One particular area where I get the impression they have a specific measurable impact is in their legal support on certain cases:
https://www.eff.org/legal-victories
Then there is (for example) their practical solution of how to help increase HTTPS adoption with their excellent software tool, CertBot, which helps automate LetsEncrypt certificates:
I’d note that it seems to be exceptionally rare for a politically active organisation to be able to both campaign on issues at a high level AND produce technically viable and relevant software tools. Those are two wildly different areas of expertise, and yet they do this, with a clear overarching narrative.
In terms of proposing more specific solutions to problems they protest against, I don’t have a strong view on whether you’re right to emphasise this or not. Maybe there is more they could do here. But in terms of the larger question of “are EFF effective?” I’d say they are demonstrably having a positive impact.
Is it enough? I don’t know. How do you measure it… Can they do better? Almost certainly.
I'm open to new information... so if you know something I don't, is there a more concise answer to "who really funds the EFF"?
> One likely explanation, Glaser reasoned, was that most of these groups depended on funding from the very same corporations that they should be criticizing. Over the past years, EFF has taken millions in funds from Google and Facebook via straight donations and controversial court payouts that many see as under-the-radar contributions. Hell, Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s foundation gave EFF at least $1.2 million.
> But the reason for EFF’s silence on the Facebook surveillance and influence scandal goes deeper—into the business model of the internet itself, which from the outset has framed user privacy as being threatened by ever-imminent government censorship, as opposed to the protection of users and their data from wanton commercial intrusion and exploitation. Put simply, the lords of the internet care very little about user privacy—what they want to preserve, at the end of the day, is their own commercial license against the specter of government regulation of any kind.
2) can you provide an example of a 'slippery slope' that did not come to fruition? Rhetorical devices and hyperbole are exactly how you make abstract technical concerns feel real to an average 65 year old congressperson
Last I checked, congressperson is a person in congress, the profession of which is politics... I felt that covered the rhetoric and hyperbole well but I can take the criticism.
What I may have miscalculated is that there will be some who feel that my statment is something that is / has occured and not just rhetoric and hyperbole and then that is a slippery slope I do not want to journey along.
As long as we're blending meanings, I offer that you're getting undervotes instead of downvotes.
Since the first part isn't true there is no "slope", so to speak.
Faces, places, selfies, beaches, sport, babies, aeroplanes, swimming, documents etc. all categorised neatly, added to the metadata and synced with the server for you.
The idea that this has 'opened the door' is as laughable as my example, the garage door got stuck wide open years ago. First the search indexing, then the smart indexing identifying people and places and pets. Funnily enough there were no banners flying, slippery slopes or people smashing their 'iSpy' devices when search became a feature.
To start, if the problem is 'doing something wrong' vs 'status quo', simply stopping the 'doing something wrong' is a proposal
Nevermind the many concrete recommendations which do occur- support for net neutrality is one clear example i can recall from memory, I'm sure they are others.
Also:
has clear examples of cases impacting policy which eff have been involved in
and:
https://www.eff.org/pages/tools
has some very important tools for internet privacy, some of which which have made a huge impact
Why does their need to be a better solution in the case of the Apple CSAM phone scanning debacle? The solution is to just not do it.
If Apple is so worried about illegal material being uploaded to iCloud, they can just modify their iCloud encryption logic to give themselves access and scan the material on their own servers when it's uploaded. They have access to the unencrypted content either way, so it's fundamentally no less private. Actually, it's more private because at least Apple wouldn't be giving themselves access to content on my private property.
That's not their job though, providing solutions and listening to citizen and NGO feedback is the job of the politicians.
Charity Navigator gives them 4 out of 4 stars: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431.
If the EFF lost every single case and donated half their money to their political opponents, then this rating would still be unchanged provided they disclosed everything and didn't take much of a cut for overhead.
If you think the EFF is not an effective organization, it might be worthwhile explaining your opinion so as the influence charitable donations that could be spent differently. I think the EFF misses the mark pretty frequently, personally. But they're net positive.
Most proposals they object to are trying to solve real problems. I almost never see the EFF propose better ways to solve those problems. They just raise objections to everyone else's proposed solutions.
And those objections are often just low effort implausible slippery slope arguments. It is pretty easy to make a slippery slope argument for pretty much anything that has it leading to a dystopian nightmare.
Legislators and policy makers tend to pay more attention to people with solutions, even bad solutions, than to people who just object to everything, especially when those objections are low quality.