‘News’ Site Keeps Hallucinating EFF Staffers

1 week 3 days ago

What do EFF staffers Sarah ChenJavier Morales, Caitlin Chin, Emma Rodriguez, and Mikko Kopponen have in common? 

For one thing, they don’t exist. 

For another, all have been quoted as EFF experts in articles published in the past two months on a site called News-USA Today, which describes itself as “an independent news publisher focused on clear, accurate, and useful journalism.” 

Uh… 

(Please don’t confuse this site with USA Today, in which real EFF experts are accurately quoted on a regular basis.) 

News-USA Today is hardly the only slagheap that’s hallucinating or fabricating EFF personnel and quotes; as we wrote last September, media companies large and small are using AI to generate news content because it’s cheaper than paying for journalists’ salaries, but that savings can come at the cost of the outlets’ reputations— assuming they care about reputation at all. 

But this many fake EFF sources in two months? That’s making a play for the championship title of bogus news content. 

News-USA Today’s site proclaims, “Our goal is simple: give readers the facts and the context they need to make informed decisions.” It then defines its mission:

  • “Deliver timely, factual reporting grounded in verifiable sources and public documents.”
  • “Make complex topics understandable without losing nuance or accuracy.”
  • “Serve the public interest by surfacing stories that affect lives, institutions, and communities.”
  • “Maintain a clear separation between news, analysis, opinion, and sponsored content.” 

Attempts to reach contacts listed on the site went unanswered. In fact, after we reached out to them, they published a story on June 9 with quotes from Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Jared Cohen — who also doesn’t exist. 

As we noted last year, EFF is all about having our words spread far and wide. Per our copyright policy, any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY), unless otherwise noted.  

However, we don't want disreputable sites making up words (or false identities!) for us, whether or not they’re using AI. False quotations that misstate our positions damage the trust that the public and reputable media outlets have in us.  

The best thing a news consumer can do is invest a little time and energy to learn how to discern the real from the fake. It’s unfortunate that it's the public’s burden to put in this much effort, but while we're adjusting to new tools and a new normal, a little effort now can go a long way.   

As we’ve noted before in the context of election misinformation, the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica has published a handy guide about how to tell if what you’re reading is accurate or “fake news,” as has FactCheck.org

Josh Richman

【月刊マスコミ評・新聞】自衛隊の統制と政治の責任への視点=六光寺 弦

1 week 3 days ago
 軍事優先国家への転換を進める高市早苗政権。殺傷能力がある武器の輸出を解禁した後は、国家情報会議の設置に続き、安保3文書改定、スパイ防止法の制定を見据える。その先は憲法の自衛隊明記、さらには軍への“昇格”だろう。その自衛隊はと言えば、規律はガタガタ。文民統制は危機的な状況だ。 4月の自民党大会で、陸自の歌姫と呼ばれる3等陸曹が制服姿で君が代斉唱をリードした。露骨な自衛隊の政治利用なのに、その場にいた高市首相は違法と認めない。小泉進次郎防衛相は3曹と撮った写真を一時、SNSに投..
JCJ

LGBT Q&A: We’re Back With Season 2! 

1 week 3 days ago

Last June during Pride, we launched a new initiative—LGBT Q&A—where we answered your most pressing queer-related digital rights questions on EFF’s Instagram and TikTok accounts. No question was too big or too small! You asked us things like what pictures to use on dating apps; how to remove your name from internet searches; why homophobic content doesn't get removed after you report it; and how to stay safe at Pride marches.

And this year, we’re doing it all again. 

Both online and offline, LGBTQ+ individuals and the fight for queer liberation are under threat; and the need for guidance and protection from prying eyes and oppressive structures is increasingly pertinent. This is particularly true for those of us who face consequences when intimate details around gender or sexual identities are revealed without consent. 

But we know that it can feel overwhelming to even start thinking about how you can protect yourself online in the face of these issues. That's why this Pride, we’re answering all your digital rights questions. 

How to submit your questions?

  • If you would like to remain anonymous and away from social platforms, you can submit questions via this secure link
  • Head to EFF’s Reddit or the r/LGBTQ subreddit and submit your questions underneath the posts. 
  • Your questions can also be submitted under the linked posts on EFF’s Instagram and TikTok, as well as on our stories where you can submit questions directly. 
  • If you prefer Mastodon and Bluesky, comment your questions under the linked posts. 

As always, we will not engage with comments that discriminate against marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ+ community.

We’re here to help build an online space where you get to decide what aspects of yourself you share with others, how you present to the world, and what things you keep private. Join us to make the internet private, safe, and full of pride.

Paige Collings

Congress Just Rushed Through a Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul

1 week 4 days ago

In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. 

H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The bill removes the Library of Congress’ current supervisory role over the Copyright Office, transfers several powers directly to the Register of Copyrights, and makes the Register a presidential appointee, confirmed by the Senate. 

These changes would make an office that’s already hugely influential in copyright and tech policy much more political. EFF first explained why that’s a terrible idea when it came up nearly a decade ago. This bill, like the older one, weakens the few public-interest checks and balances that do exist.  We hope the Senate promptly rejects this bill. 

