 Hi there. My name is Rainie Reitman. I'm the Activism Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And we are going to be having an on Facebook live conversation today about the election and what that means for digital rights. And I am joined by my colleague, Danny O'Brien. Danny? Hey. Hi. I'm so glad to have you here today. I'm glad to be here. So Danny has 20 years of experience in tech policy advocacy. And you used to be with the Committee to Protect Journalists. And then you were with EFF back when you were the only activist of EFF. Is that correct? I was an activist number one. There was an activist before me, but we were serial activists rather than parallel, which is what we have now. Yes. Much smaller team. And then you co-founded the Open Rights Group. Yeah, which is the UK's equivalent of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Fantastic. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you also coined the term life hack. Is that right? Yes. Talking of parallel, that was a slightly different parallel universe. But if you've ever been annoyed at the gradual dilution of the term hack from meaning a very specific sort of programming thing to just being able to tie your shoelaces correctly, that is my responsibility. I do apologize. And we all blame you for it. So last week, we had a very special event here in San Francisco. We had members come in and join us for a round of drinks. And we talked to them about how the recent election of Donald Trump impacts the future of digital rights and what that really means. We had a very candid conversation. And you led that conversation. And afterwards, I realized that it was frustrating that we hadn't had more people in the room. Right. I mean, the room was packed just to be clear. I mean, what we do is whenever anybody goes around the world at EFF, we try and organize Speakeasers, which is where members of EFF, people who have joined and are supporting us, can come and ask us questions face to face. And we plan to have one. We have regular ones here in our offices in San Francisco or nearby. And this one was something that we had planned anyway. I was planned to speak. And it turned out that there were far more questions about the election than perhaps people had anticipated before that night. So we talked a little bit about what our plans had been. And I'm hoping that we can share that, too. And we got a lot of feedback from the people in the audience. And I'm hoping that we can find some feedback from you, people at EFF, too. Yeah. So what we're going to be doing today is we're going to be having sort of going through some of the things that Danny had said during the Speakeasy. And the other thing we're going to be doing is we're actually going to invite people from the community to post their own questions. So if you have questions for Danny or for me, you can tweet them at us using the hashtag AskEFF. And then you can also post them on Facebook. And we have a friend off screen named Maggie. And Maggie is going to be pulling those questions. Thank you, Maggie. Maggie is waving. Maggie's going to be pulling those questions. She's going to be handing them to me on no cards. I've already got several. And we're going to be answering them on screen. And why don't we just get started? Yeah. I mean, usually we kind of do this little talking in the beginning to give people time to gather. But I'm looking through here. I think I see enough people. I think that's true. So I wanted to start off with the question that we started the Speak Easy Off with last week. And the exact question was it was submitted before the election results came in. And it was, does EFF have a specific game plan if he who shall not be named wins the election? And now we learn to say his name. So you have to say President-Elect, Donald J. Trump. I'm going to have to say that. Keep saying it. You've got four years of it. So yes, we did. We did have a plan. I'm not sure we would describe it as a specific plan, because one of the things that made this election period particularly unusual is that in a lot of ways it wasn't won through policy specifics. It's not as if the incoming president came to know the gist of policies about technology. That said, that we knew that the general pattern. And so far, that pattern has been absolutely reflected in what we've seen. The first part of that is that we knew if Donald Trump won the election, he would be coming in as an outsider and as a disruptive outsider. So he would be coming in with an entirely new set of people. But that was going to be a very small core of people. And one of the natures of the transition in the US election system is there's a huge number of seats to fill within the federal government. So it was inevitable that that was going to suck in a lot of people that we did know something about. The other thing about disruptive events in Washington that EFF has been very familiar with in our 30 years of existence is that many, many people who are already there see it as an opportunity to dust down laws and proposals that have failed previously, often failed because we've successfully fought them and brought them back again. If any of you were around and EFF members in 2001, the day after 9-11, you'll know that we were aware of what was going to be in the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act did not appear as hundreds of pages that were just written within that week. So one of the things that we're anticipating is a lot of people would take this opportunity and take advantage of the sort of fear, I think, is a fair description of it, an atmosphere of concern to push their existing agenda, or many of those agendas against us. The other thing I would say is that EFF has support from across the political spectrum. And in the United States, that means we have members, supporters, and activists from the Republican Party, from the Democrat Party, Democrat Democratic Party, from Libertarians and Greens. I think it would be fair to say, and we've