EFF's OurVoteLive.org Helps Over 86,000 Voters

Yesterday, a year-long collaboration between EFF and the Election Protection Coalition came to fruition. OurVoteLive.org, powered by EFF's Total Election Awareness project, helped EP's thousands of hotline operators and legal response teams document and respond to over 86,000 calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE voter-assistance hotline on November 4th and during early voting. Over 5,000 more calls were documented during the primaries.

Now that the election is over, Our Vote Live contains the largest database of voting-related inquiries, problems, and discrepancies ever created — all searchable and visible to the general public. While important prototypes were used in prior elections, Our Vote Live was by far the most comprehensive and most successful effort to date.

Behind the simple features visible to the general public is a complex system that enabled hotline call centers to provide information to callers, record their questions and complaints, and coordinate legal assistance and media outreach in response.

The vast majority of the calls came from voters with one of two inquiries: 29,000 callers asked "Am I registered to vote?", and 34,000 asked "Where is my polling place?" Just trying to answer these basic questions is complicated task as up-to-date voter registration data and polling place data is notoriously difficult to find and consolidate. Catalist and The Google Elections Team did an impressive job of rounding up much of this information and helping us make it available to volunteer operators at EP's call centers. (Google's Abe Murray has a great post on the Google Maps Blog about the tangled process of assembling Google's polling location data.)

A significant number of the calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline reported serious problems. When they did, Our Vote Live enabled operators to coordinate a response with unprecedented efficiency. Joe Hall, who used the system to assist volunteers in his call center in New York City, writes:

One thing that has become obvious is having a bonafide database record ID is gangbusters for coordinating across centers, from centers up to national and within centers. The ability to have a living entry, one you can add notes to and add follow-up information, was a big deal... often we'd finally get to one in our pile, pull up the entry and see that someone else had followed up, meaning that we could quickly move on and not waste anyone's time.

As the system provided unprecedented information in close to real time, Our Vote Live was regularly reviewed by the press, election integrity advocates, and others interested in the health of the electoral process. OurVoteLive.org received close to 60,000 visitors on Election Day and was blogged about or linked to by the likes of Fox News, the New Yorker, Daily Kos, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, the NAACP, Common Cause and many others.

We hope that the real benefits of the project are only beginning to be seen. It's been less than 24 hours since Election Day, and we (and Election Protection) are only beginning to review the data in a comprehensive way. There's a recount likely in the Minnesota Senate race, and there's a runoff imminent in the Georgia Senate race. We've heard nationwide reports of unmanageably long lines, voter intimidation, and (of course) voting machine problems. Beyond the serious problems identified in individual reports on Our Vote Live, we need substantial systemic reform of our election process, as Election Protection leaders outlined in a memo Tuesday evening.

In addition to all of the things that went right yesterday, Election Day highlighted areas where the need for major improvement remains. Smart, transparent information technology will play a critical role in future reforms, and EFF will continue to work with EP and others to help make it happen. Stay tuned to EFF's Deeplinks blog for updates as the process continues.

(This is cross-posted to the OurVoteLive blog.)

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Human Rights and Internet Companies: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Agree to Principles

For almost two years, EFF has been a participant in negotiations between human rights groups, investors, academics and Internet companies -- including Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft -- aimed at improving how those businesses deal with free expression and privacy issues around the world.

Today, the results of that discussion have been announced. The Global Network Initiative is a set of principles on free expression and privacy that the companies have agreed to follow in all countries they do business within, together with a set of implementation guidelines and a skeleton for an independent watchdog body that will monitor companies for compliance with these principles.

Before now, Internet companies' first reaction to revelations of complicity in human rights abuses has been to deny that they can do anything at all. When Yahoo's involvement in the Shi Tao case in China was first revealed in 2005, Yahoo stated that it was obligated to "operate within the laws, regulations and customs" of countries.

