of how alone you are.

The Real Monster

Community Surveillance Apps come in many forms, encouraging the adoption of more home security devices like doorway cameras, smart doorbells, and more crowd-sourced surveillance apps. People come to these apps out of fear and only find more of the same, with greater public paranoia, racial gatekeeping, and even vigilante violence. EFF believes the makers of these platforms should position them away from crime and suspicion and toward community support and mutual aid. 

Foggy Gremlin

Be careful where you step for this scavenger. The Foggy Gremlin sticks to you like a leech, and envelopes you in a psychedelic mist to draw in large predators. You can run, but no longer hide, as the fog spreads and grows denser. Anywhere you go, and anywhere you’ve been is now a hunting ground. As exhaustion sets in, a world once open and bright has become narrow, dark, and sinister.

The Real Monster

Real-time location tracking is a chilling mechanism that enables law enforcement to monitor individuals through data bought from brokers, often without warrants or oversight. Location data, harvested from mobile apps, can be weaponized to conduct area searches that expose sensitive information about countless individuals, the overwhelming majority of whom are innocent. We oppose this digital dragnet and advocate for legislation like the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act to protect individuals from such tracking.

Street Level Surveillance

Fight the monsters in your community

　＜デジタル化、コンテンツビジネス化が進む現在地から出版産業のゆくえを展望する＞トークセッション：植村八潮さん(専修大学教授)+橋場一郎さん(株式会社KADOKAWA　執行役 Chief Digital Officer)　コロナ禍を経て、出版産業の二極化がますます顕著になっている。大手出版社がコンテンツビジネスを機動力に、空前の利益をあげる一方で、紙の書籍を柱にする多くの小・零細出版社は厳しい経営状況に置かれ、廃業する書店も後を絶たない。　デジタル化は、情報アクセシビリティを..

偽善者ほどウザッタイ存在はありません。　詐欺師の偽善者は、人がどうなろうと自分さえ＜いい人＞の体裁を繕っていればいいのだから、後は野となれ山となれで、逃げていきます。　偽善者バイデンは、ネタニヤフに匹敵する＜ウザッタイ存在＞です。　稀代の偽善者と稀代の殺人鬼が共謀するジェノサイド・虐殺を、あらゆる手段を駆使して、一刻も早く止めさせましょう、、

シャープ製および東芝テック製の複合機（MFP）には、複数の脆弱性が存在します。

第５０回衆議院議員総選挙の投開票が、明日に迫った。野党にとっては、裏金事件で世間の批判を浴びる自民党を追い落とす好機だ。投開票前の２４日、都内各地域において野党統一候補の擁立を目指す市民連合組織「市民と野党をつなぐ会＠東京」の共同代表・鈴木国夫さんが、参議院議員会館内において、野党共闘がつくられた経緯や共闘に対する自身の思いを語った。主催は「平和をつくり出す宗教者ネット」。（岩中健介）

WiFi Allianceが提供するWi-Fi Test Suiteには、コマンドインジェクションの脆弱性が存在します。

VIMESAが提供するVHF/FM Transmitter Blue Plusには、不適切なアクセス制御の脆弱性が存在します。

Deep Sea Electronicsが提供するDSE855には、重要な機能に対する認証の欠如の脆弱性が存在します。

OMNTEC Mfg., Inc.が提供するProteus Tank Monitoringには、重要な機能に対する認証の欠如の脆弱性が存在します。

イスラエルとパレスチナの取材を30年以上にわたって続けてきた映像ジャーナリストの土井敏邦監督が、激動のガザの記録を2部構成でまとめたドキュメンタリー『ガザからの報告』が１０月２６日から東京で、１１月６日から大阪で劇場上映されます。（大野和興）

At EFF, our work always begins from the same place: technological self-determination. That’s the right to decide which technology you use, and how you use it. Technological self-determination is important for every technology user, and it’s especially important for users with disabilities.

Assistive technologies are a crucial aspect of living a full and fulfilling life, which gives people with disabilities motivation to be some of the most skilled, ardent, and consequential technology users in the world. There’s a whole world of high-tech assistive tools and devices out there, with disabled technologists and users intimately involved in the design process. 

The accessibility movement’s slogan, “Nothing about us without us,” has its origins in the first stirrings of European democratic sentiment in sixteenth (!) century and it expresses a critical truth: no one can ever know your needs as well you do. Unless you get a say in how things work, they’ll never work right.