been keeping a close eye on the team that's forming, that Mr. Trump is drawing from a part of the Republican Party that has not been friendly to civil liberties in this time. So we are expecting a tough fight, both in DC and elsewhere. I think that's very true. So if you're just joining us, we're having a conversation with EFF International Director, Danny O'Brien. And we're taking comments and questions so you can post to the Facebook group or you can tweet at us using the hashtag AskEFF. And I have a colleague here who will be actually handing me, oh, she has one right here, questions that we'll be asking Danny live here online. And so we really appreciate your support and your questions. And I think the second question I want to ask is, Danny, we're in this rough spot where we're looking at, as you said, some policies that are very unfriendly to the positions that EFF has been pushing for the last several years, for 20-plus years. What do you think EFF can even do about some of these things? So I think that's a fair question. And I think I know talking to people, I mean, that's what people ask about themselves. And I know speaking to the many organizations that make up the sort of digital rights community now that they're asking themselves. I think there are a couple of things that are interesting about this. One is that if you think it's bad where you are, if you're concerned or confused about what's going on, just imagine what it's like in DC right now. So a lot of people, a lot of our colleagues had some expectation, a reasonable expectation perhaps, that this transition would move to the Clinton administration. They're now faced with a situation where there's a bunch of new people they might not necessarily have contacts with. And two of the parts of government, and now three, really, are now in a very different place. So you have a new presidency with a lot of unknown faces and a lot of known faces too. So just to give you an example of what we're facing, I was looking through the transition team list. And one name that caught my eye was Marsha Blackburn. And we dealt with Marsha before. Marsha proposed way back an amendment that would actually expand the federal government's powers to prevent community mesh networks and municipal Wi-Fi alternatives, municipal network alternatives. And so that was like an expansion of government, which is not something that we're used to in sort of a Republican frame of mind. So Marsha's also spoken out very strongly against net neutrality. Jeff Eisenbach, who's the transition team's leader of tech policy, is another strong speaker against net neutrality. He headed up the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which I think is fair to say, and I think they would agree with me, the folks there, in some ways was the diametric opposite of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's sort of like, if you imagine the EFF logo, and it had a little goatee and a sash on it, that would be the Progress and Freedom Foundation. And these are the people that are going to be leading the transition team. So very few people have contact. So where does that leave EFF? Well, I think one of the things that's important to realize is that it leaves us where we are now, which is San Francisco. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has not been a Washington DC shop for many, many years now, for almost 20 years. We left DC partly because we saw strengths in other ways of doing things. The way that EFF is organized, for those of you who don't know, is we sort of form a pyramid of power that makes it sound like it's a cult. So those three things are technology. We have technologists. We use the law and we use activism. And just to explain how we'll use those capabilities in the upcoming years. So law is a really important one. If you think of the setup that we have now, where the Republican Party is running, has majorities in both Congress and Senate, and the White House. In times like that, it's traditionally the judiciary that the burden falls on to rein back the power of the executive. Now, I know that a lot of people are concerned on the evil side of the fence about the Supreme Court. But of course, the judiciary in the United States is a huge, huge beast. And it's distributed. And that's what's really important. We have different circuits, which come to different decisions. And EFF fights in all of those circuits. We're very used to challenging executive power through the courts. Our great colleagues who we work with a lot, the ACLU, led their front page with, see you in court, Mr. Trump. And that's definitely something that we can imagine ourselves doing. We fought against the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration in the courts, and we're going to fight Mr. Trump. The other thing that's worth saying is that for those of you who aren't local to California, you probably have missed this. But the Californian legislature and executive themselves have formed a very strongly oppositional force to Donald Trump's administration immediately. There was a very strongly worded letter from the joint leaders of the legislature. And we've had a lot of experience and a lot of wins here in California. So I think one of our biggest legislative wins in the last year was, I think, called CalECPA. And CalECPA was a California and a state level attempt to fill in some of the civil liberties holes in the United States' federal electronic communications protections. And that was great because by passing a law in California, we also were able to throw up a protective shield across the entire world. Because the law, as it applies in California, is the law that applies to Apple. It's the law that applies to Facebook. And it law that applies to Google. So that means that now, when government officials from the United States want to get information from those companies, they have to follow CalECPA. So I imagine that we're also going to spend some time in the California courts, in the California