Aggregator

　　　　　　　　 広島ホームテレビ　　地方政治の実態に密着して取材すると、こんなにも面白いドキュメンタリー番組ができることを広島のローカルTV局が示してくれた。　広島県安芸高田市の石丸伸二市長といえば、X（旧ツイッター）で30万近いフォロワーがあり、今や全国的な有名人だ。　河井克行・案里夫妻による大規模買収事件で市長らが辞職し..

ハマスがイスラエル側にテロ的攻撃を行った（2023年10月７日）とされる機会から発展しつつあるパレスチナ人廃絶のイスラエル側の動きで明かになりつつある現象に伴って、アメリカ社会（の主として白人キリスト教者）が、どうも人間（全てではないが、ある種の人間）の尊厳を無視する人が多いことが、明白になりつつあります。まず本年の大統領選挙の候補者全て、バイデン現大統領、トランプ前大統領、かつての大統領候補であったロバート・ケネデイーの息子が、イスラエル擁護です。

Where we go says a lot about who we are. That's why EFF supports the Massachusetts Location Shield Act (H.357/S.148), filed by Rep. Kate Lipper-Garabedian and Sen. Cynthia Creem. This bill would prohibit companies from engaging in the predatory practice of selling, leasing, or trading location data, while still allowing companies to collect and process this data for legitimate purposes with user consent.

みんなの力で都政を変えよう！　市民集会

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! 

統計トピックスNo.141　我が国のこどもの数

ミャンマーの核開発疑惑が国際的に注意をひいたのは今回が初めてではない。数回は繰り返された。筆者が最初にその話をミャンマー国軍情報部幹部から「核開発の試み」を聞いたのは2003―04年にかけてである。それは「ある山にトンネルを掘り核開発施設を建設している」「そのための北朝鮮のスタッフが入ってきている」「原子物理学研究の留学生をロシアに相当数送り込んでいる」といった内容であった。正直言って半信半疑であった。何故なら「アウンサン廟爆破事件」(1983年ラングーン事件)への抗議でミャンマー政府は北朝鮮と全面的に断交したままだったからだ。

A companion bill to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was introduced in the House last month. Despite minor changes, it suffers from the same fundamental flaws as its Senate counterpart. At its core, this bill is still an unconstitutional censorship bill that restricts protected online speech and gives the government the power to target services and content it finds objectionable. Here, we break down why the House version of KOSA is just as dangerous as the Senate version, and why it’s crucial to continue opposing it. 

Core First Amendment Problems Persist

EFF has consistently opposed KOSA because, through several iterations of the Senate bill, it continues to open the door to government control over what speech content can be shared and accessed online. Our concern, which we share with others, is that the bill’s broad and vague provisions will force platforms to censor legally protected content and impose age-verification requirements. The age verification requirements will drive away both minors and adults who either lack the proper ID, or who value their privacy and anonymity.   

The House version of KOSA fails to resolve these fundamental censorship problems.

TAKE ACTION

THE "KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT" ISN'T SAFE FOR KIDS OR ADULTS

Dangers for Everyone, Especially Young People

One of the key concerns with KOSA has been its potential to harm the very population it aims to protect—young people. KOSA’s broad censorship requirements would limit minors’ access to critical information and resources, including educational content, social support groups, and other forms of legitimate speech. This version does not alleviate that concern. For example, this version of KOSA could still: 

• Suppress search results for young people seeking sexual health and reproductive rights information; 
• Block content relevant to the history of oppressed groups, such as the history of slavery in the U.S; 
• Stifle youth activists across the political spectrum by preventing them from connecting and advocating on their platforms; and 
• Block young people seeking help for mental health or addiction problems from accessing resources and support. 

As thousands of young people have told us, these concerns are just the tip of the iceberg. Under the guise of protecting them, KOSA will limit minors’ ability to self-explore, to develop new ideas and interests, to become civically engaged citizens, and to seek community and support for the very harms KOSA ostensibly aims to prevent. 

What’s Different About the House Version?

Although there are some changes in the House version of KOSA, they do little to address the fundamental First Amendment problems with the bill. We review the key changes here.

