EFF Press Releases

Electronic Frontier Foundation to Present Annual EFF Awards to Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, and 404 Media

jrichman — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:20:53 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that 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.

The EFF Awards ceremony will start at 6:30 pm PT on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024 at the Golden Gate Club, 135 Fisher Loop in San Francisco’s Presidio. Guests can register at https://www.eff.org/event/eff-awards-2024. The ceremony will be livestreamed and recorded.

For the past 30 years, the EFF Awards—previously known as the Pioneer Awards—have recognized and honored key leaders in the fight for freedom and innovation online. Started when the internet was new, the Awards now reflect the fact that the online world has become both a necessity in modern life and a continually evolving set of tools for communication, organizing, creativity, and increasing human potential.

“Maintaining internet access in a conflict zone, conducting fearless investigative reporting on how tech impacts our lives, and bringing the fight for digital rights and social justice to significant portions of Latin America are all ways of ensuring technology advances us all,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “This year’s EFF Award winners embody the internet’s highest ideals, building a better-connected and better-informed world that brings freedom, justice, and innovation for everyone. We hope that by recognizing them in this small way, we can shine a spotlight that helps them continue and even expand their important work.”

Carolina Botero: Fostering Digital Human Rights in Latin America

Carolina Botero is a researcher, lecturer, writer, and consultant who is among the foremost leaders in the fight for digital rights in Latin America. In more than a decade as executive director of the Colombia-based Karisma Foundation — founded in 2003 to ensure that digital technologies protect and advance fundamental human rights and promote social justice — she transformed the organization into an outspoken voice fostering freedom of expression, privacy, access to knowledge, justice, and self-determination in our digital world, with regional and international impact. She left that position this year, opening the door for a new generation while leaving a strong and inspiring legacy for those in Latin America and beyond who advocate for a digital world that enhances rights and empowers the powerless. Botero holds a master’s degree in international law and cooperation from Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a master’s degree in commercial and contracting law from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She frequently authors op-eds for Colombia’s El Espectador and La Silla Vacía, and serves on the advisory board of The Regional Center for Studies for the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), monitoring the adoption of information and communication technologies in Brazil. She previously served on the board of Creative Commons and as a member of the UNESCO Advisory Committee on Open Science.

Connecting Humanity: Championing Internet Access in Gaza

Connecting Humanity is a Cairo-based nonprofit organization that helps Palestinians in Gaza regain access to the internet – a crucial avenue for free speech and the free press. Founded in late 2023 by Egyptian journalist, writer, podcaster, and activist Mirna El Helbawi, Connecting Humanity collects and distributes embedded SIMs (eSIMs), a software version of the physical chip used to connect a phone to cellular networks and the internet. Connecting Humanity has collected hundreds of thousands of eSims from around the world and distributed them to people in Gaza, providing a lifeline for many caught up in Israel’s war on Hamas. People in crisis zones rely upon the free flow of information to survive, and restoring internet access in places where other communications infrastructure has been destroyed helps with dissemination of life-saving information and distribution of humanitarian aid, ensures that everyone’s stories can be heard, and enables continued educational and cultural contact. El Helbawi previously worked as an editor at 7 Ayam Magazine and as a radio host at Egypt’s NRJ Group; she was shortlisted for the Arab Journalism Award in 2016, and she created the podcast Helbing.

404 Media: Fearless Journalism

As the media landscape in general and tech media in particular keeps shrinking, 404 Media — launched in August 2023 — has tirelessly forged ahead with incisive investigative reports, deep-dive features, blogs, and scoops about topics such as hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, sex, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, government and law enforcement surveillance, privacy, and the democratization of the internet. Co-founders Jason Koebler, Sam Cole, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg all worked together at Vice Media’s Motherboard, but after that site's parent company filed for bankruptcy in May 2023, the four journalists resolved to go out on their own and build what Maiberg has called "very much a website by humans, for humans about technology. It’s not about the business of technology — it’s about how it impacts real people in the real world.” Among many examples, 404 Media has uncovered a privacy issue in the New York subway system that let stalkers track peoples’ movements, causing the MTA to shut down the feature; investigated a platform being used to generate non-consensual pornography with AI, causing the platform to make changes limiting abuse; and reported on dangerously inaccurate AI-generated books that Amazon then removed from sale.

