On September 19, the FTC published a staff report following a multi-year investigation of nine social media and video streaming companies. The report found a myriad of privacy violations to consumers stemming largely from the ad-revenue based business models of companies including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) which prompted unbridled consumer surveillance practices. In addition to these findings, the FTC points out various ways in which user data can be weaponized to lock out competitors and dominate the respective markets of these companies.

The report finds that market dominance can be established and expanded by acquisition and maintenance of user data, creating an unfair advantage and preventing new market entrants from fairly competing. EFF has found that  this is not only true for new entrants who wish to compete by similarly siphoning off large amounts of user data, but also for consumer-friendly companies who carve out a niche by refusing to play the game of dominance-through-surveillance. Abusing user data in an anti-competitive manner means users may not even learn of alternatives who have their best interests, rather than the best interests of the company advertising partners, in mind.

The relationship between privacy violations and anti-competitive behavior is elaborated upon in a section of the report which points out that “data abuse can raise entry barriers and fuel market dominance, and market dominance can, in turn, further enable data abuses and practices that harm consumers in an unvirtuous cycle.” In contrast with the recent United States v. Google LLC (2020) ruling, where Judge Amit P. Mehta found that the data collection practices of Google, though injurious to consumers, were outweighed by an improved user experience, the FTC highlighted a dangerous feedback loop in which privacy abuses beget further privacy abuses. We agree with the FTC and find the identification of this ‘unvirtuous cycle’ a helpful focal point for further antitrust action.

In an interesting segment focusing on the existing protections the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) specifies for consumers’ data privacy rights which the US lacks, the report explicitly mentions not only the right of consumers to delete or correct the data held by companies, but importantly also the right to transfer (or port) one’s data to the third party of their choice. This is a right EFF has championed time and again in pointing out the strength of the early internet came from nascent technologies’ imminent need (and implemented ability) to play nicely with each other in order to make any sense—let alone be remotely usable—to consumers. It is this very concept of interoperability which can now be re-discovered and give users control over their own data by granting them the freedom to frictionlessly pack up their posts, friend connections, and private messages and leave when they are no longer willing to let the entrenched provider abuse them.

We hope and believe that the significance of the FTC staff report comes not only from the abuses they have meticulously documented, but the policy and technological possibilities that can follow from the willingness to embrace alternatives. Alternatives where corporate surveillance cementing dominant players based on selling out their users is not the norm. We look forward to seeing these alternatives emerge and grow.

We’re happy to see that Discord will soon start offering a form of end-to-end encryption dubbed “DAVE” for its voice and video chats. This puts some of Discord’s audio and video offerings in line with Zoom, and separates it from tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, which do not offer end-to-end encryption for video, voice, or any other communications on those apps. This is a strong step forward, and Discord can do even more to protect its users’ communications.

End-to-end encryption is used by many chat apps for both text and video offerings, including WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, and Facebook Messenger. But Discord operates differently than most of those, since alongside private and group text, video, and audio chats, it also encompasses large scale public channels on individual servers operated by Discord. Going forward, audio and video will be end-to-end encrypted, but text, including both group channels and private messages, will not.

When a call is end-to-end encrypted, you’ll see a green lock icon. While it's not required to use the service, Discord also offers a way to optionally verify that the strong encryption a call is using is not being tampered with or eavesdropped on. During a call, one person can pull up the “Voice Privacy Code,” and send it over to everyone else on the line—preferably in a different chat app, like Signal—to confirm no one is compromising participants’ use of end-to-end encryption. This is a way to ensure someone is not impersonating someone and/or listening in to a conversation.

By default, you have to do this every time you initiate a call if you wish to verify the communication has strong security. There is an option to enable persistent verification keys, which means your chat partners only have to verify you on each device you own (e.g. if you sometimes call from a phone and sometimes from a computer, they’ll want to verify for each).

Key management is a hard problem in both the design and implementation of cryptographic protocols. Making sure the same encryption keys are shared across multiple devices in a secure way, as well as reliably discovered in a secure way by conversation partners, is no trivial task. Other apps such as Signal require some manual user interaction to ensure the sharing of key-material across multiple devices is done in a secure way. Discord has chosen to avoid this process for the sake of usability, so that even if you do choose to enable persistent verification keys, the keys on separate devices you own will be different.

While this is an understandable trade-off, we hope Discord takes an extra step to allow users who have heightened security concerns the ability to share their persistent keys across devices. For the sake of usability, they could by default generate separate keys for each device while making sharing keys across them an extra step. This will avoid the associated risk of your conversation partners seeing you’re using the same device across multiple calls. We believe making the use of persistent keys easier and cross-device will make things safer for users as well: they will only have to verify the key for their conversation partners once, instead of for every call they make.

