In honor of Digital Inclusion Week, October 7-11th 2024, it’s an honor to uplift one of our Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) members who is doing great work making sure technology benefits everyone by addressing the digital divide: CCTV Cambridge. This year they partnered to host a Digital Navigator program. Its aim is to assist in bridging the digital divide in Cambridge by assessing the needs of the community and acting as a technological social worker. Digital Navigators (DN’s) have led to better outreach, assessment, and community connection. 

Making a difference in communities affected by the digital divide is impactful work. So far the DN’s have helped many people access resources online, distributed 50 Thinkpad laptops installed with Windows 10 and Microsoft Office,  and distributed 15 hotspots for wifi with two years paid by T-mobile. This is groundbreaking because typically people are getting chromebooks on loan that have limited capabilities. The beauty of these devices is that you can work and learn on them with reliable, high-speed internet access, and they are able to be used anywhere.

Samara Murrell, Coordinator of CCTV’s Digital Navigator Program states:

"Being part of a solution that attempts to ensure that everyone has equal access to information, education and job opportunities, so that we can all fully participate in our society, is some of the best, most inspiring and honorable work that one can do."

Left to Right: DN Coordinator Samara Murrell and DN’s Lida Griffin, Dana Grotenstein, and Eden Wagayehu

CCTV Cambridge is also slated to start hosting classes in 2025. They hope to offer intermediate Windows and Microsoft Office to the cohort as the first step, and then advanced Excel as the second part for returning members of the cohort.

Maritza Grooms, CCTV Cambridge’s Associate Director of Community Relations, says:

"CCTV is incredibly grateful and honored to be the hub and headquarters of the Digital Navigator Pilot Program in partnership with the City of Cambridge, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge Public School Department, and Just-A-Start. This program is crucial to serving Cambridge's most vulnerable and marginalized communities and ensuring they have the access to resources they need to be able to fully participate in society in this digital age. We appreciate any and all support to help us make the Digital Navigator Program a continued sustainable program beyond the pilot. Please contact me at maritza@cctvcambridge.org to find out how you can support this program or visit cctvcambridge.org/support to support today."

There are countless examples of the impact CCTV’s DN’s have had already. One patron of the library who came in to take a tech class, had their own laptop because of the DNs. That enabled her to take a tech support class and advance her career. A young college student studying bioengineering needed a laptop and hotspot to continue his studies, and he recently got them from CCTV Cambridge.

Kudos to CCTV Cambridge for addressing the disparities of the digital divide in your community with your awesome digital inclusion work!
To connect with other members of the EFA doing impactful work in your area, please check out our allies page: https://efa.eff.org/allies

Did you know the City of Portland, Oregon, already owns and operates a fiber-optic broadband network? It's called IRNE (Integrated Regional Network Enterprise), and despite having it in place Portlanders are forced to pay through the nose for internet access because of a lack of meaningful competition. Even after 24 years of IRNE, too many in PDX struggle to afford and access fast internet service in their homes and small businesses.

EFF and local Electronic Frontier Alliance members, Personal TelCo Project and Community Broadband PDX, are calling on city council & mayoral candidates to sign a pledge to support an open-access business model, where the city owns and leases the "dark" fiber. That way services can be run by local non profits, local businesses, or community cooperatives. The hope is these local services can then grow to support retail service and meet the needs of more residents.

This change will only happen if we show our support, join the campaign today to stay up to date and find volunteer opportunities.  Also come out for fun and learning at The People’s Digital Safety Fair Saturday October 19th, for talks and workshops from the local coalition. Let’s break the private ISP monopoly power in Portland!

Leading this campaign is Community Broadband PDX, with the mission to ‘guide Portlanders to create a new option for fast internet access: Publicly owned and transparently operated, affordable, secure, fast and reliable broadband infrastructure that is always available to every neighborhood and community.’ According to Jennifer Redman, President, Board of Directors, and Campaign Manager of Community Broadband PDX, (who also formerly served as the Community Broadband Planning Manager in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability with the City of Portland) when asked about the campaign to expand IRNE into affordable accessible internet for all Portlanders, she said:

“Expanding access to the Integrated Regional Network Enterprise (IRNE) is the current campaign focus because within municipal government it is often easier to expand existing programs rather than create entirely new ones - especially if there is a major capital investment required. IRNE is staffed, there are regional partners and the program is highly effective. Yes it is limited in scope but there are active expansion plans.   

