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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Digital rights battles in 2015: NSA reform, net neutrality, CISA and beyond Digital rights battles in 2015: NSA reform, net neutrality, CISA and beyond by Rainey Reitman This article by activism director Rainey Reitman originally appeared on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From John Oliver’s quizzing Edward Snowden on whether the National Security Agency is collecting our “dick pics” to Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal team’s obliterating the patent that was used to go after podcaster Adam Carolla, digital rights issues were in the public spotlight last year. For the most part, 2015 found us winning hard-fought battles to advance our freedoms online. We had an important, if substantively small, victory with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, an imperfect bill that was, nonetheless, the first significant reform on NSA surveillance in more than 30 years. The bill was the culmination of more than two years of work in the wake of the Snowden revelations. We also saw Internet users joining forces to advocate for real net neutrality, and the Federal Communications Commission finally adopted rules that brought us closer to the open Internet that a real democracy demands. In California, CalECPA — which Wired dubbed the “nation’s best digital privacy law” — was signed into law, after years of efforts by the EFF community. We also busted the podcasting patent, and we saw more strides toward software patent reform. We will also remember 2015 as a turning point in our efforts to encrypt the entire Web, as EFF and our partners rolled out our most ambitious technological project to date: Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt is designed to put HTTPS in the hands of the people, creating a pathway for website administrators to obtain certificates and enable encryption painlessly and at no cost. But it’s not all roses and sunshine. For all our achievements in the past 12 months, we will also remember this as a year of struggle. Liberty suffered a terrible blow in the eleventh hour, when Congress added a privacy-undermining cybersecurity bill (CISA) to the budget package. Congress passed a Fast Track bill, which could make it more difficult for us to defeat the Trans Pacific Partnership when it comes for a vote. We’re fighting a heated battle with certain members of the intelligence community who want to exploit tragedies in order to push their agenda of undermining encryption. EFF is gathering privacy advocates, cryptography experts and everyday Internet users who care about the Web to speak out in defense of secure technology we can rely on. The year 2016 brings opportunity. With the sunset of a key provision of the FISA Amendments Act looming in 2017, this is a year when we can force our elected officials in Congress to bring more transparency, leading to a bill that will end mass surveillance of the Internet. This is also a year when we are ready to push forward significant reform of software patents and when we’ve got one last opportunity to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership before it ratchets up intellectual property enforcement worldwide. It’s not going to be easy. As technology adoption has increased, so too have efforts to use tech for censorship and surveillance. But the movement of politically aware technology users is growing exponentially, fueled by the work of investigative journalists, civic-minded software developers, grass-roots activists and many others. Together, we’re building the movement that will dismantle the surveillance state and ensure that the technology of tomorrow is trustworthy and accountable to users. We need you. Please join the community of over 20,000 card-carrying EFF members by donating today. Below you can find a series of articles revisiting watershed moments in 2015. You also can follow our series by subscribing to EFF on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus. Year in Review blog posts (linked at source) “Let’s Encrypt brings free HTTPS to the world” “Creepy online tracking companies fizzle in the face of privacy badger” “We threw a wrench in the White House’s TPP Fast Track plan” “A ban on CD ripping marks this year’s lowest point in international copyright” “Our fight to rein in the CFAA” “Free speech in the Middle East and North Africa” “Who’s driving this thing? Anti-DRM victories and milestones” “What happened with crypto this year?” “Defending prisoner rights in the digital world” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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