So it’s great to see people with disabilities involved in the design of assistive tech, but that’s where self-determination should start, not end. Every person is different, and the needs of people with disabilities are especially idiosyncratic and fine-grained. Everyone deserves and needs the ability to modify, improve, and reconfigure the assistive technologies they rely on.

Unfortunately, the same tech companies that devote substantial effort to building in assistive features often devote even more effort to ensuring that their gadgets, code and systems can’t be modified by their users.

Take streaming video. Back in 2017, the W3C finalized “Encrypted Media Extensions” (EME), a standard for adding digital rights management (DRM) to web browsers. The EME spec includes numerous accessibility features, including facilities for including closed captioning and audio descriptive tracks.

But EME is specifically designed so that anyone who reverse-engineers and modifies it will fall afoul of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 1201), a 1998 law that provides for five-year prison-sentences and $500,000 fines for anyone who distributes tools that can modify DRM. The W3C considered – and rejected – a binding covenant that would protect technologists who added more accessibility features to EME.

The upshot of this is that EME’s accessibility features are limited to the suite that a handful of giant technology companies have decided are important enough to develop, and that suite is hardly comprehensive. You can’t (legally) modify an EME-restricted stream to shift the colors to ones that aren’t affected by your color-blindness. You certainly can’t run code that buffers the video and looks ahead to see if there are any seizure-triggering strobe effects, and dampens them if there are. 

It’s nice that companies like Apple, Google and Netflix put a lot of thought into making EME video accessible, but it’s unforgivable that they arrogated to themselves the sole right to do so. No one should have that power.

It’s bad enough when DRM infects your video streams, but when it comes for hardware, things get really ugly. Powered wheelchairs – a sector dominated by a cartel of private-equity backed giants that have gobbled up all their competing firms – have a serious DRM problem.

Powered wheelchair users who need even basic repairs are corralled by DRM into using the manufacturer’s authorized depots, often enduring long waits during which they are unable to leave their homes or even their beds. Even small routine adjustments, like changing the wheel torque after adjusting your tire pressure, can require an official service call.

Colorado passed the country’s first powered wheelchair Right to Repair law in 2022. Comparable legislation is now pending in California, and the Federal Trade Commission has signaled that it will crack down on companies that use DRM to block repairs. But the wheels of justice grind slow – and wheelchair users’ own wheels shouldn’t be throttled to match them.

People with disabilities don’t just rely on devices that their bodies go into; gadgets that go into our bodies are increasingly common, and there, too, we have a DRM problem. DRM is common in implants like continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, where it is used to lock people with diabetes into a single vendor’s products, as a prelude to gouging them (and their insurers) for parts, service, software updates and medicine.

Even when a manufacturer walks away from its products, DRM creates insurmountable legal risks for third-party technologists who want to continue to support and maintain them. That’s bad enough when it’s your smart speaker that’s been orphaned, but imagine what it’s like to have an orphaned neural implant that no one can support without risking prison time under DRM laws.

Imagine what it’s like to have the bionic eye that is literally wired into your head go dark after the company that made it folds up shop – survived only by the 95-year legal restrictions that DRM law provides for, restrictions that guarantee that no one will provide you with software that will restore your vision.

Every technology user deserves the final say over how the systems they depend on work. In an ideal world, every assistive technology would be designed with this in mind: free software, open-source hardware, and designed for easy repair.

But we’re living in the Bizarro world of assistive tech, where not only is it normal to distribute tools for people with disabilities are designed without any consideration for the user’s ability to modify the systems they rely on – companies actually dedicate extra engineering effort to creating legal liability for anyone who dares to adapt their technology to suit their own needs.

Even if you’re able-bodied today, you will likely need assistive technology or will benefit from accessibility adaptations. The curb-cuts that accommodate wheelchairs make life easier for kids on scooters, parents with strollers, and shoppers and travelers with rolling bags. The subtitles that make TV accessible to Deaf users allow hearing people to follow along when they can’t hear the speaker (or when the director deliberately chooses to muddle the dialog). Alt tags in online images make life easier when you’re on a slow data connection.

Fighting for the right of disabled people to adapt their technology is fighting for everyone’s rights.

(EFF extends our thanks to Liz Henry for their help with this article.)