To register for this event: https://www.eff.org/event/eff-awards-2024

For past honorees: https://www.eff.org/awards/past-winners

Journalists Sue Massachusetts TV Corporation Over Bogus YouTube Takedown Demands

jrichman — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:17:41 +0000

BOSTON—A citizen journalists’ group represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a federal lawsuit today against a Massachusetts community-access television company for falsely convincing YouTube to take down video clips of city government meetings.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts by Channel 781, an association of citizen journalists founded in 2021 to report on Waltham, MA, municipal affairs via its YouTube channel. The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says.

“WCAC knew it had no right to stop people from using video recordings of public meetings, but asked YouTube to shut us down anyway,” Channel 781 cofounder Josh Kastorf said. “Democracy relies on an informed public, and there must be consequences for anyone who abuses the DMCA to silence journalists and cut off people’s access to government.”

Channel 781 is a nonprofit, volunteer-run effort, and all of its content is available for free. Its posts include videos of its members reporting on news affecting the city, editorial statements, discussions in a talk-show format, and interviews. It also posts short video excerpts of meetings of the Waltham city council and other local government bodies.

Waltham Community Access Corp. (WCAC) operates two cable television channels: WCAC-TV is a Community Access station that provides programming geared towards the interests of local residents, businesses, and organizations, and MAC-TV is a Government Access station that provides coverage of municipal meetings, events, and special government-related programming.

Some city meeting video clips that Channel 781 posted to YouTube were short excerpts from videos recorded by WCAC and first posted to WCAC’s website. Channel 781 posted them on YouTube to highlight newsworthy statements by city officials, to provoke discussion and debate, and to make the information more accessible to the public, including to people with disabilities.

The DMCA notice and takedown process lets copyright holders ask websites to take down user-uploaded material that infringes their copyrights. Although Kastorf had explained to WCAC’s executive director that Channel 781’s use of the government meeting clips was a fair use under copyright law, WCAC sent three copyright infringement notices to YouTube referencing 15 specific Channel 781 videos, leading YouTube to deactivate the account and render all of its content inaccessible. YouTube didn’t restore access to the videos until two months later, after a lengthy intervention by EFF.

The lawsuit—which seeks damages and injunctive relief—says WCAC knew, should have known, or failed to consider that the government meeting clips were a fair use of copyrighted material, and so it acted in bad faith when it sent the infringement notices to YouTube.

“Nobody can use copyright to limit access to videos of public meetings, and those who make bogus claims in order to stifle critical reporting must be held accountable,” said EFF Intellectual Property Litigation Director Mitch Stoltz. “Phony copyright claims must never subvert the public’s right to know, and to report on, what government is doing.”

For the complaint: https://www.eff.org/document/07-24-2024-channel-781-news-v-waltham-community-access-corporation-complaint

For more on the DMCA: https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca

For EFF’s Takedown Hall of Shame: https://www.eff.org/takedowns

Contact:

Mitch Stoltz

Media Briefing: EFF, Partners Warn UN Member States Are Poised to Approve Dangerous International Surveillance Treaty

karen — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 05:11:55 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—On Wednesday, July 24, at 11:00 am Eastern Time (8:00 am Pacific Time, 5:00 pm CET), experts from Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Access Now, Derechos Digitales, Human Rights Watch, and the International Fund for Public Interest Media will brief reporters about the imminent adoption of a global surveillance treaty that threatens human rights around the world, potentially paving the way for a new era of transnational repression.

The virtual briefing will update members of the media ahead of the United Nations’ concluding session of treaty negotiations, scheduled for July 29-August 9 in New York, to possibly finalize and adopt what started out as a treaty to combat cybercrime.

Despite repeated warnings and recommendations by human rights organizations, journalism and industry groups, cybersecurity experts, and digital rights defenders to add human rights safeguards and rein in the treaty’s broad scope and expansive surveillance powers, UN Member States are expected to adopt the Russian-backed, deeply flawed draft.

The experts will discuss the draft treaty in terms of shifts in geopolitical power, abuse of cybercrime laws, and challenges posed by the rising influence of Russia and China. A question-and-answer session will follow speaker presentations.