1. Duty of Care Provision   

We’ve been vocal about our opposition to KOSA’s “duty of care” censorship provision. This section outlines a wide collection of harms to minors that platforms have a duty to prevent and mitigate by exercising “reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature” of their product. The list includes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and bullying, among others. As we’ve explained before, this provision would cause platforms to broadly over-censor the internet so they don’t get sued for hosting otherwise legal content that the government—in this case the FTC—claims is harmful.

The House version of KOSA retains this chilling effect, but limits the "duty of care" requirement to what it calls “high impact online companies,” or those with at least $2.5 billion in annual revenue or more than 150 million global monthly active users. So while the Senate version requires all “covered platforms” to exercise reasonable care to prevent the specific harms to minors, the House version only assigns that duty of care to the biggest platforms.

While this is a small improvement, its protective effect is ultimately insignificant. After all, the vast majority of online speech happens on just a handful of platforms, and those platforms—including Meta, Snap, X, WhatsApp, and TikTok—will still have to uphold the duty of care under this version of KOSA. Smaller platforms, meanwhile, still face demanding obligations under KOSA’s other sections. When government enforcers want to control content on smaller websites or apps, they can just use another provision of KOSA—such as one that allows them to file suits based on failures in a platform’s design—to target the same protected content.

2. Tiered Knowledge Standard 

Because KOSA’s obligations apply specifically to users who are minors, there are open questions as to how enforcement would work. How certain would a platform need to be that a user is, in fact, a minor before KOSA liability attaches? The Senate version of the bill has one answer for all covered platforms: obligations attach when a platform has “actual knowledge” or “knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances” that a user is a minor. This is a broad, vague standard that would not require evidence that a platform actually knows a user is a minor for it to be subject to liability. 

The House version of KOSA limits this slightly by creating a tiered knowledge standard under which platforms are required to have different levels of knowledge based on the platform’s size. Under this new standard, the largest platforms—or "high impact online companies”—are required to carry out KOSA’s provisions with respect to users they “knew or should have known” are minors. This, like the Senate version’s standard, would not require proof that a platform actually knows a user is a minor for it to be held liable. Mid-sized platforms would be held to a slightly less stringent standard, and the smallest platforms would only be liable where they have actual knowledge that a user was under 17 years old. 

While, again, this change is a slight improvement over the Senate’s version, the narrowing effect is small. The knowledge standard is still problematically vague, for one, and where platforms cannot clearly decipher when they will be liable, they are likely to implement dangerous age verification measures anyway to avoid KOSA’s punitive effects.

Most importantly, even if the House’s tinkering slightly reduces liability for the smallest platforms, this version of the bill still incentivizes large and mid-size platforms—which, again, host the vast majority of all online speech—to implement age verification systems that will threaten the right to anonymity and create serious privacy and security risks for all users.

3. Exclusion for Non-Interactive Platforms

The House bill excludes online platforms where chat, comments, or interactivity is not the predominant purpose of the service. This could potentially narrow the number of platforms subject to KOSA's enforcement by reducing some of the burden on websites that aren't primarily focused on interaction.

However, this exclusion is legally problematic because its unclear language will again leave platforms guessing as to whether it applies to them. For instance, does Instagram fall into this category or would image-sharing be its predominant purpose? What about TikTok, which has a mix of content-sharing and interactivity? This ambiguity could lead to inconsistent enforcement and legal challenges—the mere threat of which tend to chill online speech.

4. Definition of Compulsive Usage 

Finally, the House version of KOSA also updates the definition of “compulsive usage” from any “repetitive behavior reasonably likely to cause psychological distress” to any “repetitive behavior reasonably likely to cause a mental health disorder,” which the bill defines as anything listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. This change pays lip service to concerns we and many others have expressed that KOSA is overbroad, and will be used by state attorneys general to prosecute platforms for hosting any speech they deem harmful to minors. 

However, simply invoking the name of the healthcare professionals’ handbook does not make up for the lack of scientific evidence that minors’ technology use causes mental health disorders. This definition of compulsive usage still leaves the door open for states to go after any platform that is claimed to have been a factor in any child’s anxiety or depression diagnosis. 