legislature, and across the rest of the United States. Activism is another important part of our role. And actually, I happen to have with me the director of activism at the Electronic Freedom Frontier Foundation. And that is. I am the activism director here. So maybe I should take that part. Yeah, go ahead. Go for that. So Danny was describing, for those of you just joining, Danny was sort of talking about, well, what's EFF's larger strategy on these issues? And we are taking questions, by the way. If you haven't, you can tweet at us using the hashtag AskEFF. And you can post comments here on Facebook. And so we're talking about these three different prongs that we use to tackle problems. And we just went through how we use the court systems to enforce our rights and to protect digital rights. And another really important component of that is activism, advocacy. And I'm very honored to be able to work on activism for EFF. And what we really try to do is create a framework so that people, everyday people across the world, can do something positive to enforce their rights, to protect their rights. And we've done a lot of creative actions and seen a lot of incredible results. I mean, the obvious one, the one that is most talked about to this day is our incredible SOPA blackout, which we participated in and helped to organize and bring together. But we've also had incredible successes, blocking bills in Congress and passing very positive legislation on the federal level and on the state level. And so much of that is thanks to the incredible efforts of everyday supporters who are willing to pick up the phone and make a phone call, sign a petition, or tweet at their member of Congress. But actually, we're seeing even more than that now, which is we're seeing people willing to go and show up at a town hall. And let me just say, there is nothing as impactful as showing up at a town hall and asking a question to an elected official late. I have heard from staffers who say, we throw a town hall in our home districts, and we'll have only 50 people show up. And only a few of them will want to ask questions. So literally, just taking one evening out of your year and going to one of these town hall events can have a huge impact. And in addition to that, we also see people having an enormous impact by pushing for change positively within their companies. A lot of people who are EFF supporters are also working at some of these tech companies that are making major decisions about how they collect and deal with data. And there's an important role that their own employees can play in pushing for the right thing. But the main thing is that we try to, whatever the threat is upon us, whatever the problem is we're facing, whatever the opportunity is, we try to let you know what the most effective, most impactful thing is by telling you through our mailing list. So you can sign up through our mailing list and also become a card-carrying donor if you'd like. So I'm going to remind people that we are taking questions and then I'm also going to remind both myself and Danny, they want us to talk louder. I hear you. We'll talk a little bit louder. And then shall I take a little bit of a next? So we did two wings of this and I want to actually cover something else. So a lot of what we've been talking about here are perhaps the traditional methods that we've used in the past. And I know that a lot of people are concerned that this may not be an ordinary transition and this may not be an ordinary government. So as Rainey explained, I'm the international director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and I think it was somewhat significant that the first people who sent me messages during this election were from members of the international community. And EFF works in Turkey, we work in Russia, we work in the edges of Syria, we support people who are targeted in those countries and I was getting messages of support and solidarity. And I think that there are many people who are concerned that there's potentially a risk here, that if you have the Congress and the Senate and the executive dominated by one force, that we've essentially got, as EFF and many others have explained for the last few years, a huge surveillance apparatus within that executive. And the restraint of that surveillance apparatus is held in almost entirely by internal regulations. There's very little oversight and there's very little sort of external controls. And a lot of people who've opposed Trump are concerned that those boundaries won't hold and they're worried about what happens with the administration that expands the surveillance network and then applies it domestically. We're aware of those concerns and we hear them and I think the message that I wanna say to people who are concerned about that, that in many ways this isn't a surprise or something new to us, this is really what EFF was built for. This is what we've been preparing for since 1989. We've been trying to warn the world about the expansion of surveillance in the use of technology by a powerful executive. We've documented it and spelled out the consequences of that from everywhere from Kazakhstan to Ethiopia. We've analyzed the use of government surveillance in that way and we've attempted to protect vulnerable groups around the world. And we'll continue to do that internationally and domestically and the final part of our triangle is one of the ways that we do this. I think most of you probably know that here at EFF we've built tools like HTTPS everywhere, like let's encrypt to increase the level of encryption, like privacy badger to restrict the amount of tracking that goes on. We funded TOR in its early years and I think one of the things that people have to bear in mind is that a lot of the privacy enhancing tools that people use now to protect themselves are actually US government funded and that government funding may change or vanish. So part of the reorientation that we're doing here at the Electronic Frontier Foundation is