Discord has performed the protocol design and implementation of DAVE in a solidly transparent way, including publishing the protocol whitepaper, the open-source library, commissioning an audit from well-regarded outside researchers, and expanding their bug-bounty program to include rewarding any security researchers who report a vulnerability in the DAVE protocol. This is the sort of transparency we feel is required when rolling out encryption like this, and we applaud this approach.

But we’re disappointed that, citing the need for content moderation, Discord has decided not to extend end-to-end encryption offerings to include private messages or group chats. In a statement to TechCrunch, they reiterated they have no further plans to roll out encryption in direct messages or group chats.

End-to-end encrypted video and audio chats is a good step forward—one that too many messaging apps lack. But because protection of our text conversations is important and because partial encryption is always confusing for users, Discord should move to enable end-to-end encryption on private text chats as well. This is not an easy task, but it’s one worth doing.

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines and accounts. As we demonstrated with our own Red Flag Machine, however, this software flags and blocks websites for spurious reasons and often disproportionately targets disadvantaged, minority and LGBTQ youth.

The companies making the software claim it’s all done for the sake of student safety: preventing self-harm, suicide, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. While a noble goal, given that suicide is the second highest cause of death among American youth 10-14 years old, no comprehensive or independent studies have shown an increase in student safety linked to the usage of this software. Quite to the contrary: a recent comprehensive RAND research study shows that such AI monitoring software may cause more harm than good.

That study also found that how to respond to alerts is left to the discretion of the school districts themselves. Due to a lack of resources to deal with mental health, schools often refer these alerts to law enforcement officers who are not trained and ill-equipped to deal with youth mental crises. When police respond to youth who are having such episodes, the resulting encounters can lead to disastrous results. So why are schools still using the software–when a congressional investigation found a need for “federal action to protect students’ civil rights, safety, and privacy”? Why are they trading in their students’ privacy for a dubious-at-best marketing claim of safety?

Experts suggest it's because these supposed technical solutions are easier to implement than the effective social measures that schools often lack resources to implement. I spoke with Isabelle Barbour, a public health consultant who has experience working with schools to implement mental health supports. She pointed out that there are considerable barriers to families, kids, and youth accessing health care and mental health supports at a community level. There is also a lack of investment in supporting schools to effectively address student health and well-being. This leads to a situation where many students come to school with needs that have been unmet and these needs impact the ability of students to learn. Although there are clear and proven measures that work to address the burdens youth face, schools often need support (time, mental health expertise, community partners, and a budget) to implement these measures. Edtech companies market largely unproven plug-and-play products to educational professionals who are stretched thin and seeking a path forward to help kids. Is it any wonder why schools sign contracts which are easy to point to when questioned about what they are doing with regard to the youth mental health epidemic?

One example: Gaggle in marketing to school districts claims to have saved 5,790 student lives between 2018 and 2023, according to shaky metrics they themselves designed. All the while they keep the inner-workings of their AI monitoring secret, making it difficult for outsiders to scrutinize and measure its effectiveness.

We give Gaggle an “F”

Reports of the errors and inability of the AI flagging to understand context keep popping up. When the Lawrence, Kansas school district signed a $162,000 contract with Gaggle, no one batted an eye: It joined a growing number of school districts (currently ~1,500) nation-wide using the software. Then, school administrators called in nearly an entire class to explain photographs Gaggle’s AI had labeled as “nudity” because the software wouldn’t tell them:

“Yet all students involved maintain that none of their photos had nudity in them. Some were even able to determine which images were deleted by comparing backup storage systems to what remained on their school accounts. Still, the photos were deleted from school accounts, so there is no way to verify what Gaggle detected. Even school administrators can’t see the images it flags.”

Young journalists within the school district raised concerns about how Gaggle’s surveillance of students impacted their privacy and free speech rights. As journalist Max McCoy points out in his article for the Kansas Reflector, “newsgathering is a constitutionally protected activity and those in authority shouldn’t have access to a journalist’s notes, photos and other unpublished work.” Despite having renewed Gaggle’s contract, the district removed the surveillance software from the devices of student journalists. Here, a successful awareness campaign resulted in a tangible win for some of the students affected. While ad-hoc protections for journalists are helpful, more is needed to honor all students' fundamental right to privacy against this new front of technological invasions.

