 Welcome to the audio version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Affector newsletter. This is a pilot project to give people a new way to learn about digital rights and offer more accessibility to our newsletter. This is the audio version of Affector Volume 32, Issue 25, published on August 25, 2020, and titled, Surveillance Shouldn't Be a Pre-Requisite for an Education. The editor of this issue is Activism Project Manager, Lindsay Oliver, and is read by me, Member Outreach Assistant, Christian Romero. Affector is a semi-weekly newsletter on digital rights issues. Inside, EFF summarizes and links to updates, announcements, blog posts, and news stories to help keep readers on the bleeding edge of digital rights issues. Remember, each of the following items has a link to a more detailed description that you can read in the online version of Affector. Let's get to it. Proctoring apps subject students to unnecessary surveillance. The use of proctoring apps, privacy-invasive software productions that quote-unquote watch students as they take tests or complete schoolwork, has skyrocketed. These apps make a seductive promise that schools can still rely on high-stakes tests where they have complete control of a student's work environment even during remote learning. But that promise comes with a huge catch. These apps violate student privacy, negatively impact some populations, and will likely never fully stop creative students from outsmarting the system. EFF launches searchable database of police agencies and the tech tools they use to spy on communities. In partnership with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, we've launched the largest-ever collection of searchable data on police use of surveillance technologies with a map and a database of over 5,300 data points. Learn about facial recognition, drones, license plate readers, and other devices law enforcement agencies are acquiring to spy on our communities. The new earnit bill still threatens encryption and free speech. The whole idea behind Section 230 is to make sure that you are responsible for your own speech online, not someone else's. Currently, if a state prosecutor wants to bring a criminal case related to something said or done online, or a private lawyer wants to sue, they must seek out the actual speaker in most cases. They can't just hawk a website owner into court because of a user's actions, but that will change if earnit passes. Once websites lose their Section 230 protections, they'll take drastic measures to mitigate their exposure, and that will limit free speech across the internet. Now, here are some EFF updates. Victory. EFF defends public's right to access court records about patent ownership. The public's right of access to court proceedings is well established as a legal principle, but it needs constant legal defending. In part, that's because private parties keep asking publicly funded courts to resolve their disputes in secret. As we and others have written before, this problem is especially great in patent cases when parties on opposite sides of a case often agree with each other to keep as much of the litigation as possible hidden from view. Report. The San Francisco Police Department conducted mass surveillance of protesters at the end of May and in early June using a downtown business district's camera network according to new records obtained by EFF. The records show that San Francisco Police Department received real-time access to hundreds of cameras as well as a data dump of camera footage amid the ongoing demonstrations against police violence. University app mandates are the wrong call. As students, parents, and schools prepare for the new school year, universities are considering ways to make returning to campuses safer. Some are even mandating that students install COVID-related technology on their personal devices, but this is the wrong call. EFF and 45 human rights and civil liberties groups condemn federal law enforcement actions against protesters in Portland. EFF joined dozens of other groups in a letter condemning the behavior of federal law enforcement agencies in Portland, Oregon. Despite the wishes of Portland officials, the federal government deployed law enforcement using the U.S. Marshals and Custom and Border Protection Officers. The federal government officially explained these actions as an effort to protect federal buildings, but it appears to be a materialized counter-insurgent effort to suppress protesters and the residents of Portland. It is past time for Twitter to end-to-end encrypt direct messages. A high-profile Twitter hack back in July put the risk of internal compromise in the spotlight. Attackers gained access to an internal admin tool at the company and used it to take over approximately 130 accounts. Twitter has access to users' direct messages or DMs, which are some of the most sensitive user data on the platform and are vulnerable to that hack's kind of internal compromise. That's because they are not end-to-end encrypted, but Twitter wouldn't have to worry about whether or not these attackers read or ex-filtrated DMs if it had end-to-end encrypted them like we've been asking Twitter to do for years. What really does and doesn't work for fair use in the DMCA, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held another in its year-long series of hearings on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, also known as the DMCA last month. The topic of this hearing was, how does the DMCA contemplate limitations and exceptions like fair use? We're glad Congress is asking the question. Without fair use, much of our common culture would be inaccessible, cornered off by copyright. Fair use creates breathing space for innovation and new creativity by allowing us to reuse and comment on existing works. But unfortunately, the answer to Congress's question is, not enough. Inside the invasive, secretive, bossware tracking workers, COVID-19 has pushed millions of people to work from home and a flock of companies offering software for tracking workers swooped in to pitch their products to employers across the country. Some vendors build their tools as automatic time tracking or workplace analytics software. Others market to companies concerned about data breaches or intellectual property theft. While aimed at helping employers, bossware puts workers' privacy and security at risk by logging every click and keystroke covertly gathering information for lawsuits and using other spying features that go far beyond what is necessary and proportionate to manage a workforce. And finally, we've got some mini-links for you. Face masks are breaking facial recognition. Good. This one's from The Verge. This article explores the ways in which face masks and face coverings increase the error rates in facial recognition systems. History shows that efforts to control infectious disease through policing and incarceration have undermined public health aims and exacerbated racial disparities. This one's from The Washington Post. No surprise, it will increase racial disparities in policing. History teaches us that when we rely on law enforcement to police public health, we will re-entrench inequality. The NSA is advising its employees to limit location services on smartphones. For once, we agree. From the Hill. The NSA, quote, rolled out guidance warning that location data from mobile and other internet-connected devices could pose a security threat for users if it were accessed by adversaries, end quote. Detecting cell-site simulators is good, but phone makers must do more at the device level to prevent attacks. This one's from TechCrunch. EFF's latest project helps detect cell-site simulators and determine whether a cell tower is legitimate or not. Did you protest recently? Your face might be in a government database from The Guardian, quote, in the United States, at least one in four law enforcement agencies are able to use facial recognition technology. The implications are troubling, end quote. And that's it. Thanks for listening. Remember, the items in this newsletter are links, and this is only a short summary. Please subscribe to EFFector at EFF.org slash EFFector for the full stories. You can also visit EFF.org for the latest EFF blog posts, press releases, events, and announcements. Lastly, EFF is a member-supported organization. We have been defending free speech online, fighting illegal surveillance, promoting the rights of digital innovators, and working to ensure that the rights and freedoms that we enjoy are enhanced rather than eroded as our use of technology grows. This year is EFF's 30th anniversary, and we need your support more than ever. Help us reach our 30th anniversary goal of 30,000 donors by visiting EFF.org slash join and signing up as a member today. You can become a member for only $25. Thanks for listening.