The Global Network Initiative demonstrates that there is far more that companies can and will commit to do. They can train their employees to recognize requests that may violate international agreements. They can structure ways to evaluate requests and challenge them in the local courts. They can ensure that board-level executives are kept aware of potential human rights issues, and can acknowledge their responsibilities. They can build human rights requirements into contracts they sign with third-parties. They can, as they have done in this initiative, consult with their competitors, civil liberties experts, socially-conscious investment funds and academics to learn and improve how they behave in situations that might threaten the rights of users. The Initiative is a significant indication of the importance of accountability for better human rights practices online.

It's not a perfect set of documents. EFF continues to work in the Initiative, but we do have concerns with the limits of this initial agreement:

• There is no obligation to inform Internet users of the storage location of personal data, and from where it is accessible.
• There is no commitment to inform users when they hand over their information to agents of government and law enforcement.
• There is no binding requirement to develop privacy and anti-censorship technologies and include them in new products.
• GNI assessors are selected by the companies themselves from a list of neutral groups, and do not have untrammeled access to all relevant company documents.

When it comes to addressing their involvement in worldwide human rights abuses, the first step for Internet companies had been admitting that there is a problem. With the Global Network Initiative, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have gone further, and begun to embed human rights assessments into their own company structure. We hope many other companies will join them.

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EFF's New NSA Spying Shirts

A few weeks back, we produced a new graphic to accompany our new case against the government, Jewel v. NSA, challenging the Bush administration's illegal spying program. The graphic is a retooling of the NSA's logo, featuring a glowering eagle using his talons to illegally plug into the nation's telecommunications system — with the help of telecom giant AT&T.

By popular demand, we are now offering t-shirts featuring our NSA logo in an exclusive offer to members only. With a donation of $65 or more you can help us continue the fight against illegal spying and receive a shirt (as well as other premiums) in return. Your support makes our work possible! Thank you!

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Do You Need An Exemption from the DMCA?

Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office undertakes a rule-making to consider whether the DMCA's ban on circumventing technological protection measures (e.g., DRM and other "access control" restrictions) is interfering with noninfringing uses of copyrighted materials. The Copyright Office has announced that those interested in requesting a DMCA exemption for the period 2009-2012 must submit their proposals to the Copyright Office by December 2, 2008 (there will be an opportunity in February to support or oppose the proposals, but the proposals have to be made in December).

Do you think you might need a DMCA exemption? Before you answer, you should read the Copyright Office's final report in the 2006 rule-making carefully. As we pointed out in 2005, the Copyright Office has repeatedly dismissed any consumer-oriented fair uses, such as making backup copies of DVDs or video games, as well as requests for exemptions to enable copying DVDs to laptops and portable devices. The Copyright Office also rejected EFF's efforts to secure exemptions in 2003 to allow circumvention of DVD region coding by legitimate DVD owners, to skip "unskippable" DVD advertisements, and to access public domain materials on DVDs. All in all, we stand by our 2005 assessment that the DMCA rulemaking process is hopelessly broken when it comes to addressing noninfringing digital consumer fair uses.

However, the 2006 rule-making showed that other kinds of exemptions may be granted, where circumvention is necessary for noninfringing activities like classroom teaching (e.g., film professors using DVD clips), computer security research (e.g., regarding copy-protected CDs), archiving and preservation (e.g., preserving video games and multimedia software), maintaining obsolete systems (e.g., malfunctioning or obsolete "dongles" for software), and promoting interoperability (e.g., cell phone unlocking).

If you are engaged in noninfringing activities that have been tripped up by the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and would be interested in a DMCA exemption for 2009-2012, let us know by October 31. We've got some ideas of our own (including renewing the cell phone unlocking exemption for you iPhone unlockers!), but we're eager to hear from other user communities that may have been overlooked.

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Colbert on NSA Spying

In his Word of the Day commentary yesterday, Stephen Colbert put forward a ringing defense of the NSA's spying program. Responding to reports that NSA employees are routinely listening in on the personal calls of US soldiers and aid workers stationed abroad, Colbert reminds viewers that "it's a lot easier to listen to Americans, they speak English."

The clip is also available here.

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Robots for EFF: Artist Creates Robots and Monsters As a Benefit for EFF

The artist Joe Alterio has just announced a fantastic benefit that we heartily support. He is re-launching his project, Robots and Monsters: A Charitable Menagerie, trading original, custom-made art for donations to EFF!