to rededicate our efforts to providing technology as a final backstop. I think there are two parts of that. One is building tools, teaching people how to use those tools and reaching out to technologists in our community to support those tools, to send in bug reports if you can and send us a patch on GitHub. But also if you're working in companies, the message that we have for companies is you've got to encrypt now, you've got to delete your logs now and you've got to start resisting. You've got to start resisting any expansion of government intrusions into the vast honeypot of data that Silicon Valley companies have collected that we've spent 20 years warning could easily be used by a government. Now we have given that warning to every administration and to every voter for the last 30 years. If you're feeling it now, we understand and we just want to make it clear that we'll transport and fight against any eventuality using the law, using activism and using technology. Danny, that reminds me, you mentioned a lot of these tools are many of the tools we rely on to protect our privacy online are receiving some funding from government and I think it's really important that people recognize that EFF does not take any government funding. EFF relies on individual donors to continue our work, to fight in the courts, to build technology and to engage in activism and advocacy. So I'm gonna ask my colleague, Maggie who has handed me a stack of questions to please if you could post the donation link for EFF into the chat so that anybody who's online now if you care about these issues, if you are worried about the future of the open web, if you believe in what EFF is trying to do please make a donation. We can't do this work without you and it means the world to us. And now, as I said, I'm Rainie Reitman and this is Danny O'Brien for People Just Joining and I am going to dive into some of these questions. You can join the conversation by posting to the Facebook feed or by tweeting at us using the hashtag Ask EFF. So Danny, I'm getting, and I throw this one at you, I'm getting a lot of questions about net neutrality. What does the future of net neutrality look like under a president Trump? Long pan over to be, it's not good. So I think earlier on in this live chat, we talked a little bit about some of the people that we've seen in the joining the transition team. And when I was talking to somebody in DC who works on these issues to paraphrase them, they said, this is a list of people who either I don't know or wish I'd never met. And the people that we do recognize are people who have pretty set their sail pretty hard against net neutrality. It's not the hugest of issues, it's not the most partisan of issues. So in many ways, that's a real shame. I think that you would think that this would be an administration that could recognize the importance of bringing out voices that are otherwise unheard in the mainstream media and protect and defend their ability to communicate freely online. That's not the messaging that we're seeing. And I think the other thing that's important to note about net neutrality, at least in the US, is this is something that has to be proactively enforced by regulators. It's not something that the government can step back. It's a regulation that needs to be enforced. So even if the net neutrality was a neutral issue, simply by paying less attention to it, this administration could easily let it fall. I'm trying, as you probably noticed, to put as much optimism into this conversation as I can. But I have to say that here and in our communities, one of the things that we're most concerned about is net neutrality. I think we're gonna, we've taken two steps back on that. We're gonna have to really fight hard. And maybe I can follow up. We're getting, I've gotten two questions already about an issue that I know is quite dear to your heart, which is the Snooper's Charter, the Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK, which it just passed this week. And so I'd appreciate it if you could, and I know you've been following this for years, and you may have a temptation to spend the next 20 minutes explaining it. I take your hint, Rainie, you sat with me in bars about this. So speaking personally, this has not been the greatest week for me. As you may have noticed that I'm British and I have co-found the Open Rights Group, which is one of the groups with Privacy International and a squadron of people who fought a bill called the Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK. Partly as a result of Brexit and a lot of the disruption within the United Kingdom, that passed with very few amendments. We fought it pretty hard. EFF actually supplied some amendments to try and advise those fighting it in the UK Parliament. And I think the most important thing to bear in mind here, because I don't know how many of you are actually British, is that the Investigatory Powers Bill is the first attempt after Snowden to expand, not contract or restrain the state surveillance system, but to actually expand and justify it. What that means is if you see new laws being proposed, if the tack that the Trump administration takes is the tack that we saw after 9-11 of saying that we're in a national security emergency and we need more powers, it's gonna be reflected, they're gonna take it from IPB. And Rainey, I apologize for ranting about this. The things to watch out for, and this is if you're a technologist in the companies as well, the things to look out for is the Investigatory Powers Bill enables and empowers the government to reach out and hack devices. So basically it gives them a carte blanche, not only in the intelligence services, but also law enforcement to break into and hack into computers and mobile devices and turn them into surveillance tools. This is something that we were fighting with rule 41 in the United States and we're gonna see an even bigger move, I think, to widen that power. The other part of it that we're really concerned