Leveraging IRNE allows us to advocate for policies like “Dig Once Dig Smart” every time the ground is open for any type of development in the City of Portland - publicly owned-fiber conduit must be included. The current governmental structure has made implementing these policies extremely difficult because of the siloed nature of how the City is run. For example, the water bureau doesn’t want to be told what to do by the technology services bureau. This should significantly improve with our charter change. Currently the City of Portland really operates as a group of disparate systems that sometimes work together. I hope that under a real city manager, the City is run as one system.

IRNE already partners with Link Oregon - which provides the “retail” network services for many statewide educational and other non-profit institutions.  The City is comfortable with this model - IRNE builds and manages the dark fiber network while partners provide the retail or “lit" service. Let’s grow local ISPs that keep dollars in Portland as opposed to corporate out-of-state providers like Comcast and Century Link.”

The time is now to move Portland forward and make access to the publicly owned fiber optic network available to everyone. As explained by Russell Senior, President and member of the Board of Directors of Personal TelCo Project, this would bring major economic and workforce development advantages to Portland:

“Our private internet access providers exploit their power to gouge us all with arbitrary prices, because our only alternative to paying them whatever they ask is to do without. The funds we pay these companies ends up with far away investors, on the order of $500 million per year in Multnomah County alone. Much of that money could be staying in our pockets and circulating locally if we had access they couldn't choke off.

I learned most of my professional skills from information I found on the Internet. I got a good job, and have a successful career because of the open source software tools that I received from people who shared it on the internet. The internet is an immense store of human knowledge, and ready access to it is an essential part of developing into a fruitful, socially useful and fulfilled person.”

Portland is currently an island of expensive, privately owned internet service infrastructure, as every county surrounding Portland is building or operating affordable publicly owned and publicly available super-fast fiber-optic broadband networks. Fast internet access in Portland remains expensive and limited to neighborhoods that provide the highest profits for the few private internet service providers (ISPs). Individual prosperity and a robust local economy are driven by UNIVERSAL affordable access to fast internet service.  A climate resilient city needs robust publicly owned and available fiber-optic broadband infrastructure. Creating a digitally equitable and just city is dependent upon providing access to fast internet service at an affordable cost for everyone. That is why we are calling city officials to take the pledge that they will support open-access internet in Portland.

Join the campaign to make access to the city owned fiber optic network available to everyone. Let’s break the private ISP monopoly power in Portland!

We're thrilled to share that the Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) has a fresh new look and a wealth of new resources for community organizers. EFF can’t be everywhere and in every fight, which is why back in 2016 we committed to building a network with grassroots organizations, and made the EFA a critical part of our work. Local organizers from within the community are better situated to build support and change in the long term. So when civil liberties and digital rights are under threat in your neck of the woods, we hope you find or become a local EFA member.

After eight very eventful years for local organizing, the EFA is going strong with over 70 active groups across the United States. To renew our support of the network, EFF revamped the look of the EFA and made a number of improvements to our online hub for all things EFA: https://efa.eff.org.

But the network is bigger than EFF. EFA is composed of its members, and relies on dedicated local advocates, educators, and hackers to help drive the work forward. If you’re part of a not-for-profit community group, we encourage you to apply.

JOIN EFA

Defend Digital Rights Locally

What Is the EFA?

The Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) is an information-sharing network of grassroots groups across the United States, administered by EFF’s team of organizers. All groups are totally independent—meaning no one is obliged to follow EFF’s lead to be supported. The result is a network with incredibly diverse beliefs, focuses, and tactics; from hacker spaces developing open-source software tools, to community ISPs, to student groups hosting surveillance self-defense workshops.

A few things do unify alliance members, though. All groups must be tied to a local community, meaning their work is based in a specific region or institution, with meaningful ways for other community members to get involved. Groups must also be not-for-profit; either unincorporated or registered as a non-profit. Finally, all member organizations publicly endorse EFA’s five core principles:

- Free expression: People should be able to speak their minds to whomever will listen.

- Security: Technology should be trustworthy and answer to its users.

- Privacy: Technology should allow private and anonymous speech, and let users set their own parameters about what to share with whom.

- Creativity: Technology should promote progress by allowing people to build on the ideas, creations, and inventions of others.

