Electronic Frontier Foundation

What do you guys think of the Electronic Frontier Foundation? I care a lot about digital privacy and I have always thought of them as benevolent, competent defenders of digital rights in both the private and public domain, but recently I have been looking into them more and now I am not so sure. The specific issue I found with them is that they seem to be biased in favor of big tech companies. They will protect the digital rights of individuals and organizations when violated by the government and some smaller companies but with larger tech companies, such as Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., they don't seem to take any sort of significant legal action for their abuses, their impact limited to posting articles about these abuses with minimal action behind them. I tried to search news websites and legal databases (mainly leagle.com; lmk if you guys know of any better free legal databases) for legal actions they have taken against big tech companies, but the only legal action I saw EFF take towards any of these companies is an FTC complaint they filed against Google/Alphabet in 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/01/uc-berkeley-students-sue-google-alleging-their-emails-were-illegally-scanned/ I was surprised by their lack of litigation against big tech companies given they are one of the foremost digital rights organizations. Their responses to abuses of big tech companies, even during such large scandals as Cambridge Analytica, is pretty lackluster as well, lacking any litigation or media campaigns, and relegated to some toothless articles. An example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/yet-another-lesson-from-the-cambridge-analytica-fiasco Now we come to the crux of the issue; what is the motivation/reasons for this behavior? I can think of multiple reasons for this behavior from the EFF. For one, they may not have the financial or organizational resources to take on these big tech companies. Additionally, they may not have the legal basis to take any action over certain issues. That being said, I don't have the legal or organizational background to know whether or not any of these reasons may be the source of this behavior. Or maybe they are just incompetent in distributing their resources and their defense of the private sector is failing for that reason. And hey, maybe there are other innocent reasons that I am not thinking of that could be the cause of this trend. In contrast, some think this trend of avoiding litigation with big tech companies is deliberate because they claim that the EFF is paid off by these big companies, specifically Google/Alphabet and Facebook, through cy pres rewards and corporate donations. The following articles provide more details: https://web.archive.org/web/20140226201712/http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/30/google-and-facebooks-new-tactic-in-the-tech-wars/ https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine (This source is super verbose, sorry about that) These articles also argue that the EFF aids the big tech companies that pay it off by providing legal support for cases brought against them involving freedom of speech, copyright and patents, pushing narratives in the interest of big tech, as well as by indirectly litigating in favor of their interests, such as through the quashing of SOPA and PIPA. The EFF has certainly aided big tech companies in legal fights, as can be seen in the following articles, but whether or not this is because they are being paid off, I am unsure. https://www.eff.org/cases/viacom-v-youtube https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/finally-victory-free-speech-garcia-v-google https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/court-upholds-legality-google-books-tremendous-victory-fair-use-and-public https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/victory-doj-backs-down-facebook-gag-orders-not-so-secret-investigation https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20120409059 https://www.eff.org/cases/apple-v-does I am still not sure whether I believe they are in the pockets of certain big tech companies but even if they aren't, it seems like they could do a lot better at protecting the digital rights of all in the face of big tech companies. What do you guys think? Do you have any additional perspectives or information on the problems I described or the organization in general?

I was always suspicious about EFF. On one hand they provide good information for normal people and tend to open them to more responsible Internets using. On the other hand, they are big thing and we all know big entity, despite good intentions tends to become more open to mass consumerism and globalism. They clearly aren't here to fight but to deal with it. Anyway, (my) number 1 golden rule on the internets: nobody can be trusted. NOBODY.

I still receive the EFF newsletter, only because I haven't unsubscribed yet. It's always a long mess, so I don't really read them. My opinion on the EFF wasn't fully-formed until I read this article: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine The EFF has always seemed like an impotent cousin of the FSF that's easy to ignore, right? That article explains what it really is, and it's just as mentioned: the EFF will jump at the chance to criticize government, but rarely corporations, because that's what it was actually created to do. Still, if I got into legal trouble I thought it could help with, I'd certainly try to get free legal help from the EFF, but I wouldn't count on it unless my trouble was with the government.

>>11120 > Reader estimate: 53-67 minutes Well, soykaf. Looks like this will have to go on the stack to read later.

>>11120 >Yasha Levine This Soviet hebrew again, I wonder if his complete technological illiteracy is not so profound in this article.

to address the issues with this and FSF a new foundation could be formed and be governed on opencollective, lumio or something like that. need some charisma behind it though. who i am i kidding, y'all can't rent an apartment together after 3 threads so the chances of organizing something are slim.

>>11115 Didn't the EFF sue AT&T in 2006, because of the illegal wiretapping from the NSA? (your query is room 641A)

>>11115 >What do you guys think of the Electronic Frontier Foundation? I've been reading some of their articles from time to time and the content is generally good, but they avoid talking about the core of the problem - proprietary software. They try to convince their readers "privacy regulations" will help defend them from data mining, which is of course false, because as free software activists say - power corrupts. Enforcing "privacy laws" on for example Facebook will never work, as the problem lies in the way social media get money. The solution would be destroying all profit-driven, data mining social media. Users have to own their data and privacy, not ask big corporations to respect it. That's what EFF won't tell you. >>11120 Cool pic, I like the style.

>>11126 astute. I've always thought that the EFF is like the 'more respectable' version of the FSF. They're much better at PR (when was the last time you heard a twitter firestorm over the EFF being 'problematic'?) and they go after safe targets. There's nothing wrong with that imo, they do good work in their limited range. But if I have to choose between the EFF and the FSF I'll go with the FSF because they have a much more coherent critique of modern computing.

>>11126 >"privacy regulations" will help defend them from data mining This has always been my problem with them, which is kind of strange now that I think about it, since in other ways they're a lot like OP and >>11120 said: not sufficiently focused on the threat that private silicon valley megacorps pose. Seems like regulation would be totally counter to that, since it would be giving the government power over tech companies. I'd rather them focus more on the FSF's approach of software that can't spy on you by nature rather than software that's not allowed to spy on you (which reminds me of the EU's generally benevolent but somewhat misguided privacy protections). They kind of remind me of the ACLU: their politics lack specificity and sometimes dwell on symptoms of the problem rather than what I perceive to be the root of it, but I rarely actually find myself disagreeing with them. And to be fair, if they did get more politically opinionated I probably would start disagreeing with them (except for their unqualified love of Signal), so there's certainly something to be said for organizations that can unite socialist activists and libertarian techies against a common enemy. Overall I think I'm aligned with >>11127 . They serve a purpose I can mostly get behind and as long as they aren't standing in the way of anti-corporate free software movements I'm content to nominally support them, even if I'm not going to give them my money or time. Good thread, OP. I hadn't really considered the EFF this way and feel like my eyes have been opened a bit.

>>11129 >except for their unqualified love of Signal i meant to say i don't like how much they sh!ll signal. i get recommending it to people who still use whatsapp and sms, but it would be nice to see some comment about decentralized alternatives. idk i was trying to think of stuff i disagree with in their noob-focused "this is how you preserve your privacy online" blog posts and infographics that get shared around social media, and signal is the first thing that came to mind.

The problem is the naive view they have towards competing against the monopolies, in the sense that if someone built a search engine with actual privacy everyone would just flock to it and all the problems of Google would disappear by themselves. So in that regard they never do much. The problem is the core of what most know as Internet is on the back of those monopolies, so they only become relevant when the State tries to overstep their bounds. The antitrust approach is more effective to fight those companies in my opinion.

>>11131 yeah i get the impression that if you asked someone from the EFF they would tell you that they want google to "reform" and be more respectful of privacy rather than want google to be destroyed because its existence is antithetical to privacy