[telecom] 2012 in Review: EFF's Fight Against Secret Surveillance Law

DECEMBER 22, 2012 | BY MARK RUMOLD

2012 in Review: EFF's Fight Against Secret Surveillance Law

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2012 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

It seems like a fairly straightforward principle: when the government interprets a law in a way that affects citizens, the public is entitled to know the interpretation and understand its effects.

But when it comes to the federal government's interpretation of electronic surveillance laws, apparently, the general rule just doesn't seem to apply (or so the Department of Justice seems to think). In 2012, EFF pushed back, taking the DOJ to court for refusing to disclose how they interpret various surveillance laws. Over the past year, EFF litigated three Freedom of Information Act lawsuits -- each concerning a different law used, and secretly interpreted, by the government but shielded from disclosure and the public's scrutiny.

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***** Moderator's Note *****

Here's /my/ question: why is the EFF using SSL to protect a publicly available website that they want (I think) to have widely read?

Before anyone jerks their knee, yes, I know that the EFF has a published statement on the issue, but I don't see the logic in preventing anyone from scanning a web retrieval when the whole "secret" is written into the URL.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Monty Solomon
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To reduce the chance that your ISP (or anybody else) might *alter* the pages in transit, insert an advertisement, etc. Authenticity can be valuable to the sender as well as to the receiver.

Reply to
John Reiser

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