- Access to knowledge: Curiosity should be rewarded, not stifled.

How EFF Supports EFA Members

EFF is committed to building and strengthening the EFA network. EFF doesn’t bottleneck on-the-ground activists, or parachute into local communities with marching orders. Instead, we aim to build the network in autonomous and decentralized ways, helping build local power through base-building, and fostering more connections between aligned groups.

That’s not to say we stay on the sidelines: EFF’s organizers respond to requests from community groups with hands-on support. This includes helping to create an effective local campaign, host successful events, write a local op-ed, or tackle the administrative headaches faced by new and growing groups. We also lend EFF’s platform by promoting local work. In short, membership comes with an EFF support-line which, pending capacity, can help make local work more impactful.

EFF’s organizing team also brings groups together with a number of member-only convenings. Exclusive EFA videoconferences are hosted every month, with talks and workshops from digital rights and organizing experts, as well as an opportunity to brainstorm or workshop work with other organizers in the network. Organizers also regularly host in-person EFA meetups and socials, and will leverage EFF’s network to assist with local networking necessary for coalition work. EFF also hosts multiple socials and in-person EFA meetups exclusive to members across the country throughout the year.

As an added bonus, EFA groups also get discounts on EFF annual memberships, unlocking additional exclusive events, mailings, and member gifts. 

New Look, Site, and Resources

Bringing a new look to the EFA site (and new swag) was the perfect excuse to also extend and update our resources for organizers.

Allies Directory

EFF staff meet an endless stream of people frustrated with constant infringements of our rights, especially when these intrusions start hitting us at home. There are sometimes clear ways to take action when congress or big tech are making bad decisions. But what about when it’s in your own backyard?

That’s where the EFA allies directory (https://efa.eff.org/allies) comes in. Finding a local group can turn that pent up frustration into action. Even if your nearest group has a different focus, they’ll be like-minded digital right defenders familiar with other local resources and organizations. Our site offers an easy way to filter by state, and get a quick introduction to each group and how to best contact them.

Organizer Toolkits

While EFF’s organizing team is always eager to help groups grow, many groups run into the same hurdles. That’s why we’ve prepared several organizer toolkits with evergreen advice for starting and growing a group. These include:

• Organizing events: Every event, from a regular meeting to hosting a conference, requires clear planning and many logistical considerations.

• Social media advocacy: It can be challenging to make an impact online, but with some consistency and helpful tips it can be an effective tool for rallying support.

• Building coalitions with sign-on letters: Approaching decision-makers with a host of groups supporting or opposing a policy in a sign-on letter is a powerful advocacy tool. If approached carefully, it can also serve as a starting point for continued coalition work and support across issues.
• Traditional media tips: Talking to a reporter about your work can be stressful, but with the right preparation it helps spread your message and raise your group’s prestige.
• Student organizing: Students have to navigate a lot of unique and difficult dynamics starting a group, maintaining a group, and even protesting on campus.
• Community agreements: Local groups benefit from consensus, from event expectations to community guidelines, making it clear what behavior is encouraged and what is off-limits. This helps groups grow and keep everyone safe.

These toolkits are designed to be easily printed and shared, and are available at launch in both English and Spanish.

Building a Movement Together

The relaunch of the EFA is not just a cosmetic change; it represents our renewed commitment to supporting grassroots digital rights advocacy. The strength of the EFA network lies in its diversity and the dedication of its members. In an era where civil liberties and digital rights are under constant threat, a coordinated and well-supported grassroots movement is essential for addressing the digital rights challenges of today, and tomorrow.

So EFF calls on you to get involved. Find a local group, discuss joining the EFA with your group, or even get some friends together to start a new group. We need people from all walks of life, with a range of experience and expertise, to be a part of the work which will shape the future.

JOIN EFA

Defend Digital Rights Locally

For more information on how the EFA works and to join the fight, please check out our FAQ page or reach out to EFF’s organizing team at organizing[at]eff.org. Join us in building a future where digital rights are upheld and respected.

The Electronic Frontier Alliance is proud to have such a diverse membership, and is especially proud to ally with Encode Justice chapters. Encode Justice is a community that includes over 1,000 high school and college students across over 40 U.S. states and 30 countries. Organized into chapters, these young people constitute a global youth movement for safe, equitable AI. Their mission is mobilizing communities for AI aligned with human values.