KOSA Remains a Censorship Threat 

Despite some changes, the House version of KOSA retains its fundamental constitutional flaws.  It encourages government-directed censorship, dangerous digital age verification, and overbroad content restrictions on all internet users, and further harms young people by limiting their access to critical information and resources. 

Lawmakers know this bill is controversial. Some of its proponents have recently taken steps to attach KOSA as an amendment to the five-year reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, the last "must-pass" legislation until the fall. This would effectively bypass public discussion of the House version. Just last month Congress attached another contentious, potentially unconstitutional bill to unrelated legislation, by including a bill banning TikTok inside of a foreign aid package. Legislation of this magnitude deserves to pass—or fail—on its own merits. 

We continue to oppose KOSA—in its House and Senate forms—and urge legislators to instead seek alternatives such as comprehensive federal privacy law that protect young people without infringing on the First Amendment rights of everyone who relies on the internet.  

TAKE ACTION

THE "KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT" ISN'T SAFE FOR KIDS OR ADULTS

「パレスチナをイスラエル占領から解放！」「ガザ戦争反対！」「イスラエル・ジェノサイドを助ける武器をアメリカは送るな！」　アメリカ・ニューヨークのコロンビア大学では、校庭にテントを張って泊りがけでパレスチナ支援のデモを続けていました。　4月24日、マイク・ジョンソン米下院議長がやってきて、「学校の秩序を維持できないネマト・シャフィク学長は首だ！」と叫びました。　そして、4月30日の夜、約500人の警察隊が校庭に乱入し、300人以上を逮捕しました。　CNNテレビなどが、4月18日以降、全米の大学であわせて2000人以上が逮捕されたと報じました。　「全員釈放！！」と叫ぶ学生の声が、全米を包んでいます。

　「経済安保秘密保護法案」（重要経済情報の保護及び活用に関する法律案）は、反対運動の広がりよそに4月９日、実施状況を国会に報告し公表することを中心とした「修正案」が立憲民主党などの賛成で可決され衆院を通過。審議の舞台は参院に移った。乗せられた立憲　同法案の中身は、２０１３年に安倍晋三政権下で成立した特定秘密保護法を経済分野にも適用し、厳罰化で縛ることを狙ったものだ。立憲の賛成は最初から「修正」の余地を残しておき一部「修正」で通してしまおうという自民党の「手法」に乗せられたもの..

Today marks World Press Freedom Day, an annual celebration instituted by the United Nations in 1993 to raise awareness of press freedom and remind governments of their duties under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year, the day is dedicated to the importance of journalism and freedom of expression in the context of the current global environmental crisis.

Journalists everywhere face challenges in reporting on climate change and other environmental issues. Whether lawsuits, intimidation, arrests, or disinformation campaigns, these challenges are myriad. For instance, journalists and human rights campaigners attending the COP28 Summit held in Dubai last autumn faced surveillance and intimidation. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented arrests of environmental journalists in Iran and Venezuela, among other countries. And in 2022, a Guardian journalist was murdered while on the job in the Brazilian Amazon.

The threats faced by journalists are the same as those faced by ordinary internet users around the world. According to CPJ, there are 320 journalists jailed worldwide for doing their job. And ranked among the top jailers of journalists last year were China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, Vietnam, Israel, and Iran; countries in which internet users also face censorship, intimidation, and in some cases, arrest. 

On this World Press Freedom Day, we honor the journalists, human rights defenders, and internet users fighting for a better world. EFF will continue to fight for the right to freedom of expression and a free and open internet for every internet user, everywhere.

This report responds to APC's belief that it important to characterise gendered disinformation, because it relates to a specific type of violation of women’s and gender-diverse people’s rights,…

This joint stakeholder report prepared by APC and Rudi International for the 47th session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) focuses on human rights in the digital context and the state of civic…

These comments were drafted in a collective process aimed at advancing the centrality of gender issues in the Global Digital Compact, ensuring that the governance, development and use of technology…