about and Silicon Valley really and any other technology company has to fight terribly hard to beat is an ability to compel technologists, individual technologists within these companies to obey commands from law enforcement in the government to insert spyware or bend or control their own technology to conduct surveillance. If you look in the Investigatory Power Bill, it's called the somewhat Orwellian term of interference, equipment interference. It's what the FBI was asking Apple to do. One of the few lines that we've seen from Mr. Trump is Mr. Trump was very pro FBI and very anti-Apple in that line and that's the line that I think technologists and activists have to protect against. So we have some more questions. I have so many questions coming in and I actually think this is a great discussion but I wanna get to as many of these as possible and I'll do that one next. If you're just joining, I'm Rainie Reitman. I'm the Activism Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'm joined with Danny O'Brien who is our International Director and we are talking about digital rights in the next few years and what that looks like under a Trump administration and you can join the conversation by simply leaving a question down below. My colleague Maggie is off screen and she's handing me questions as they come in and you can also tweet at us using the hashtag AskEFF. So the next one, and I'm getting a lot of versions of this so I'm gonna put this up here. Should we install some form of PGP on everything quickly and Danny, maybe we should just start there. I assume there are some folks who are listening to this who simply don't know what PGP is so let's start right there and then we'll explain what is the right technical solution going forward. I hope you're not asking me to extract people on how to install PGP. Okay, good. If you could just do that real quick. Sure, sure, we've got three hours or so. So this is definitely something that we've seen a lot of questions about. PGP just for those of you who perhaps haven't been around for 30 years. PGP was pretty good privacy. It's a piece of software that uses strong encryption which is a technology, a way of protecting communications even from very large governments with very powerful surveillance abilities. It's the, public encryption is the very heart of how you can communicate on the internet and not only protect your information as it passes through the internet from criminals and other parties that you wouldn't wanna see your most private communications. It's also a way of protecting yourself from the government and we've had a lot of queries from people who are now, I would describe them as scared about the new administration and then wondering if they should do that. Going back to the triangle that we talked about earlier. The way to fight the invasion of your privacy by a government, by a state that you're living under is you use all three and I'm the international director so we work in places with autocratic regimes or repressive regimes and that triangle still holds even if you're in the worst possible situations. You still try to fight within the system with the law. You still try to publicize what's going on but you do also use technology. So what we're doing at EFF is this. We've always conducted trainings and spread information about how to use these tools because we see these tools as a vital part of civil liberties and protecting human rights. So we've always taught people about it if you go to a URL at our surveillance self defense site maybe I'll just ask Maggie. Maggie's off site. She's helping us out. Thank you, Maggie, for doing this. I realize this is not typically part of the job of being the HR director for EFF but she's been a real champion. If you could actually just post the link to our, it's actually an amazing resource, surveillance self defense. Do you wanna explain what it is? Sure, surveillance self defense. I work on the international side and we built surveillance self defense to help people in repressive environments protect their communications. That's why it's actually in 11 languages. But we've also tried to build it for people who are the most vulnerable people in any society. And it gives you guides on how to use a signal which a lot of people are switching to. I've noticed from the endless notifications from my signal plan. It also explains more importantly not just using these tools but how to think about your risk assessment, how to do what we call threat modeling which is to say, okay realistically, my threat model's changed. I'm now more worried about my own government than I am cyber criminals. How should that change how I protect information? How does it change how I talk to other people? Because you also have to think about the privacy of other people. I think one of the things that we've seen that's been most drastic is people concerned for people in their family. They say, well, look, I'll be okay. I've got a good job, I'm white, I'm relatively in a relatively good position but I have friends and family who I'm worried about. Well, you should think about them and you should think, if you're smart enough and savvy enough to be tuning into a Facebook Live feed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I think you're the person that those people are going to turn to for advice. So go to Surveillance Self-Defense, read about what you can do, think about how you can teach that to other people and we're going to do two things. We update Surveillance Self-Defense on a fortnightly basis every two weeks. Is fortnightly a weird Englishism? It's not something we say here. Okay, every 14 days we update it but we update it for two weeks. Every farthing or two. So we update it fairly regularly but the core stays the same and we're going to speed up that updating. We're going to bring in some new tools. We're going to bring back the secure messaging advice that we've done in the past and we're also increasing training. So we do digital security training and