Here's how it works: visit Joe's site, give him $50 along with three words or phrases to work from, and he'll send you an original work of art. EFF gets the proceeds, and Joe's adds a copy of the creation to his ever-growing menagerie of amazing creatures for everyone to enjoy.

Joe launched Robots and Monsters last year as a benefit for the SF AIDS Foundation. With the help of other artists, that project was so successful that it raised over $10,000. Now Joe is ready to support a new cause:

For almost 20 years, the EFF has been on the good side of 1st Amendment fights on the web, and considering that [Robots and Monsters] couldn't happen without this amazingly wonderful and scary tool that we all use now, we figure we owe them one.

Joe is planning to produce a limited number of originals for this project, so act quickly to get your original robot art to benefit EFF!

Thanks for the creative support, Joe!

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Government Files to Dismiss NSA Telecom Surveillance Cases

Late Friday night, the Government started the formal process for retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies sued by EFF and others for their involvement in the warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The immunity is a key part of the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act passed by Congress in July. EFF will be challenging the new law as unconstitutional and that challenge is set for a hearing before federal judge Vaughn Walker, along with the government's dismissal motion [PDF], on December 2, 2008. To support its attempt to shut the courthouse doors on plaintiffs, the Government filed a "certification" from Attorney General Mukasey. The key substance of the Government's submission was filed in secret with the court, but the Attorney General also filed a public certification [PDF]. In addition, the Government submitted some legislative history documents [PDF].

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EFF IP Attorney Wins (Another!) Award

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann just won a much-prized acknowledgment from Public Knowledge, a public interest group based in Washington, DC whose mission to promote innovation and protect consumer rights often complements our mission at EFF.

Public Knowledge each year hands out the IP3 Awards to highlight the work of individuals whose work contributes to the public interest in one of the three IP areas — Internet Protocol, Intellectual Property and Information Policy.

Surprise! Fred's IP3 Award is for his contribution to the world of Intellectual Property:

Von Lohmann was nominated for his work to advance the cause of fair use while protecting innovation. Von Lohmann has designed legal strategy for, and argued cases on behalf of, the cause of fair use of intellectual property before every level of Federal court. He is in the forefront of advocating new policies that reflect the protection of users and the reasonable balance between copyright and consumer rights. He will be given the award for contributions to Intellectual Property.

This isn't the first time Fred has gotten props for his brilliant work defending fair use, consumer rights, and articulating a Better Way Forward. He won a California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) award in 2003 and was recognized as a "SuperLawyer" in 2008. Go Fred!

PK will also be giving much deserved awards to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Free Press Plicy Director Ben Scott, and Public.Resource.org founder Carl Malamud.

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New RSS Feeds

EFF is making some changes to the site's RSS feeds. If you subscribe to EFF.org with RSS, you've probably been using either our Blog Feed or our Press Release Feed or our Action Alert Feed or some combination of those three. To simplify things, we've consolidated them into one place: The EFF Updates Feed.

We've also just relaunched the long-dormant Line Noise Podcast. Line Noise has two feeds for your favorite podcast aggregator, depending on your audio-codec of choice: MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. Check out our latest episode, in which EFF designer Hugh D'Andrade speaks with Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry about The Lost Art of Orphan Works.

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A Second Chance to See "Spying on the Home Front"

As Congress gears up to debate giving amnesty to telecoms involved in illegal spying, the terrific Frontline documentary "Spying on the Home Front" will be rebroadcast Tuesday on many PBS stations across the country. This program examines just how far the government has gone with its surveillance program, and features EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn discussing EFF's ongoing case against AT&T for its illegal collaboration with the NSA. AT&T whisleblower Mark Klein also tells his compelling story about his discovery of a "secret room" diverting AT&T network traffic to the NSA.

But our case is only part of the story. As Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald put it, the documentary "powerfully dramatizes the severity of privacy erosion at the hands of a federal government operating largely in the dark."

Check your local listings for times, or you can always watch the program on the Frontline website. Then tell lawmakers to stop the spying and to block amnesty for telecoms that broke the law.

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