The Copyright Office Doesn’t Need More Politics—Or More Power

The Copyright Office's main responsibilities are administrative and advisory. It registers copyrights, maintains records, grows the Library of Congress’s collections, and provides expertise to Congress on copyright law. But over the past two decades, the Office has also become increasingly influential in copyright policy debates that affect free expression, libraries, educators, competition—and everyday internet users. Unfortunately, it has not been a neutral advocate. The office’s recent report on the role of AI severely bungled the issue of fair use, prioritizing private licensing market “solutions” over user rights. 

Going further back, the Copyright Office supported one of the most infamous anti-internet proposals of all time—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a disastrous internet censorship proposal that sparked one of the largest online protests in history. The Office has repeatedly advanced positions that favored large entertainment-industry interests over the public interest.

The Office also plays a major role in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1201 rulemaking process, which determines when the public may lawfully bypass digital locks for activities such as security research, repair, preservation, or accessibility. EFF has used this process repeatedly to mitigate some of the worst harms of the DMCA. H.R. 6028 would move rulemaking authority over 1201 from the Librarian of Congress to the Register of Copyrights, further consolidating power within the Copyright Office itself.

The bill also makes the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate. Each administration will be pressured to pick nominees aligned with their own policy preferences, and the powerful copyright owning industries will invest even more heavily in lobbying to get their way, and influence the selection. This position should be focused on administrative ability and actual expertise, not lobbying and politics. 

The Copyright Office Should Stay Connected To The Library of Congress

H.R. 6028 would do more than change who appoints the Register of Copyrights. It would sever the Copyright Office from Library of Congress supervision and transfer many Librarian powers directly to the Register. 

The supervisory relationship exists for good reason, as the nation’s libraries have pointed out for years. The Library, while far from perfect, at least has the mission of preserving and providing access to knowledge. That should be an important public-interest counterweight in copyright debates. Congress has not explained how weakening the ties between the Library and the Copyright Office would serve the public better, or even seriously inquired about it. 

This Bill Was Rushed Through

Back in March, EFF joined Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology, library organizations and tech groups, urging Congress not to fast-track this legislation. We told them changes to the Copyright Office will have major consequences for the “speech rights, educational opportunities, and creative freedoms of all Americans.” 

Yet Congress moved forward without any hearings on the bill, and without meaningful examination. H.R. 6028 creates a years-long separation of the Copyright Office from the Library of Congress, transfers significant legal authority, and restructures the appointment process for the nation’s top copyright official. Changes like that deserve hearings, debate, and public scrutiny. H.R. 6028 got none of that. 

The Senate Should Stop This Bill

Copyright law exists to serve the public and “promote the progress” of science and learning. The institutions that administer copyright law should do the same. 

H.R. 6028 would move the Copyright Office further away from that goal. Congress should be strengthening public-interest oversight of copyright policymaking, not looking for ways to concentrate more authority in a single presidentially appointed official. 

The Senate should reject H.R. 6028. The Copyright Office should serve the public—not presidential administrations, and not industry lobbyists. 

Joe Mullin

特定小電力無線局の無線設備の一の筐体に収めることを要しない装置、送信時間制限装置及びキャリアセンスの技術的条件等を定める件の一部を改正する告示案等に係る意見募集の結果

1 week 4 days ago
特定小電力無線局の無線設備の一の筐体に収めることを要しない装置、送信時間制限装置及びキャリアセンスの技術的条件等を定める件の一部を改正する告示案等に係る意見募集の結果
総務省

The 702 Ultimatum: Warrant Requirement or Bust

1 week 4 days ago

For months now, Congress has been kicking the ball down the road—temporarily postponing the expiration of the mass surveillance authority Section 702 of FISA in hopes that some consensus could be reached. Now, with the deadline looming, the stakes have never been higher. Nearly every time the statute has come up for renewal, the people demanding privacy and civil liberties have had to compromise, but with current negotiations seemingly at  an impasse, it’s time for surveillance maximalist lawmakers to come to the table. 

We say to the Intelligence Community crowd: Section 702 should require a warrant before the Federal Bureau of Investigation can look at digital communications collected from Americans. If not, we should let the whole thing expire.

This is a serious proposition. The intelligence community can keep a useful national security surveillance tool if and only if they make FBI agents get a warrant signed by a judge before they sift through and read out private communications. A warrant requirement is not the only demand EFF has been making for changing Section 702, but it is the most important reform and it should happen before there is any more reauthorization of the policy. 

For too long, the FBI has been able to piggyback on a major national security tool as an unconstitutional backdoor way of reading Americans’ communications. 702 collects communications going to, from, or between people in other countries—including when they are contacted by people in the United States. Mass surveillance is just that—mass. It’s lacking any of the individualized suspicion that our legal system is based on. 

Take action

TELL congress: 702 Needs Reform

So, what’s been happening?

On one side are surveillance hawks and intelligence community-devotees who think the mass surveillance of Americans is an acceptable, even valuable, product of this authority. This bipartisan coalition of privacy deniers think that 702 should be extended without any change, and they seem to be willing to let the authority expire rather than compromise with the lawmakers and public that are demanding common-sense reforms. They’ve been given a number of chances to pass bills that would implement some key incremental reforms, but those opportunities have not moved the needle. 