At its core, Encode Justice is more than just a name. It’s a guiding philosophy: they believe we must encode justice and safety into the technologies we build. Young people are critical stakeholders in conversations about AI, and presently, as we find ourselves face-to-face with challenges like algorithmic bias, misinformation, democratic erosion, and labor displacement; we simultaneously stand on the brink of even larger-scale risks that could result from the loss of human control over increasingly powerful systems. Encode Justice believes human-centered AI must be built, designed, and governed by and for diverse stakeholders, and that AI should help guide us towards our aspirational future, not simply reflect the data of our past and present.

Currently three local chapters of Encode Justice have joined the EFA: Encode Justice North Carolina, Oregon, and Georgia. Recently I caught up with the leader of Encode Justice NC, Siri, about her chapter, their work, and how other people (including youth) can plug in and join the movement for safe, equitable AI:

Can you tell us a little about your chapter, its composition, and its projects?

Encode Justice North Carolina is an Encode Justice chapter led by Siri M while including other high schoolers and college students in NC. Most of us are in the Research Triangle Park area, but we’d also welcome any NC based student that is interested in our work! In the past, we have done projects including educational workshops, policy memos, and legislative campaigns (on the state & city council level) while lobbying officials and building coalitions with other state and local organizations.

Diving more into the work of your chapter, can you elaborate? And are there any local partnerships you’ve made with regard to your legislative advocacy efforts?

We’ve specifically done a lot of work around surveillance, with ‘AI in Policing & Surveillance' being the subject of our educational workshop with the national organization “Paving Tomorrow.” We’ve also lobbied the city council of Cary, NC to pass an ACLU model bill on police surveillance, after gaining support in the campaign from Emancipate NC, the EFA, and BSides RDU. Notably, we have lobbied our state legislature to pass a bill regarding social media addiction and data privacy for youth. Additionally, a policy memo from our chapter was written and published as a part of the Encode Justice State AI legislative project to spread information and analysis on the local legislative landscape, stakeholders, and solutions regarding tech policy related issues in our state. The memo was for legislators, organizations, and press to use.

We’ve also conducted a project to gather student testimonials on AI/school-based surveillance. In the near future, we are looking forward to working on bigger campaigns, including a national legislative facial recognition campaign, and a local campaign on the impacts of surveillance on immigrant communities. We are also more generally looking forward to expanding our reach while gaining new members in more regions of NC, and potentially leading more campaigns and projects while increasing their scope and widening our range of topics. 

How can other youth plug-in to support and join the movement?

Anyone, including non-students, can follow us on Instagram at @encodejusticenc. If you are interested in becoming an Encode Justice North Carolina member, you could please fill out the form to do so! Lastly, if you are a student that would like to support us in a smaller way, you can fill out the student testimonies survey here.

Here at EFF digital equity is something that we advocate for, and we are always thrilled when we hear a member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance is advocating for it as well. Simply put, digital equity is the condition in which everyone has access to technology that allows them to participate in society; whether it be in rural America or the inner cities—both places where big ISPs don’t find it profitable to make such an investment. EFF has long advocated for affordable, accessible, future-proof internet access for all. I recently spoke with EFA member CCTV Cambridge, as they partnered with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to tackle this issue and address the digital divide in their state:

How did the partnership with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute come about, and what does it entail?

Mass Broadband Institute and Mass Hire Metro North are the key funding partners. We were moving forward with lifting up digital equity and saw an opportunity to apply for this funding, which is going to several communities in the Metro North area. So, this collaboration was generated in Cambridge for the partners in this digital equity work. Key program activities will entail hiring and training “Digital Navigators” to be placed in the Cambridge Public Library and Cambridge Public Schools, working in partnership with navigators at CCTV and Just A Start. CCTV will employ a coordinator as part of the project, who will serve residents and coordinate the digital navigators across partners to build community, skills, and consistency in support for residents. Regular meetings will be coordinated for Digital Navigators across the city to share best practices, discuss challenging cases, exchange community resources, and measure impact from data collection. These efforts will align with regional initiatives supported through the Mass Broadband Institute Digital Navigator coalition.

What is CCTV Cambridge’s approach to digital equity and why is it an important issue?