WHAT:
Virtual media briefing on UN surveillance treaty

HOW:
To join the news conference remotely, please register from the following link to receive the webinar ID and password:
https://eff.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkd-GsrzoiH9Jt3gsl2CJ55Xv0hBDguxW5

SPEAKERS:
Tirana Hassan, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
Paloma Lara-Castro, Public Policy Coordinator, Derechos Digitales
Khadija Patel, Journalist in Residence, International Fund for Public Interest Media
Katitza Rodriguez, Policy Director for Global Policy, EFF
Moderator: Raman Jit Singh Chima, Global Cybersecurity Lead and Senior International Counsel, Access Now

WHEN:
Wednesday, July 24, at 11:00 am Eastern Time, 8:00 am Pacific Time, 5:00 pm CET

For EFF’s submissions and Coalition Letters to UN Ad Hoc Committee overseeing treaty negotiations:
https://www.eff.org/pages/submissions#main-content

Contact:

Karen Gullo

Deborah Brown

Catalina Balla

Government Has Extremely Heavy Burden to Justify TikTok Ban, EFF Tells Appeals Court

jrichman — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:17:25 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — The federal ban on TikTok must be put under the finest judicial microscope to determine its constitutionality, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others argued in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The amicus brief says the Court must review the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in April — with the most demanding legal scrutiny because it imposes a prior restraint that would make it impossible for users to speak, access information, and associate through TikTok. It also directly restricts protected speech and association, and deliberately singles out a particular medium for a blanket prohibition. This demanding First Amendment test must be used even when the government asserts national security concerns.

The Court should see this law for what it is: “a sweeping ban on free expression that triggers the most exacting scrutiny under the First Amendment,” the brief argues, adding it will be extremely difficult for the government to justify this total ban.

Joining EFF in this amicus brief are the Freedom of the Press Foundation, TechFreedom, Media Law Resource Center, Center for Democracy and Technology, First Amendment Coalition, and Freedom to Read Foundation.

TikTok hosts a wide universe of expressive content from musical performances and comedy to politics and current events, the brief notes, and with more than 150 million users in the United States and 1.6 billion users worldwide, the platform hosts enormous national and international communities that most U.S. users cannot readily reach elsewhere. It plays an especially important and outsized role for minority communities seeking to foster solidarity online and to highlight issues vital to them.

“The First Amendment protects not only TikTok’s US users, but TikTok itself, which posts its own content and makes editorial decisions about what user content to carry and how to curate it for each individual user,” the brief argues.

Congress’s content-based justifications for the ban make it clear that the government is targeting TikTok because it finds speech that Americans receive from it to be harmful, and simply invoking national security without clearly demonstrating a threat doesn’t overcome the ban’s unconstitutionality, the brief argues.

“Millions of Americans use TikTok every day to share and receive ideas, information, opinions, and entertainment from other users around the world lies, and that’s squarely within the protections of the First Amendment,” EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene said. “By barring all speech on the platform before it can happen, the law effects the kind of prior restraint that the Supreme Court has rejected for the past century as unconstitutional in all but the rarest cases.”

For the brief: https://www.eff.org/document/06-26-2024-eff-et-al-amicus-brief-tiktok-v-garland

For EFF’s stance on TikTok bans: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/03/government-hasnt-justified-tiktok-ban

Contact:

David Greene

EFF Welcomes Tarah Wheeler to Its Board of Directors

jrichman — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 21:42:20 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce today that Tarah Wheeler — a social scientist studying international conflict, an author, and a poker player who is CEO of the cybersecurity compliance company Red Queen Dynamics — has joined EFF’s Board of Directors.

Wheeler has served on EFF’s advisory board since June 2020. She is the Senior Fellow for Global Cyber Policy at Council on Foreign Relations and was elected to Life Membership at CFR in 2023. She is an inaugural contributing cybersecurity expert for the Washington Post, and a Foreign Policy contributor on cyber warfare. She is the author of the best-selling “Women In Tech: Take Your Career to The Next Level With Practical Advice And Inspiring Stories” (2016).

“I am very excited to have Tarah bring her judgment, her technical expertise and her enthusiasm to EFF’s Board,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “She has supported us in many ways before now, including creating and hosting the ‘Betting on Your Digital Rights: EFF Benefit Poker Tournament at DEF CON,’ which will have its third year this summer. Now we get to have her in a governance role as well.”