On the other side of the debate is a bipartisan coalition of people who understand that this authority can no longer operate as is. Section 702 is rife with problems, loopholes, and compliance issues that need fixing. The National Security Agency collects full conversations being conducted by and with overseas targets—including conversations by and with Americans in the U.S.—and stores them in massive databases. The NSA then allows other agencies, specifically the FBI, to access untold amounts of that information. In turn, the FBI takes a “finders keepers” approach to this data: they reason that since it's already collected under one law, it’s OK for them to see it. If the FBI wanted to get that data on their own, it would require them to get a warrant signed by a judge certifying that there is probable cause. Instead, under current practice, the FBI can query and even read the U.S. side of that communication without a warrant. What’s more, victims of this surveillance won’t know and have very few ways of finding out that their communications have been surveilled.

Complicating this matter more is that the Trump administration has announced Bill Pulte as the new Director of National Intelligence, whose job it will be to oversee and direct U.S. intelligence agencies. This is particularly concerning because of Pulte’s history of using private information held by the government as a political weapon. In his FHFA role, he has accused several of the President’s political foes and targets—including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook—of mortgage fraud based on private data held by his agency. Because of his looming appointment, many Democrats have vowed not to reauthorize Section 702 unless he is removed from the position. They shouldn’t stop there—they should use that leverage to demand a warrant requirement. The integrity of the people in charge of a program should not be the only thing that stands between Americans and violations of their civil liberties. 

What happens if 702 expires? 

As the New York Times reports, “The law, however, has a built-in safety net for a temporary lapse that allows the surveillance program to endure until annual certifications issued by the nation’s intelligence court expire, though such a scenario could invite legal challenges. The court recertified the program in March, meaning the N.S.A. could continue to operate the program through March 2027 even if the statute were to expire.” 

If Section 702 does stay expired past March 2027, the United States government will likely revert to using other programs and authorities to justify the surveillance of overseas national security targets, namely 12333, a shadowy executive order from the 1980s that gives the U.S. government nearly unlimited power to spy on people overseas.  Even if this does come to pass, standing our ground on warrant requirements and allowing Section 702 to expire  is important for several reasons. First, just because the government continues surveillance under a different authority does not mean it is legally justified in doing so—this was the lesson of the post 9/11 Presidential Surveillance Program, which was only retroactively immunized by Congress. Second, seeing how the government responds to the end of Section 702 might give us opportunities to push for transparency in other parts of information collection and better understand how the inner workings of the intelligence apparatus pivot and adapt as new legal authorities take precedence. 

Where do we go from here? 

Every few years, for almost two decades now, we’ve been fighting to reform Section 702 so that it will no longer enable the warrantless mass surveillance of Americans. A bipartisan coalition in Congress supports this goal, but the White House and Congressional leadership won’t listen. It’s past time we make at least one serious reform to a mass surveillance law that has been abused for decades. Tell your elected official: Put a warrant requirement in Section 702 or let it expire.

Take action

TELL congress: 702 Needs Reform

Matthew Guariglia

Congress Has Until June 12 to Take Action on 702. Tell Them Not to Drop The Ball

1 week 4 days ago

There are no excuses for any Member of Congress to support a clean reauthorization of Section 702. Anyone who votes to do so does not take your privacy seriously. Full stop.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is among the United States’ most infamous mass surveillance programs. Sold to the public as a foreign surveillance tool, it has become a backdoor for law enforcement to search through Americans’ private communications without ever obtaining a warrant. We need to act now to prevent Congress from reauthorizing 702 in a way that ignores the truth: This authority needs to change.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has attempted several times to push re-authorization bills that give us now substantive reforms. We will not fall for fig leafs or shifts in rhetoric. Our demands are common sense: no renewal without real reforms. A simple extension is a betrayal of every US resident who expects their government to respect their rights and the Constitution.

Your representative needs to hear from you right now, before the 45 date extension ends and Congress will need to vote again. Contact them today.

Tell them: No vote on any bills that would reauthorize Section 702 without meaningful reform.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

[B] ホルムズ通航「日本はイランと個別交渉を」 元首相・研究者らが政府に要請

1 week 4 days ago
米国・イスラエルとイランの戦闘を背景に、ホルムズ海峡周辺の船舶通航が不安定化する中、元職・前職国会議員や研究者、エネルギー事業関係者らが6月8日、衆議院第一議員会館で「ホルムズ独自友好交渉へ」と題する記者会見を開いた。会見には、小林正弥・千葉大学教授(呼びかけ人代表)、鳩山友紀夫元内閣総理大臣、境野春彦・コネクトエネルギー合同会社CEO、宮田律・現代イスラム研究センター理事長、竹信三恵子・和光大学名誉教授らが出席した。主催した「生活と平和」提言事務局は、日本政府に対し、ホルムズ海峡における日本関係船舶の安全通過を実現するため、イラン政府と直接かつ友好的に個別交渉を行うよう求めた。(岩中健介)
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