CCTV’s approach to digital equity has always been about people over tech. We really see the Digital Navigators as more like digital social workers rather than IT people in a sense that technology is required to be a fully civically engaged human, someone who is connected to your community and family, someone who can have a sense of well being and safety in the world. We really feel like what digital equity means is not just being able to use the tools but to be able to have access to the tools that make your life better. You really can’t operate in an equal way in the world without the access to technology, you can’t make a doctor’s appointment, talk to your grandkids on zoom, you can’t even park your car without an app! You can’t be civically engaged without access to tech. We risk marginalizing a bunch of folks if we don’t, as a community, bring them into digital equity work. We’re community media, it’s in our name, and digital equity is the responsibility of the community. It’s not okay to leave people behind.

It’s amazing to see organizations like CCTV Cambridge making a difference in the community, what do you envision as the results of having the Digital Navigators?

Hopefully we’re going to increase community and civic engagement in Cambridge, particularly amongst people who might not have the loudest voice. We’re going to reach people we haven't reached in the past, including people who speak languages other than English and haven’t had exposure to community media. It’s a really great opportunity for intergenerational work which is also a really important community building tool.

How can people both locally in Massachusetts and across the country plug-in and support?

People everywhere are welcomed and invited to support this work through donations, which you can do by visiting cctvcambridge.org! When the applications open for the Digital Navigators, share in your networks with people you think would love to do this work; spread the word on social media and follow us on all platforms @cctvcambridge! 

Facial recognition is a threat to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. EFF supports strict restrictions on face recognition use by private companies, and total bans on government use of the technology. Face recognition in all of its forms, including face scanning and real-time tracking, pose threats to civil liberties and individual privacy. “False positive” error rates are significantly higher for women, children, and people of color, meaning face recognition has an unfair discriminatory impact. Coupled with the fact that cameras are over-deployed in neighborhoods with immigrants and people of color, spying technologies like face surveillance serve to amplify existing disparities in the criminal justice system.

Across the nation local communities from San Francisco to Boston have moved to ban government use of facial recognition. In New York, Electronic Frontier Alliance member Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) is at the forefront of this movement. Recently we got the chance to speak with them about their efforts and what people can do to help advance the cause. S.T.O.P. is a New York-based civil rights and privacy organization that does research, advocacy, and litigation around issues of surveillance technology abuse.

What does “Ban The Scan” mean? 

When we say scan, we are referring to the “face scan” component of facial recognition technology. Surveillance, and more specifically facial recognition, disproportionately targets Black, Brown, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, amplifying the discrimination that has defined New York’s policing for as long as our state has had police. Facial recognition is notoriously biased and often abused by law enforcement. It is a threat to free speech, freedom of association, and other civil liberties. Ban the Scan is a campaign and coalition built around passing two packages of bills that would ban facial recognition in a variety of contexts in New York City and New York State. 

Are there any differences with the State vs City version?

The City and State packages are largely similar. The main differences are that the State package contains a bill banning law enforcement use of facial recognition, whereas the City package has a bill that bans all government use of the technology (although this bill has yet to be introduced). The State package also contains an additional bill banning facial recognition use in schools, which would codify an existing regulatory ban that currently applies to schools.

What hurdles exist to its passage? 

 For the New York State package, the coalition is newly coming together, so we are still gathering support from legislators and the public. For the City package, we are lucky to have a lot of support already, and we are waiting to have a hearing conducted on the residential ban bills and move them into the next phase of legislation. We are also working to get the bill banning government use introduced at the City level.

What can people do to help this good legislation? How to get involved? 

We recently launched a campaign website for both City and State packages (banthescan.org). If you’re a New York City or State resident, you can look up your legislators (links below!) and contact them to ask them to support these bills or thank them for their support if they are already signed on. We also have social media toolkits with graphics and guidance on how to help spread the word!  

Find your NYS Assemblymember: https://nyassembly.gov/mem/search/ 

Find your NYS Senator: https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator 

Find your NYC Councilmember: https://council.nyc.gov/map-widget/  

The University of Georgia (UGA) School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic has filed an Open Records Request lawsuit to demand public records from the private Atlanta Police Foundation (APF). The lawsuit, filed at the behest of the Atlanta Community Press Collective and Electronic Frontier Alliance-member Lucy Parsons Labs, is seeking records relating to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which activists refer to as Cop City. While the facility will be used for public law enforcement and emergency services agencies, including training on surveillance technologies, the lease is held by the APF.  