we're going to up our level of training. So if you're interested in that, do contact us. If we can't give you in your community training, we can try and find someone who can and we're also going to increase the amount of material that is specific for that training and we're specifically targeting vulnerable communities. I know people, the people who are feeling most worried in this environment right now the United States Latino community, the Muslim community, Arab American community and I would say many activists and finding journalists. So my background is as I've trained journalists all around the world in digital security at the committee to protect journalists, we work closely with other organizations and we'll continue building tools and helping people. So I want to get through a couple more of these questions. Maybe just a pretty quick one. The question was, will he pardon Edward Snowden? I'm guessing, I'm not sure this question is about Donald Trump, I suspect it's not. I suspect it might be, well, perhaps it is. So in which sense? I don't think we have any particular insight here. There's a big campaign going on and we're not before the election to encourage the outgoing president, President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden. President-elect Trump has gone on the record, I think, in saying that he doesn't feel that Mr. Snowden should be pardoned. I think the big issue here, though, looking forward and I know that Ed Snowden would say always look at the bigger picture. I think the biggest worry we have is the attitude to whistleblowers and I think one of the things that most concerns us is that President Trump doesn't start from scratch here. President Trump is picking up an executive that was defined by the policies of President Obama and before him President Bush and those policies have increasingly expanded the surveillance state and clamped down on whistleblowers. President Obama's actually been one of the worst presidents in targeting whistleblowers. So our concern really is not only the chances of setting a precedent with Mr. Snowden but also what new whistleblowers are gonna have to face in this new administration. I think that's true. And so I wanna get to a couple more of these questions. If you're just joining, I'm Rainie Reitman. I'm the Activism Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'm talking with hosting over here next to my office. I'm hosting Danny O'Brien, our International Director and we're trying to recreate the teaching that we had last Friday here in San Francisco. And you can join the conversation just by posting questions and we'll try to answer as many as we can and also by tweeting at us using the hashtag askeff. So the one I'm getting the most of, the question that a lot of people are sending are a combination of, how can I volunteer? And another one said, what are the most effective ways for people who aren't technologists to protect our digital rights here and around the world after the election? Is that one for you? Do you want me to talk to that one? Yeah, I mean, I can talk, perhaps I can talk globally and you can talk. Okay, well let me throw some options out there. So we ask ourselves all the time, what's the most effective thing that you can do? And EFF, we have an activism team where we write and we educate and we always try to offer people, if there is a way for you to take action among something that it can make a difference, we'll ask you to speak out and we'll tell you what that would be. And we have had incredible results from that. I was speaking with a California staffer who said, if we even get five phone calls on an issue to a district office, this is a state legislator, it will make a difference if we get those phone calls all in the same day. And so something as small as five phone calls to one office in a day can actually impact how legislators see these things. I think that we talked earlier and we have it listed in the comments about our tool surveillance self-defense. This is an opportunity to start spreading the word about these technology tools that we use to protect ourselves and to start taking action to spread the word about them. It's also an opportunity for you to start organizing in your own communities. I'm gonna ask my colleague, Maggie, to post a link to the Electronic Frontier Alliance. The Alliance is grassroots organizations starting in home communities. You might have one nearby or you might not have one nearby and you might wanna start one nearby. And we give you tools to start organizing with your friends and neighbors, to educate and inspire people, to care about digital rights and speak out when our rights are threatened. We are trying to not just change a particular bill but to grow a movement. We are trying to create a new generation of activists willing to fight for the future of freedom online and we're gonna need your help to do it. So please, this is your fight as well as our fight and we need you to take action. I'll also put in a plug for we just launched a new version of the EFF mobile app, which will give you a notification on your phone if we have a dire need for you to speak out immediately. Please consider downloading that and I'm also gonna ask Maggie to post a link to that in the comments down below. And you wanna talk about globally. Yeah, so as I said earlier, I'm the International Director and I've had a lot of queries. What goes on in America is of huge concern to the rest of the world and it can be sometimes a little frustrating. I know having watched many American elections from the other side of the Atlantic, you feel that you don't have any power. So I wanna talk a little bit about how EFF is going to reorientate our international work. For many years, I think one of the prongs of what we've done at EFF is try to capacity build, to try and encourage and give support and advice to digital rights groups in other countries. And that's been fantastic. I really talked about the movement of the Electronic Frontier