Tips for Students to Reclaim their Privacy

Students struggling with the invasiveness of school surveillance AI may find some reprieve by taking measures and forming habits to avoid monitoring. Some considerations:

• Consider any school-issued device a spying tool. 
• Don’t try to hack or remove the monitoring software unless specifically allowed by your school: it may result in significant consequences from your school or law enforcement. 
• Instead, turn school-issued devices completely off when they aren’t being used, especially while at home. This will prevent the devices from activating the camera, microphone, and surveillance software.
• If not needed, consider leaving school-issued devices in your school locker: this will avoid depending on these devices to log in to personal accounts, which will keep data from those accounts safe from prying eyes.
• Don’t log in to personal accounts on a school-issued device (if you can avoid it - we understand sometimes a school-issued device is the only computer some students have access to). Rather, use a personal device for all personal communications and accounts (e.g., email, social media). Maybe your personal phone is the only device you have to log in to social media and chat with friends. That’s okay: keeping separate devices for separate purposes will reduce the risk that your data is leaked or surveilled. 
• Don’t log in to school-controlled accounts or apps on your personal device: that can be monitored, too. 
• Instead, create another email address on a service the school doesn’t control which is just for personal communications. Tell your friends to contact you on that email outside of school.

Finally, voice your concern and discomfort with such software being installed on devices you rely on. There are plenty of resources to point to, many linked to in this post, when raising concerns about these technologies. As the young journalists at Lawrence High School have shown, writing about it can be an effective avenue to bring up these issues with school administrators. At the very least, it will send a signal to those in charge that students are uncomfortable trading their right to privacy for an elusive promise of security.

Schools Can Do Better to Protect Students Safety and Privacy

It’s not only the students who are concerned about AI spying in the classroom and beyond. Parents are often unaware of the spyware deployed on school-issued laptops their children bring home. And when using a privately-owned shared computer logged into a school-issued Google Workspace or Microsoft account, a parent’s web search will be available to the monitoring AI as well.

New studies have uncovered some of the mental detriments that surveillance causes. Despite this and the array of First Amendment questions these student surveillance technologies raise, schools have rushed to adopt these unproven and invasive technologies. As Barbour put it: 

“While ballooning class sizes and the elimination of school positions are considerable challenges, we know that a positive school climate helps kids feel safe and supported. This allows kids to talk about what they need with caring adults. Adults can then work with others to identify supports. This type of environment helps not only kids who are suffering with mental health problems, it helps everyone.”

We urge schools to focus on creating that environment, rather than subjecting students to ever-increasing scrutiny through school surveillance AI.

In an indictment against Defend the Atlanta Forest activists in Georgia, state prosecutors are citing use of encrypted communications to fearmonger. Alleging the defendants—which include journalists and lawyers, in addition to activists—in the indictment were responsible for a number of crimes related to the Stop Cop City campaign, the state Attorney General’s prosecutors cast suspicion on the defendants’ use of Signal, Telegram, Tor, and other everyday data-protecting technologies.

“Indeed, communication among the Defend the Atlanta Forest members is often cloaked in secrecy using sophisticated technology aimed at preventing law enforcement from viewing their communication and preventing recovery of the information” the indictment reads. “Members often use the dark web via Tor, use end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal or Telegram.”

The secure messaging app Signal is used by tens of millions of people, and has hundreds of millions of global downloads. In 2021, users moved to the nonprofit-run private messenger en masse as concerns were raised about the data-hungry business models of big tech. In January of that year, former world’s richest man Elon Musk tweeted simply “Use Signal.” And world-famous NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden tweeted in 2016 what in information security circles would become a meme and truism: “Use Tor. Use Signal.”

Despite what the bombastic language would have readers believe, installing and using Signal and Tor is not an initiation rite into a dark cult of lawbreaking. The “sophisticated technology” being used here are apps that are free, popular, openly distributed, and widely accessible by anyone with an internet connection. Going further, the indictment ascribes the intentions of those using the apps as simply to obstruct law enforcement surveillance. Taking this assertion at face value, any judge or reporter reading the indictment is led to believe everyone using the app simply wants to evade the police. The fact that these apps make it harder for law enforcement to access communications is exactly because the encryption protocol protects messages from everyone not intended to receive them—including the users’ ISP, local network hackers, or the Signal nonprofit itself.

Elsewhere, the indictment hones in on the use of anti-surveillance techniques to further its tenuous attempts to malign the defendants: “Most ‘Forest Defenders’ are aware that they are preparing to break the law, and this is demonstrated by premeditation of attacks.” Among a laundry list of other techniques, the preparation is supposedly marked by “using technology avoidance devices such as Faraday bags and burner phones.” Stoking fears around the use of anti-surveillance technologies sets a dangerous precedent for all people who simply don’t want to be tracked wherever they go. In protest situations, carrying a prepaid disposable phone can be a powerful defense against being persecuted for participating in first-amendment protected activities. Vilifying such activities as the acts of wrongdoers would befit totalitarian societies, not ones in which speech is allegedly a universal right.

