 Welcome to Affector from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is the audio edition of EFF's email newsletter geared towards keeping you on the bleeding edge of your digital rights. This is Affector, Volume 35, Issue 12, titled, Freeing the Law with Public Resource. This issue was published in September 2023, and I'm your host, Membership Advocate Christian Romero. Let's start with our top feature. Victory – EFF frees the law. Technical standards like fire and electrical codes develop by private organizations but incorporated into public law can be freely disseminated without any liability for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled. The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upholds the idea that our law belongs to all of us, and we should be able to find, read, and share them free of registration requirements, fees, and other roadblocks. It's a long-awaited victory for public.resource.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 by Open Records Advocate Karl Malamud of Helzburg, California, and represented in this case by EFF with co-counsel Fenwick and West and David Halperin. Now let's go through some EFF updates. First up, EFF urges appeals court to rehear case over Trump's ex-account. A federal appeals court undermined more than a century of First Amendment law by upholding a gag order that kept ex, formerly known as Twitter, from discussing the government's demand for Donald Trump's account data, EFF argued in a brief urging a rehearing. Next up, EFF to Michigan court. Government shouldn't be allowed to use a drone to spy on you without a warrant. Should the government have to get a warrant before using a drone to spy on your home and backyard? We think so. And in an amicus brief filed last Friday in Long Lake Township v. Maxon, we urged the Michigan Supreme Court to find that warrantless drone surveillance of a home is unconstitutional. We argue that the township's conduct was governed by and violated the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent section of the Michigan Constitution. EFF welcomes Erica Estrella and Yoshi Kono to its board of directors. EFF is honored to announce today that Erica Estrella, head of technology at Parkwood Entertainment and a leading voice for diversity and equity in tech, and University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Professor Tade Yoshi Yoshi Kono, a renowned security researcher and scholar, have joined EFF's board of directors. Here's our last EFF update. New Privacy Badger prevents Google from mangling more of your links and invading your privacy. We released a new version of Privacy Badger that updates how we fight link tracking across a number of Google products. With this update, Privacy Badger removes tracking links in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Image results. Privacy Badger now also removes tracking links added after scrolling through Google search results. Now let's go through some announcements. First up, we want you, U.S. federal employees, to stand for digital freedoms. It's that time of year again. U.S. federal employees and retirees can support the digital freedom movement through the Combined Federal Campaign, the largest and most successful annual charity campaign for U.S. government employees and retirees. Last year, 175 members of the Combined Federal Campaign community raised over $34,000 for EFF's lawyers, activists, and technologists fighting for digital freedoms online. But in a year with many threats popping up to our rights online, we need your support now more than ever. Next up, California Constitutional Privacy at 50, the power of state law and promoting racial justice in the digital age. EFF's Lee Tien will speak on a panel about California constitutional privacy, and Cindy Cohen will moderate a panel on fighting the public-private surveillance partnership at the Berkeley Technology Law Journal's fourth annual Technology and Racial Justice Symposium on Friday, October 27th at the Bancroft Hotel in Berkeley. The symposium hosted with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Coalition of Minorities in Technology Law, Privacy Law at Berkeley, and Felton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, will bring together leading academics and practitioners to explore the landscape of California's constitutional right to privacy at age 50, highlight how the right is currently used to promote racial justice and other social progress, and discuss new creative and intersectional uses of state constitutional rights to privacy to defend and promote justice in the digital age. Next up, TOR University Challenge. EFF has launched the TOR University Challenge, a campaign urging higher education institutions to support free, anonymous speech by running a TOR network relay. Universities answering this call to defend private access to an uncensored web will receive prizes while helping millions of people around the world and providing students and faculty a vital learning experience. Tell your alma mater to join the network today. Next up, New Watcher's T-Shirt. Don't miss out on our new member T-Shirt for 2023. Donate at the copper level or above to receive our new Watcher's T-Shirt. And now we can go through a few job openings. First up, Media Relations Specialist. EFF is hiring a Media Relations Specialist to work closely with the Media Relations Director to ensure that EFF's communications with news gatherings of all kinds is prompt, effective, and proactive. The Media Relations Specialist sometimes also writes and edits press releases and blog posts and helps everyone at EFF uncover press-friendly ways to communicate our work. Next up, Legislative Analyst. EFF is hiring a Legislative Analyst to help EFF oppose and or develop and support legislation affecting technology, innovation, and civil liberties by advising EFF on legislative strategy with policymakers at local, state, and federal level, maintaining relationships with key legislative offices by developing a bridge between EFF expertise and policymakers, building and working with coalitions, engaging with media, testifying on legislative panels on behalf of the organization to influence policy, drafting comments for agency rule makings, drafting and or commenting on legislative text, and drafting blog posts or other public-facing communications. You can learn more about each of these jobs by going to eff.org slash about slash opportunities. Now, let's go through some mini-links. This first one comes from ABC News slash Good Morning America. The Risks of Stalkerware. EFF's Eva Galperin helps Good Morning America's Becky Worley explore the risks of electronic surveillance applications which some parents use to monitor kids but others have used for malicious purposes. This next one comes from The Daily Beast. Here's why Arkansas's new anti-transparency law should piss you off. Under the guise of security concerns, Arkansas's Governor, Sarah Sanders, made a brash attempt to gut her state's public records law. And then an unexpectedly beautiful thing happened. EFF's barrel lipped in rights. Members of the public on the political left and right, in the media and in labor, and from all walks of life, united to assert their right to know. The bill that finally passed is still bad for transparency. It severely restricts materials on who travels with the Governor, how much it costs, and the activities of the Arkansas State Police. But it doesn't ravage citizens' rights as badly as the first version would have. That's thanks to the power of the people. Next up from The Washington Post. Fifth Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC, likely violated First Amendment. EFF filed a brief in July arguing that government input into social media platforms' decisions about user content raises serious First Amendment concerns, and the government must be held accountable for violations. But not all such communications are improper. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed and rolled back much of a trial court's injunction, an outcome EFF's David Green called a thousand times better. And lastly from the record, California enacts first-of-its-kind bill targeting data brokers. California lawmakers enacted unprecedented legislation allowing state residents to compel data brokers to delete their personal information with the push of a button. EFF was a proud supporter of the DELETE Act, and EFF's Haley Tukeyama said advocates hope other states looking to address data broker issues consider the DELETE Act as a template. And we've made it to the end. Thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, be sure to sign up for the email version of EFF, which includes links to in-depth coverage of these stories and more. You can see past issues and subscribe at EFF.org slash EFF. Before we end this issue of the newsletter, I want to let you know that EFF is a member supported nonprofit organization, and you can help us protect digital privacy, security, and free expression for everyone. Donate to EFF today and even grab a bit of gear by heading over to EFF.org slash EFF. You can become a member for as little as $25 or even sign up as a monthly or annual donor. Thanks for your support, and I hope you'll join us for the next issue of EFFECTOR.