"I am deeply honored to join the Board of Directors at the Electronic Frontier Foundation,” Wheeler said. “EFF's mission to defend civil liberties in the digital world is more critical than ever, and I am humbled to be invited to serve in this work. EFF has been there for me and other information security researchers when we needed a champion the most. Together, we will continue to fight for the rights and freedoms that ensure a free and open internet for all."

Wheeler has been a US/UK Fulbright Scholar in Cyber Security and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the University of Oxford, the Brookings Institution’s contributing cybersecurity editor, a Cyber Project Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University‘s Kennedy School of Government, and an International Security Fellow at New America leading a new international cybersecurity capacity building project with the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative. She has been Head of Offensive Security & Technical Data Privacy at Splunk & Senior Director of Engineering and Principal Security Advocate at Symantec Website Security. She has led projects at Microsoft Game Studios (Halo and Lips) and architected systems at encrypted mobile communications firm Silent Circle. She has two cashes and $4,722 in lifetime earnings in the World Series of Poker.

Members of the Board of Directors ensure EFF’s sustainability by adopting sound, ethical, and legal governance and financial management policies so that the organization has adequate resources to advance its mission.

Shari Steele — who had been on EFF’s Board since 2015 when she ceased being EFF’s Executive Director — has rotated off the Board. Gigi Sohn has been elected Chair of the Board.

For the full roster of EFF’s Board of Directors: https://www.eff.org/about/board

Matthew Guariglia, EFF Senior Policy Analyst, Named to Library of Congress Fellowship

jrichman — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:52:06 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC—Matthew Guariglia, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has been named a National Governing Institutions Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

This multi-month residential fellowship is designed to support scholars working on research that can impact policy making. Guariglia—who won this fellowship in his personal capacity, outside of his work with EFF—will work on a new book about the dramatic increase of the U.S. government's ability to collect and store information on individuals and how it has used that information for good and ill, from Civil War military pensions to National Security Agency mass surveillance. The book is tentatively titled “Burn the Files: Surveillance, Information, and Power in the United States.” Guariglia will continue in his role at EFF during the fellowship, although the project is separate.

The Kluge Center was created to provide space to better understand and address the challenges facing democracies in the 21st century by bridging the gap between scholarship and the policymaking community. The center invites into residence top thinkers from around the world to distill wisdom from the rich resources of the Library of Congress and to foster mutually enriching relationships with lawmakers and other policy leaders.

"Behind a number of destructive American institutions—like Chinese exclusion, ‘red scare’ hysteria, mass incarceration, and digital mass surveillance—have been people sifting through paperwork and organizing files,” Guariglia said.

“Over the last 150 years, the U.S. government has constantly been increasing its capacity to collect information, either through bureaucratic procedure or surveillance, and then storing and organizing that information in ways that have often made marginalized groups more vulnerable to state intervention,” he said. “I hope more research and learning from the past can lead us to a future where the government's management of our information can be done in a responsible way to everyone's benefit and not used in a punitive way that erodes trust in key institutions."

For Matthew Guariglia’s bio and photo: https://www.eff.org/about/staff/dr-matthew-guariglia-0

For more about the Kluge Center: https://www.loc.gov/programs/john-w-kluge-center/about-this-program/about-the-kluge-center/

EFF Zine on Surveillance Tech at the Southern Border Shines Light on Ever-Growing Spy Network

karen — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:13:25 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—Sensor towers controlled by AI, drones launched from truck-bed catapults, vehicle-tracking devices disguised as traffic cones—all are part of an arsenal of technologies that comprise the expanding U.S surveillance strategy along the U.S.-Mexico border, revealed in a new EFF zine for advocates, journalists, academics, researchers, humanitarian aid workers, and borderland residents.

Formally released today and available for download online in English and Spanish, “Surveillance Technology at the U.S.-Mexico Border” is a 36-page comprehensive guide to identifying the growing system of surveillance towers, aerial systems, and roadside camera networks deployed by U.S.-law enforcement agencies along the Southern border, allowing for the real-time tracking of people and vehicles.

The devices and towers—some hidden, camouflaged, or moveable—can be found in heavily populated urban areas, small towns, fields, farmland, highways, dirt roads, and deserts in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

The zine grew out of work by EFF’s border surveillance team, which involved meetings with immigrant rights groups and journalists, research into government procurement documents, and trips to the border. The team located, studied, and documented spy tech deployed and monitored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), National Guard, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), often working in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies.