The argument is that the Atlanta Police Foundation, as the nonprofit holding the lease for facilities intended for use by government agencies, should be subject to the same state Open Records Act as to its functions that are on behalf of law enforcement agencies. Beyond the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the APF also manages the Atlanta Police Department’s Video Surveillance Center, which integrates footage from over 16,000 public and privately-held surveillance cameras across the city. 

According to UGA School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, “The Georgia Supreme Court has held that records in the custody of a private entity that relate to services or functions the entity performs for or on behalf of the government are public records under the Georgia Open Records Act.” 

Police foundations frequently operate in this space. They are private, non-profit organizations with boards made up of corporations and law firms that receive monetary or equipment donations that they then gift to their local law enforcement agencies. These gifts often bypass council hearings or other forms of public oversight. 

Lucy Parsons Labs’ Ed Vogel said, “At the core of the struggle over the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is democratic practice. Decisions regarding this facility should not be made behind closed doors. This lawsuit is just one piece of that. The people have a right to know.” 

You can read the lawsuit here. 

In a stunning reversal against the popular Transparent & Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) ordinance, the San Diego city council voted earlier this year to cut many of the provisions that sought to ensure public transparency for law enforcement surveillance technologies. 

Similar to other Community Control Of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, the TRUST ordinance was intended to ensure that each police surveillance technology would be subject to basic democratic oversight in the form of public disclosures and city council votes. The TRUST ordinance was fought for by a coalition of community organizations– including several members of the Electronic Frontier Alliance – responding to surprise smart streetlight surveillance that was not put under public or city council review.  

The TRUST ordinance was passed one and a half years ago, but law enforcement advocates immediately set up roadblocks to implementation. Police unions, for example, insisted that some of the provisions around accountability for misuse of surveillance needed to be halted after passage to ensure they didn’t run into conflict with union contracts. The city kept the ordinance unapplied and untested, and then in the late summer of 2023, a little over a year after passage, the mayor proposed a package of changes that would gut the ordinance. This included exemption of a long list of technologies, including ARJIS databases and record management system data storage. These changes were later approved this past January.  

But use of these databases should require, for example, auditing to protect data security for city residents. There also should be limits on how police share data with federal agencies and other law enforcement agencies, which might use that data to criminalize San Diego residents for immigration status, gender-affirming health care, or exercise of reproductive rights that are not criminalized in the city or state. The overall TRUST ordinance stands, but partly defanged with many carve-outs for technologies the San Diego police will not need to bring before democratically-elected lawmakers and the public. 

Now, opponents of the TRUST ordinance are emboldened with their recent victory, and are vowing to introduce even more amendments to further erode the gains of this ordinance so that San Diegans won’t have a chance to know how their local law enforcement surveils them, and no democratic body will be required to consent to the technologies, new or old. The members of the TRUST Coalition are not standing down, however, and will continue to fight to defend the standing portions of the TRUST ordinance, and to regain the wins for public oversight that were lost. 

As Lilly Irani, from Electronic Frontier Alliance member and TRUST Coalition member Tech Workers Coalition San Diego, has said: 

“City Council members and the mayor still have time to make this right. And we, the people, should hold our elected representatives accountable to make sure they maintain the oversight powers we currently enjoy — powers the mayor’s current proposal erodes.” 

If you live or work in San Diego, it’s important to make it clear to city officials that San Diegans don’t want to give police a blank check to harass and surveil them. Such dangerous technology needs basic transparency and democratic oversight to preserve our privacy, our speech, and our personal safety. 

The Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) is a loose network of local groups fighting for digital rights in the United States, chaired by EFF. Members’ efforts have been recovering from the limitations put on local organizing caused by the pandemic. More EFA members have been holding in-person workshops and meet-ups that help cement the relationships needed to do their work.

If you’re a member of a local or state group in the United States that fights for digital rights and might want to join, please learn more at our FAQ page. If your group feels like a good fit, please fill out an application here. The Alliance has scores of members, all doing great things this year. This review highlights just a few.

EFA members are organizing for your rights

This year, we caught up with our friends at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), a growing organization that has become a force to be reckoned with in New York. STOP has worked to pass the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act in their City Council, and used the law to uncover previously unknown NYPD surveillance contracts. They also won key successes against discriminatory policies by the NYPD by taking the department to court.