Alliance, but there's also a global movement about digital rights going on. I'm taking an executive action here of changing our orientation a little bit to protecting the rest of the world. I think one of the things that people are worried in this time of transition is what the United States might be doing in outside the United States. And so we've been in this place before. In the 90s, in the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration attempted to export some of the worst copyright laws of the United States to the rest of the world through trade agreements and through lobbying. Under the Obama administration, we saw the NSA surveillance program expand and target billions, literally billions of people around the world. Well, we're going to spend our time here in the United States working harder to protect the rest of the world. But there's a flip side to that. And that's one of the reasons why it's so good we have a global digital rights network now. And that may well be that some of the most effective pressure on an expansive and imperial sort of executive is from other countries. We've seen, for instance, that the lawsuits of Mac Shrems in Europe have had really profound sort of effect and made it really a challenge to... What they've done is they've linked the surveillance problem to an economic issue. And I really think that one of the things that other activists in other countries can do is to prevent the normalization of the sort of level of surveillance that we've seen come out of the United States and push back. And we're depending on you here. The final thing that you can do around the world and in the United States, and it may not feel like it's a form of action, is to donate to the Atronic Frontier Foundation. So, and we take all currencies, I think actually our donation person will come. No, we take currency and we take Bitcoin. We do. And we already have posted in the links on the Facebook chat how you can... We have a special donation page that you can make a donation. And I'll just echo what Danny said that we can only get by thanks to the generosity of people who believe in what we're trying to do. And if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be able to continue this important work. So I'm getting a lot of questions now. Again, you can tweet your questions using the hashtag AskEFF or you can post them on Facebook. What about corporate spying? What do we think about, and I have a couple different versions of this, but what do we think about the relationship between companies and the government and about the impact of corporations collecting data and then how that can end up resulting in data flowing to the governments? Do you wanna kind of talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I can touch that. Public and private sector, and maybe I'll jump in if I... Yeah, so I mean, again, I've said before that people have been saying, are you prepared for the way things might change in the next four years? And our response has been, in a lot of ways, we've been preparing for moments like this since the beginning of the organization. Every conversation that we ever have with the companies here in the United States, here in California has been, you are building a honeypot. You are building a honeypot of information, and the more information you collect, the more tempted you will be to misuse this data for other people to break into your systems and use this data, and most importantly, a government to come in and use this data. And frequently, the response we've had is, well, don't worry, we're good people. And the response is, well, when we work with government, we have a relationship with them, and don't worry, the information that we're sharing, we're good guardians of your data. Well, I think a lot of people are rethinking that outlook, and I think they should. I think that perhaps this election has given some people here an opportunity to think about what happens in the worst case scenario, what happens when a policy is pursued against their family and friends, and they're the people who have the data that would allow that policy to be executed in a way that they really don't want. So we are doing what we've always done, which is to actively reach out to technologists and the leadership in companies that collect this enormous amount of truly damaging amounts of personal information that would be a surveillance state's dream to have access to, and we're encouraging them not only to continue to resist, as many of them try and successfully do, resist the government's access to that data, but be more proactive, encrypt data when it's at rest so that not only can attackers not get that data, but no one can ask them to unlock that data. Delete data when you no longer need it, and give that deletion of data under the control of users. So when users decide they no longer need, should have that data that is no longer safe in your hands, that data vanishes and that they know that data vanishes, and once again resist, resist through the courts, resist by building technology, and resist by joining us in activism to prevent the worst excesses of a draconian or autocratic presidency. Well, I have to echo that. I think that we've got to look to take a really hard look at the policies of tech companies in the coming years, but especially right now there are things being discussed. There are proposals that were made on the campaign trail that I don't think any of us know how much of that is going to play out, but to the extent that there is going to be mass deportations to the extent that we are going to see efforts to stifle freedom of speech, and to the extent that we're going to see attempts to put people in databases based on their religious beliefs, I know the first target is going to be tech companies, and so because they have such vast quantities of data, so I agree with you on that one. So, I mean, another thing to do is that, you know, ever the contrarian we are, I mean, we spent, when President Obama came