Tag: EFF

Facebook as an American geopolitical weapon

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Facebook as an American geopolitical weapon

What made this so obvious was the glaring double standard that’s guiding Facebook’s takedown of Maffick. On prodding from a U.S. government-funded thinktank, it suddenly demanded transparency for Pages run by a media company funded by Russia (and then shut them down with no warning). Yet Facebook continues to allow the U.S. government and powerful U.S. corporations to operate their Pages without hinderance — even when these Pages are obviously set up by lobby groups and government initiatives to covertly manipulate people and influence democracy. 

Which Pages? Well, just from the ones that I’ve come across in my reporting over the years, they include those run by old spook-spinoffs like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Tor Project, as well as corporate propaganda groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cato Institute — just to name two out of many similar outfits trying to influence Americans on behalf of their donors. 

Wikileaks meets Surveillance Valley: An interview with Julian Assange

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Wikileaks meets Surveillance Valley: An interview with Julian Assange

“The problem,” says Julian Assange, is that “a lot of groups that would normally criticize Google, the nonprofits that are involved in the tech sector, are funded directly or indirectly by Google. Or by USAID. Or by Freedom House. Google and its extended network have significant patronage in the very groups that would normally be criticizing it.”

All EFF’d Up: Silicon Valley’s astroturf privacy shakedown

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

All EFF’d Up: Silicon Valley’s astroturf privacy shakedown

But that’s what EFF is all about: it’s a Silicon Valley corporate front group, no different than the rest. The only thing unique about it is how successful it’s been in positioning itself as a defender of the people—so successful, in fact, that even the people who work for it believe it. The fact that EFF has been able to pull it off of for so long shows the kind of immense power that Silicon Valley wields over our political culture. When we think about technology and the Internet, there’s no left or right. There’s just Google and Facebook.

The Dangers of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals to the Future of Protest

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Dangers of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals to the Future of Protest

The collection and sharing of phone location data that was sold and deployed in order to trace the spread of the virus could be used by a reigning administration to crack down on dissent.

Related:

A Face-Recognition Tech that Works Even for Masked Faces

How to Think about the Right to Privacy and Using Location Data to Fight COVID-19

The EARN IT Bill Is the Government’s Plan to Scan Every Message Online

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Imagine an Internet where the law required every message sent to be read by government-approved scanning software. Companies that handle such messages wouldn’t be allowed to securely encrypt them, or they’d lose legal protections that allow them to operate.Take ActionStop the Graham-Blumenthal…
— Read on www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-bill-governments-not-so-secret-plan-scan-every-message-online

Julian Assange’s Prosecution is about Much More Than Attempting to Hack a Password

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The recent arrest of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange surprised many by hinging on one charge: a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) charge for a single, unsuccessful attempt to reverse engineer a password. This might not be the only charge Assange ultimately faces. The government can add more…
— Read on www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/julian-assanges-prosecution-about-much-more-attempting-hack-password