To be clear, prosecutors have apparently not sought to use court orders to compel either the defendants or the companies named to enter passwords or otherwise open devices or apps. But vilifying the defendants’ use of common sense encryption is a dangerous step in cases that the Dekalb County District Attorney has already dropped out of, citing “different prosecutorial philosophies.”

Using messengers which protect user communications, browsers which protect user anonymity, and employing anti-surveillance techniques when out and about are all useful strategies in a range of situations. Whether you’re looking into a sensitive medical condition, visiting a reproductive health clinic with the option of terminating a pregnancy, protecting trade secrets from a competitor, wish to avoid stalkers or abusive domestic partners, protecting attorney-client exchanges, or simply want to keep your communications, browsing, and location history private, these techniques can come in handy. It is their very effectiveness which has led to the widespread adoption of privacy-protective technologies and techniques. When state prosecutors spread fear around the use of these powerful techniques, this sets us down a dangerous path where citizens are more vulnerable and at risk.

On February 8, François-Philippe Champagne, the Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced Canada would ban devices used in keyless car theft. The only device mentioned by name was the Flipper Zero—the multitool device that can be used to test, explore, and debug different wireless protocols such as RFID, NFC, infrared, and Bluetooth.

EFF explores toilet hacking

While it is useful as a penetration testing device, Flipper Zero is impractical in comparison to other, more specialized devices for car theft. It’s possible social media hype around the Flipper Zero has led people to believe that this device offers easier hacking opportunities for car thieves*. But government officials are also consuming such hype. That leads to policies that don’t secure systems, but rather impedes important research that exposes potential vulnerabilities the industry should fix. Even with Canada walking back on the original statement outright banning the devices, restricting devices and sales to “move forward with measures to restrict the use of such devices to legitimate actors only” is troublesome for security researchers.

This is not the first government seeking to limit access to Flipper Zero, and we have explained before why this approach is not only harmful to security researchers but also leaves the general population more vulnerable to attacks. Security researchers may not have the specialized tools car thieves use at their disposal, so more general tools come in handy for catching and protecting against vulnerabilities. Broad purpose devices such as the Flipper have a wide range of uses: penetration testing to facilitate hardening of a home network or organizational infrastructure, hardware research, security research, protocol development, use by radio hobbyists, and many more. Restricting access to these devices will hamper development of strong, secure technologies.

When Brazil’s national telecoms regulator Anatel refused to certify the Flipper Zero and as a result prevented the national postal service from delivering the devices, they were responding to media hype. With a display and controls reminiscent of portable video game consoles, the compact form-factor and range of hardware (including an infrared transceiver, RFID reader/emulator, SDR and Bluetooth LE module) made the device an easy target to demonize. While conjuring imagery of point-and-click car theft was easy, citing examples of this actually occurring proved impossible. Over a year later, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single instance of a car being stolen with the device. The number of cars stolen with the Flipper seems to amount to, well, zero (pun intended). It is the same media hype and pure speculation that has led Canadian regulators to err in their judgment to ban these devices.

Still worse, law enforcement in other countries have signaled their own intentions to place owners of the device under greater scrutiny. The Brisbane Times quotes police in Queensland, Australia: “We’re aware it can be used for criminal means, so if you’re caught with this device we’ll be asking some serious questions about why you have this device and what you are using it for.” We assume other tools with similar capabilities, as well as Swiss Army Knives and Sharpie markers, all of which “can be used for criminal means,” will not face this same level of scrutiny. Just owning this device, whether as a hobbyist or professional—or even just as a curious customer—should not make one the subject of overzealous police suspicions.

It wasn’t too long ago that proficiency with the command line was seen as a dangerous skill that warranted intervention by authorities. And just as with those fears of decades past, the small grain of truth embedded in the hype and fears gives it an outsized power. Can the command line be used to do bad things? Of course. Can the Flipper Zero assist criminal activity? Yes. Can it be used to steal cars? Not nearly as well as many other (and better, from the criminals’ perspective) tools. Does that mean it should be banned, and that those with this device should be placed under criminal suspicion? Absolutely not.

We hope Canada wises up to this logic, and comes to view the device as just one of many in the toolbox that can be used for good or evil, but mostly for good.

*Though concerns have been raised about Flipper Devices' connection to the Russian state apparatus, no unexpected data has been observed escaping to Flipper Devices' servers, and much of the dedicated security and pen-testing hardware which hasn't been banned also suffers from similar problems.