into power, we spent a lot of time talking to folks who were very optimistic and hopeful about that administration, saying even if you are supporting your president at this time, don't let this executive, don't fall into overconfidence, don't let this presidency and your impatience to execute what you wanted that president to achieve, tempt you into broadening executive powers, increasing that presidency's access to personal data, increasing the surveillance state, because you won't like it when those powers are picked up and used by the next administration to come along. Now, I'm going to say I told you so, but, but, but, but... Here we are. We totally understand that people now are a little more realistic about that, but it's now time for us to be annoying to those of you who may be supporting this administration. Don't think just because you've come in on a disruptive agenda that others have ignored for years and that you think you might only have this small window of opportunity to achieve. Don't think it's a good idea to expand or weaken the safeguards or oversight, because it's four years, you don't know what's going to happen in four years and you really don't want the next administration to walk into an expansive and imperial presidential power. So I just, I think I want to ask maybe one more question. I realized we've been going a while. And so how about one more question just to, and then we'll have sort of a, whatever you would like to say to wrap up, but this was a fun one that came in, is surveillance a good idea right now? And the comments are actually mentioned, should everybody be wearing bodycams in case they want to surveil the surveillers? So surveillance, for those of you who don't know, it's S-O-U-S as in sous vide cooking. So surveillance is the idea of watching the watchers. So you have surveillance and one of the ways to combat surveillance is you film what they're doing, you document what's going on and that gives you a record if that force gets abusive. Now, I mean, I'm not sure this is an official EFF position, but we talk about this actually, I was talking with our executive director about this earlier today and we were talking about David Brinn's work on this. And I mean, our position is that that's a great idea. Transparency is very important, but the asymmetry is always very difficult, right? That you can't simply go, you can use a body cam, but we have access to everybody's phone data or geolocation data and we can pull you in at any point we want. What I would say is that, again, talking about our triangle of tech lore and activism, I think that you should sure use that technology if you want, be cautious because when we've investigated body cameras even for lore enforcement, one of the things you have to consider is you're invading the privacy of other people, right? If you're collecting information and what you think is power, you're also catching other people, so be cautious about that. But on the legal side of things and one of the things that EFF is gonna be spending a lot to do is I think one of our first acts on January the 20th will be to send off a barrage of Freedom of Information Act requests. We're going to attempt to hold government to account and fight for transparency. And I think that's the kind of surveillance and if you do see anything or there's something that you're concerned about that you see in your environment, write to us, let us know. So many of our court cases and victories have come from somebody contacting us about something that they've seen. This is eerily like if you see something, say something, but maybe that's what surveillance is in these situations. Yeah. So I realized that we didn't want this to go too long and I have a lot more questions here, so perhaps we can do another round of this. Maybe we'll investigate other platforms other than Facebook. I know not everybody was thrilled with this, but this was a... Jitsie. Jitsie. Yeah, we've done some Jitsie calls in the past with mixed results. So we're always experimenting and this was an experiment for us and we thank you for joining us and I want to just end and I'll kick it over for you to give a couple closing remarks or whatever, but I just, I want to say a special thank you to the 26,000 people who are currently members of EFF. Thank you, we can't do this work without you and it means the world to us and we're gonna keep fighting for you and for everybody who uses technology. This is our battle and the next four years might be tough but it's gonna be some of the most important work we ever do in our lives. So thank you for that and that is a club that anybody can join so you can feel free to make a donation and we can have maybe this time next year a heck of a lot more people that we're thanking and Danny, do you just wanna close up with a couple thoughts? I think one of the reasons we did this is because we know that at least for a very large part of our community they're worried about what they're gonna see. This was a surprise to them and they're concerned. And one of the things I really wanted to spell out to people is that the best way to protect your rights is to exercise those rights. And even though we've just posted on our blog, Deep Links, ways to protect yourself if you're protesting or you want to speak up. And one of the things that we really, wherever you are in the political spectrum the most important thing to do is sure protect yourself. Sure take steps to protect your privacy but don't be scared to exercise those rights. And particularly if you sit and conduct the risk analysis that I hope people will do you realize that you're probably not the person who's going to be the first target in the coming future, right? It's a responsibility for all of us to speak up not only for our own rights and what we take for granted but when we see the rights of others being targeted. So keep speaking up, keep exercising in the United States your First Amendment rights and we'll keep protecting those rights here at the FF.