We talked to Portland’s Techno-Activism 3rd Mondays (TA3M), which came out of a nationwide effort to increase digital rights activism by providing regular workshops on related topics. Portland’s TA3M hasn’t just survived when most other chapters have disbanded. They have kept a great pace of trainings and panel discussions which has helped keep the digital rights movement alive in Portland, even through the pandemic when these educational events had to move online.

We checked-in with CCTV Cambridge on their efforts to close the digital divide with their Digital Navigator program, as well as their advocacy for digital equality. CCTV Cambridge does work across all demographics. For example, they implemented a Youth Media Program where teens get paid while developing skills to become professional media artists. They also have a Foundational Technology program for elders and others who struggle with technology.

EFA groups kept the conversation going in their communities

Alliance members got together for a podcast interview on Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, including EFF, Portland-based PDX Privacy, and Chicago-based Lucy Parsons Labs. It’s a great introduction to the Electronic Frontier Alliance, a couple of its superstar members, and how to get involved.

The Electronic Frontiers track at the sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book-oriented Dragon*Con in Atlanta was produced in coordination with EFA member Electronic Frontiers Georgia and garnered some fantastic conversations. After a few years of hiatus or virtual panels, the digital rights component to the convention came back strong last year and carried on full steam ahead in 2023. Members of EF-Georgia, EFF and allied organizations presented on a variety of topics, including:

• Age Limits for Social Media
• Banning TikTok
• ChatGPT
• Civil Asset Forfeiture
• Copyright 101
• Copyright and AI
• Digital Landlords
• EARN-IT and STOP CSAM Act
• Hacking 101 and 201
• Killer robots in San Francisco
• Mastodon, the Fediverse and ActivityPub
• Police Foundations and Surveillance
• The Right to Repair
• Rise of Labor Unions in Tech Shops
• Section 230 Protections

More of the Dragon*Con panels can be found at EF-Georgia’s special Dragon*Con playlist.

EFF-Austin also moved back in-person events, including monthly expert talks in Texas and meet-ups for people in their city interested in privacy, security, and related issues. Subjects included:

• AI and Cybersecurity
• Automation and Landlordism
• Biometric Surveillance and Art
• City Surveillance and Public Trust
• Cyber Security’s Role in Rethinking Democracy
• Generative AI in its Historical Context
• OAuth: the Online Authorization Protocol
• Password Security
• Positive Developments in AI and Computing

New members

This past year, we also had the opportunity to expand the alliance, especially among youth-led groups, by welcoming six impressive new members:  

• Cyber Security Club @SFSU, San Francisco, CA: The Cyber Security Club is a student group for digital security-minded members of the San Francisco State University community.
• Encode Justice North Carolina: Encode Justice NC is mostly made up of high school students learning the tools of organizing by focusing on issues like algorithmic machine-learning and law enforcement surveillance.
• Encode Justice Oregon: Like the EJ-NC chapter, EC-Oregon is composed of  high school students training their peers to take an active role in local decision-making.
• MOKANCAN, Lawrence, KS: The Missouri & Kansas Cyber Alliance Network is a growing new group of volunteer activists who have been meeting on privacy and other digital rights in cities near the border of the two states.
• New York Law School’s Privacy Law Association, New York, NY: The PLA is a group of law students that train and organize around digital privacy and its impact in many fields of the law.
• Security Club @OSU, Portland, OR: The OSU SEC is a group for security-minded students at Oregon State University that engages in cyber defense training and related digital security education.

Looking forward

As we continue to fight for our digital rights, more groups are connecting to build and maintain a movement for change. In the coming year, a lot of EFA members will be focused on effecting positive social change, whether it’s by training new generations of digital justice activists or preventing attacks on rights to privacy and free expression. 

To learn more about how the EFA works, please check out our FAQ page, and to join the fight, please apply to join us.

Learn more about some of our other EFA members in these past profiles:

• Digital Fourth
• Restore the 4th Minnesota
• PDX Privacy interview 
• Restore the Fourth MN interview
• Future ADA interview
• Personal Telco Project interview
• CyPurr Collective interview
• Cryptoparty Ann Arbor interview

 This blog is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2023.