You may want to save your receipts if you gifted any low-end Android TV set-top boxes or children's tablets to a friend or loved one this holiday season. In a series of investigations this year, EFF researchers confirmed the existence of dangerous malware on set-top boxes manufactured by AllWinner and RockChip, and discovered sketchyware on a tablet marketed for kids from the manufacturer Dragon Touch. 

Though more reputable Android devices are available for watching TV and keeping the little ones occupied, they come with a higher price tag as well. This means that those who can afford such devices get more assurance in the security and privacy of these devices, while those who can only afford cheaper devices by little-known manufacturers are put at greater risk.

The digital divide could not be more apparent. Without a clear warning label, consumers who cannot afford devices from well-known brands such as Apple, Amazon, or Google are being sold devices which come out-of-the-box ready to spy on their children. This malware opens their home internet connection as a proxy to unknown users, and exposes them to legal risks. 

Traditionally, if a device like a vacuum cleaner was found to be defective or dangerous, we would expect resellers to pull these devices from the department store floor and to the best of their ability notify customers who have already bought these items and brought them into their homes. Yet we observed the devices in question continued to be sold by online vendors months after widely circulated news of their defects.

After our investigation of the set-top boxes, we urged the FTC to take action against the vendors who sell devices known to be riddled with malware. Amazon and AliExpress were named in the letter, though more vendors are undoubtedly still selling these devices. Not to spoil the holiday cheer, but if you have received one of these devices, you may want to ask for another gift and have the item refunded.

In the case of the Dragon Touch tablets, it was apparent that this issue went beyond just Android TV boxes and even encompassed budget Android devices specifically marketed for children. The tablet we investigated had an outdated pre-installed parental controls app that was labeled as adware, leftover remnants of malware, and sketchy update software. It’s clear this issue reached a wide variety of Android devices and it should not be left up to the consumer to figure this out. Even for devices on the market that are “normal,” there still needs to be work done by the consumer just to properly set up devices for their kids and themselves. But there’s no total consumer-side solution for pre-installed malware and there shouldn’t have to be.

Compared with the products of yesteryear, our “smart” and IOT devices carry a new set of risks to our security and privacy. Yet, we feel confident that with better digital product testing—along with regulatory oversight—can go a long way in mitigating these dangers. We applaud efforts such as Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included to catalog just how much our devices are protecting our data, since as it currently stands it is up to us as consumers to assess the risks ourselves and take appropriate steps.

Today we join a set of 56 experts from organizations such as Google, Panasonic, Citizen Lab, Trend Micro and many others in an open letter calling on the European Commission, European Parliament, and Spain’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation to reconsider the obligatory vulnerability reporting mechanisms built into Article 11 of the EU’s proposed Cyber-Resilience Act (CRA). As we’ve pointed out before, this reporting obligation raises major cybersecurity concerns. Broadening the knowledge of unpatched vulnerabilities to a larger audience will increase the risk of exploitation, and software publishers being forced to report these vulnerabilities to government regulators introduces the possibility of governments adding it to their offensive arsenals. These aren’t just theoretical threats: vulnerabilities stored on Intelligence Community infrastructure have been breached by hackers before.

Technology companies and others who create, distribute, and patch software are in a tough position. The intention of the CRA is to protect the public from companies who shirk their responsibilities by leaving vulnerabilities unpatched and their customers open to attack. But companies and software publishers who do the right thing by treating security vulnerabilities as well-guarded secrets until a proper fix can be applied and deployed now face an obligation to disclose vulnerabilities to regulators within 24 hours of exploitation. This significantly increases the danger these vulnerabilities present to the public. As the letter points out, the CRA “already requires software publishers to mitigate vulnerabilities without delay” separate from the reporting obligation. The letter also points out that this reporting mechanism may interfere with the collaboration and trusted relationship between companies and security researchers who work with companies to produce a fix.

The letter suggests to either remove this requirement entirely or change the reporting obligation to be a 72-hour window after patches are made and deployed. It also calls on European law- and policy-makers to prohibit use of reported vulnerabilities “for intelligence, surveillance, or offensive purposes.” These changes would go a long way in ensuring security vulnerabilities discovered by software publishers don’t wind up being further exploited by falling into the wrong hands.

Separately, EFF (and others) have pointed out the dangers the CRA presents to open-source software developers by making them liable for vulnerabilities in their software if they so much as solicit donations for their efforts. The obligatory reporting mechanism and open-source liability clauses of the CRA must be changed or removed. Otherwise, software publishers and open-source developers who are doing a public service will fall under a burdensome and undue liability.