“Our team learned that while many people had an abstract understanding of the so-called ‘virtual wall,’ the actual physical infrastructure was largely unknown to them,” said EFF Director of Investigations Dave Maass. “In some cases, people had seen surveillance towers, but mistook them for cell phone towers, or they’d seen an aerostat flying in the sky and not known it was part of the U.S. border strategy.

“That's why we put together this zine; it serves as a field guide to spotting and identifying the large range of technologies that are becoming so ubiquitous that they are almost invisible,” said Maass.

The zine also includes a copy off EFF’s pocket guide to crossing the U.S. border and protecting information on smart phones, computers, and other digital devices.

The zine is available for republication and remixing under EFF’s Creative Commons Attribution License and features photography by Colter Thomas and Dugan Meyer, whose exhibit “Infrastructures of Control,”—which incorporates some of EFF’s border research—opened in April at the University of Arizona. EFF has previously released a gallery of images of border surveillance that are available for publications to reuse, as well as a living map of known surveillance towers that make up the so-called “virtual wall.”

To download the zine: https://www.eff.org/pages/zine-surveillance-technology-us-mexico-border

For more on border surveillance: https://www.eff.org/issues/border-surveillance-technology

For EFF’s searchable Atlas of Surveillance: https://atlasofsurveillance.org/

Contact:

Dave Maass

Reject Nevada’s Attack on Encrypted Messaging, EFF Tells Court

hudson — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 22:00:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of partners urged a court to protect default encrypted messaging and children’s privacy and security in a brief filed today.

The brief by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Nevada, the EFF, Stanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn, and six other organizations asks the court to reject a request by Nevada’s attorney general to stop Meta from offering end-to-end encryption by default to Facebook Messenger users under 18 in the state. The brief was also signed by Access Now, Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), Fight for the Future, Internet Society, Mozilla, and Signal Messenger LLC.

Communications are safer when third parties can’t listen in on them. That’s why the EFF and others who care about privacy pushed Meta for years to make end-to-end encryption the default option in Messenger. Meta finally made the change, but Nevada wants to turn back the clock. As the brief notes, end-to-end encryption “means that even if someone intercepts the messages—whether they are a criminal, a domestic abuser, a foreign despot, or law enforcement—they will not be able to decipher or access the message.” The state of Nevada, however, bizarrely argues that young people would be better off without this protection.

“Encryption is the best tool we have for safeguarding our privacy and security online — and privacy and security are especially important for young people,” said EFF Surveillance Litigation Director Andrew Crocker. “Nevada’s argument that children need to be ‘protected’ from securely communicating isn’t just baffling; it’s dangerous.”

As explained in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the EFF and others today, encryption is one of the best ways to reclaim our privacy and security in a digital world full of cyberattacks and security breaches. It is increasingly being deployed across the internet as a way to protect users and data. For children and their families especially, encrypted communication is one of the strongest safeguards they have against malicious misuse of their private messages — a safeguard Nevada seeks to deny them.

“The European Court of Human Rights recently rejected a Russian law that would have imposed similar requirements on services that offer end-to-end message encryption – finding that it violated human rights and EU law to deny people the security and privacy that encryption provides,” said EFF’s Executive Director Cindy Cohn. “Nevada’s attempt should be similarly rejected.”

In its motion to the court, Nevada argues that it is necessary to block end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger because it can impede some criminal investigations involving children. This ignores that law enforcement can and does conduct investigations involving encrypted messages, which can be reported by users and accessed from either the sender or recipient’s devices. It also ignores law enforcement’s use of the tremendous amount of additional information about users that Meta routinely collects.

The brief notes that co-amicus Pfeffercorn recently authored a study that confirmed that Nevada does not, in fact, need to block encryption to do its investigations. The study found that “content-oblivious” investigation methods are “considered more useful than monitoring the contents of users’ communications when it comes to detecting nearly every kind of online abuse.”

“The court should reject Nevada’s motion,” said EFF’s Crocker. “Making children more vulnerable in just to make law enforcement investigators’ jobs slightly easier is an uneceesary and dangerous trade off.”

For the brief: https://www.eff.org/document/nevada-v-meta-amicus-brief

Contact:

Andrew Crocker

Dozens of Rogue California Police Agencies Still Sharing Driver Locations with Anti-Abortion States

jrichman — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:56:05 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—California Attorney General Rob Bonta should crack down on police agencies that still violate Californians’ privacy by sharing automated license plate reader information with out-of-state government agencies, putting abortion seekers and providers at particular risk, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates urged in a letter to Bonta today.

