Top Features
It’s a terrible idea to let politicians and bureaucrats decide what people should read and view online. But that didn’t stop the Senate from passing KOSA, a bill that will let the federal and state governments investigate and sue websites that they claim cause kids mental distress, on Tuesday in a 91-3 vote. This development means that the House could now take up and vote on this bill at any time. We need to act now and let the people making the laws know that the public is becoming aware of their censorship plans—and won’t stand for them.
EFF Updates
Digital artist, academic, and cultural critic Nettrice Gaskins discusses how she applies both artificial intelligence and her own life experience to create something new and original and expand the boundaries of Black artistic thought.
Privacy Badger’s latest update opts users out of ad tracking through Google’s “Privacy Sandbox,” which is Google’s way to let advertisers keep targeting ads based on your online behavior without using third-party cookies. And Google just backtracked on its privacy promise, announcing that third-party cookies are here to stay, anyway.
In a first-of-its-kind agreement, the Detroit Police Department recently agreed to adopt strict limits on its officers’ use of face recognition technology as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a victim of this faulty technology.
EFF has released the U.S. Border-Homeland Security Technology Dataset, detailing vendors who supply or market technology for the U.S. government’s increasingly AI-powered homeland security efforts, including the so-called “virtual wall” of surveillance along the Mexico border.
EFF—and all Americans—got a big victory last month when we defeated a set of rules that would have mangled one of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s most effective systems for kicking out bad patents.
Here’s an audio version of EFFector. We hope you enjoy it!
Announcements
Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, and 404 Media will receive the 2024 EFF Awards for their vital work in ensuring that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people. The EFF Awards recognize specific and substantial technical, social, economic, or cultural contributions in diverse fields including journalism, art, digital access, legislation, tech development, and law. Register now for the EFF Awards ceremony, 6:30 pm PT on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024 at the Golden Gate Club, 135 Fisher Loop in San Francisco’s Presidio. The ceremony also will be livestreamed and recorded.
Ante up! The EFF Benefit Poker Tournament is back for DEF CON 32! Your buy-in for the Friday, Aug. 9 tournament is paired with a donation to support EFF’s mission to protect online privacy and free expression for all. Play for glory. Play for money. Play for the future of the web! Seating is limited, so reserve your spot today. Every player gets a custom EFF deck of cards celebrating the tournament.
Join us for EFF Tech Trivia at DEF CON 32 on Saturday, Aug. 10 at 6:30 PM! EFF's team of technology experts have crafted challenging trivia about the fascinating, obscure, and trivial aspects of digital security, online rights, and internet culture. Competing teams will plumb the unfathomable depths of their knowledge, but only the champion hivemind will claim the First Place Tech Trivia Trophy and EFF swag pack. The second and third place teams will also win great EFF gear.
This summer marks the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Join EFF on Wednesday, Aug. 28 for a livestream discussion about restrictions to reproductive healthcare and the choices people seeking an abortion must face in the digital age where everything is connected and surveillance is rampant. Learn what’s happening across the United States and how you can get involved.
Job Openings
EFF seeks an experienced professional to join our Legal team as a full-time Legal Secretary who will support our attorneys in their litigation, appellate, and policy practices. We’re looking for a problem-solver with great communication, time-management, and organizational skills who can monitor dockets, manually calculate and calendar litigation dates, research court rules to ensure filings are compliant, and e-file our documents. EFF legal secretaries also provide admin support such as maintaining case files, running and entering conflict checks, creating binders, and maintaining the legal policy docket.
We’ll start taking applications Thursday, Aug. 1 for the Spring 2025 Intern Class! EFF’s legal internships provide law students with a unique opportunity to develop valuable skills and real-world experience while working with a nationally-recognized public interest law firm. Legal interns learn from and assist EFF’s staff attorneys in all aspects of litigation, including legal research, factual investigation, and drafting of memoranda and briefs, while also helping with policy research, client counseling, and the development of public education materials (e.g., blog posts). EFF’s docket ranges across the technological and legal landscape, from online fair use of copyrighted materials to illegal government spying.
MiniLinks
“Access to anyone’s social connections can reveal sensitive private information and expose them to security risks,” EFF’s Jennifer Lynch said. High-profile politicians like Vance may be especially prone to social engineering attacks and impersonation. “If someone who is a candidate for vice president hasn’t changed his privacy settings, I don't know how a company can expect the rest of us to stay on top of this.”
DHS bought a dog-like robot that it modified with an antenna array to let law enforcement overload people’s home networks to disable any “internet of things” devices, according to a transcript obtained by EFF’s Dave Maass and shared with 404 Media.
“This data could be used by spies, scammers and other bad actors to target specific people or to improve the feasibility of scams by impersonating the numbers of people you regularly call,” said EFF’s Cooper Quintin.
"The problem is that we're really stuck in a digital monoculture, where decades of anti-competitive practices have created it so that just one system is responsible for so much of what we rely on from everything from airlines to hospitals to schools," EFF’s Rory Mir said. "One mistake that creates a big failure, it happens, it's an inevitability. But for it to have this sort of impact is a policy failure."
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