In October 2023, Bonta issued a legal interpretation and guidance clarifying that a 2016 state law, SB 34, prohibits California’s local and state police from sharing information collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) with out-of-state or federal agencies. However, despite the Attorney General’s definitive stance, dozens of law enforcement agencies have signaled their intent to continue defying the law.

The EFF and ACLU letter lists 35 specific police agencies which either have informed the civil liberties organizations that they plan to keep sharing ALPR information with out-of-state law enforcement, or have failed to confirm their compliance with the law in response to inquiries by the organizations.

“We urge your office to explore all potential avenues to ensure that state and local law enforcement agencies immediately comply,” the letter said. “We are deeply concerned that the information could be shared with agencies that do not respect California’s commitment to civil rights and liberties and are not covered by California’s privacy protections.”

ALPR systems collect and store location information about drivers, including dates, times, and locations. This sensitive information can reveal where individuals work, live, associate, worship, or seek reproductive health services and other medical care. Sharing any ALPR information with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies has been forbidden by the California Civil Code since enactment of SB 34 in 2016.

And sharing this data with law enforcement in states that criminalize abortion also undermines California’s extensive efforts to protect reproductive health privacy, especially a 2022 law (AB 1242) prohibiting state and local agencies from providing abortion-related information to out-of-state agencies. The UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates that between 8,000 and 16,100 people will travel to California each year for reproductive care.

An EFF investigation involving hundreds of public records requests uncovered that many California police departments continued sharing records containing residents’ detailed driving profiles with out-of-state agencies. EFF and the ACLUs of Northern and Southern California in March 2023 wrote to more than 70 such agencies to demand they comply with state law. While many complied, many others have not.

“We appreciate your office’s statement on SB 34 and your efforts to protect the privacy and civil rights of everyone in California,” today’s letter said. “Nevertheless, it is clear that many law enforcement agencies continue to ignore your interpretation of the law by continuing to share ALPR information with out-of-state and federal agencies. This violation of SB 34 will continue to imperil marginalized communities across the country, and abortion seekers, providers, and facilitators will be at greater risk of undue criminalization and prosecution.”

For the letter to Bonta: https://www.eff.org/document/01-31-2024-letter-california-ag-rob-bonta-re-enforcing-sb34-alprs

For the letters sent last year to noncompliant California police agencies: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/civil-liberties-groups-demand-california-police-stop-sharing-drivers-location-data

For information on how ALPRs threaten abortion access: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/09/automated-license-plate-readers-threaten-abortion-access-heres-how-policymakers

For general information about ALPRs: https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-readers-alprs

Contact:

Jennifer Pinsof

Adam Schwartz

EFF Unveils Its New Street Level Surveillance Hub

jrichman — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:56:53 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ privacy.

The hub has new or updated pages on automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn cameras, camera networks, cell-site simulators, drones and robots, face recognition, electronic monitoring, gunshot detection, forensic extraction tools, police access to the Internet of Things, predictive policing, community surveillance apps, real-time location tracking, social media monitoring, and police databases.

It also features links to the latest articles by EFF’s Street Level Surveillance working group, consisting of attorneys, policy analysts, technologists, and activists with extensive experience in this field.

“People are surveilled by police at more times and in more ways than ever before, and understanding this panopticon is the first step in protecting our rights,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia. “Our new hub is a ‘Field Guide to Police Surveillance;’ providing a reference source on recognizing the most-used police spy technology. But more than that it is a vital, constantly updated news feed offering cutting-edge, detailed analysis of law enforcement’s uses and abuses of these devices.”

The new hub also interfaces with several of EFF’s ongoing projects, including:

The Atlas of Surveillance, EFF’s collaboration with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno to map more than 12,000 police surveillance technologies in use across America; and
Spot the Surveillance, an open-source educational virtual reality tool to help people identify street-level surveillance in their community.

"We hope community groups, advocacy organizations, defense attorneys, and concerned individuals will use the hub to stay abreast of the latest legal cases and technological developments, and share their own stories with us,” Guariglia said.

Visit EFF’s new Street Level Surveillance hub at https://sls.eff.org/

Contact:

Matthew Guariglia