 Welcome to Affector from the Electronic Friends Here Foundation. This is the audio edition of EFF's email newsletter geared towards keeping you on the bleeding edge of your digital rights. Check the show notes for links to all of our stories. This is Affector Volume 33, Issue 4, titled, Highest Court Hands Down a Series of Critical Rights Decisions. This issue was published on Thursday, July 8th, 2021, and I'm your host, member outreach assistant Christian Romero. Let's start with some top features. First up, Supreme Court says you can't sue the corporation that wrongly marked you a terrorist. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court barred the courthouse door to thousands of people who were wrongly marked as potential terrorists by credit giant TransUnion. The court's analysis of their standing, whether they were sufficiently injured to file a lawsuit, reflects a naive view of the increasingly powerful role that personal data and the private corporations that harvest and monetize it play in everyday life. It also threatens congressional efforts to protect our privacy and other intangible rights from predation by Facebook, Google, and other tech giants. Supreme Court narrows ability to hold U.S. corporations accountable for facilitating human rights abuses abroad. People around the world have been horrified at the role that technology companies like Cisco, Yahoo, and Sandvine have played in helping governments commit gross human rights abuses. That's why EFF has consistently called out technology companies and American companies in particular that allow their internet surveillance, censorship products, and services to be used as tools of repression and persecution rather than to uplift humanity. Yet, legal mechanisms to hold companies accountable for their roles in human rights violations are few and far between. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has further narrowed one mechanism, the Alien Tort Statue, ATS. We now call on Congress to fill the gaps where the court has failed to act. And for our last feature, Supreme Court upholds process to challenge bad patents. The Patent Office grants thousands of patents a year, including many that would be invalidated if a court considered them. Fortunately, there is a way to challenge these junk patents at the Patent Office rather than wasting the court's time and going through expensive litigation. Unsurprisingly, patent owners keep trying to convince the Supreme Court those post-grant challenges are unconstitutional. They failed again when the court held that the administrative patent judges who preside over post-grant reviews were constitutionally appointed. Next up, we've got some EFF updates. Nominations are open for the 2021 Pioneer Awards. Nominations are now open for the 2021 Pioneer Awards to be presented at EFF's 30th Annual Pioneer Award Ceremony. Established in 1992, the Pioneer Awards ceremony recognizes leaders extending freedom and innovation in the realm of technology. You could nominate the next winner today. Next up, the overlapping infrastructure of urban surveillance and how to fix it. The built environment of surveillance, in, over, and under our cities, makes an entwined problem that must be combated through entwined solutions. To make it easier to see, we've visualized it in a cross-section of the average city block. We've created downloadable, shareable graphics to show how the varying surveillance technologies and legal authorities overlap, how they disproportionately impact the lives of marginalized communities, and what tools we have at our disposal to halt or mitigate their harms. Decoding California's new digital vaccine records and potential dangers. The state of California recently released what it calls a digital COVID-19 vaccine record. It is part of that state's recent easing of public health rules on masking within businesses. California's new record is a QR code that contains the same information as in on our paper vaccine cards, including name and birth date. We all want to return to normal freedom of movement while keeping our community safe, but we have two concerns with this plan. An expanding category of software, apps, and devices is normalizing cradle-to-grave surveillance in more and more aspects of everyday life. At EFF, we call them disciplinary technologies. They typically show up in areas of life where surveillance is most accepted and where power imbalances are the norm, in our workplaces, our schools, and in our homes. We're working to craft solutions from demanding antivirus companies and app stores to recognize fireware more explicitly, pushing companies to design for abuse cases, and exposing the misuse of surveillance technology in our schools and in our streets. Setbacks in the FTC's anti-trust suit against Facebook show why we need the Access Act. After a marathon markup, a number of bills targeting big tech's size and power, including the Critical Access Act, were passed out of committee and now await vote by the entire House of Representatives. This week, decisions by a federal court tossing out both the Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust complaint against Facebook and a similar one brought by 48 state attorneys general underscore why we need those new laws. Maryland and Montana passed the nation's first laws restricting law enforcement access to genetic genealogy databases. Maryland and Montana recently passed laws requiring judicial authorization to search consumer DNA databases and criminal investigations. These are welcome and important restrictions on forensic genetic genealogy searching, FGGS, a law enforcement technique that has become increasingly common and impacts the genetic privacy of millions of Americans. Fifteen universities have formed a company that looks a lot like a patent troll. Imagine this. A limited liability company, also known as an LLC, is formed for the sole purpose of acquiring patents, including what are likely to be low quality patents of suspect validity. The LLC approaches high tech companies and demands licensing fees. If it doesn't get paid, the company will use contingency fee lawyers and a litigation finance firm to make sure that the licensing campaign doesn't have much in the way of upfront costs. This helps them leverage to extract settlements from companies that don't want to pay to defend the matter in court, even if a court might ultimately invalidate the patent if it reached the issue. That sounds an awful lot like a patent troll. A year of action in support of the black lead movement against police violence and racism. Black lives matter on the streets, black lives matter on the internet. A year ago, EFF's executive director Cindy Cohn shared these words in the EFF statement about the police killings of Breanna Taylor and George Floyd. While there is still an immeasurably long way to go before becoming a truly just society, EFF is inspired by this leaderful movement and humbled as we reflect on the ways in which we have been able to support its critical work. Ring changed how police request door camera footage. What it means and doesn't mean. Amazon Ring announced that it will change the way police can request footage from millions of doorbell cameras in communities across the country. Rather than the current system in which police can send automatic bulk email requests to individual ring users in an area of interest up to a square half mile, police will now publicly post their requests to Ring's accompanying neighbors app. But Ring's small reforms invite bigger questions. Next up, we've got some EFF announcements. Surveillance Self-Defense Workshop. On July 13th, 2021, at 3 p.m. Pacific Time, Restore the Fourth Minnesota, a local organization in the Electronic Frontier Alliance, not EFF, will host a panel to walk through the steps activists can take before, during, and after a protest that will help maximize their data security while still being effective. 87th Texas Legislative Session Roundup. On July 13th, 2021, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, EFF Austin, a local organization in the Electronic Frontier Alliance, not EFF, will host a roundup of several bills that have been passed during the 87th regular session of the Texas Legislature that touch upon the domains of technology, surveillance, personally identifying information and data, and digital civil liberties. EFF 30 Fireside Chat Founders Edition. Mark your calendars for Wednesday, July 28th, 2021, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. As an end to EFF's year-long celebration of our 30th anniversary, join us for a candid live discussion with some of our founders and early board members. EFF's Executive Director Cindy Cohn will be joined by Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapoor, John Gilmore, and Steve Wozniak to discuss a variety of topics from EFF's origin story and its role in digital rights to where EFF is as an organization today. Next, we've got a job opening. Associate Director of Institutional Support. EFF seeks an Associate Director of Institutional Support, who is an outstanding and experienced writer to assist with the institutional funding strategy and the development and prospecting of institutional funders, organizational members, and donors. And lastly, we've got some mini-links. First up from Phil Zimmerman.com, PGP marks 30th anniversary. In a quick look back over 30 years of pretty good privacy, PGP, its creator, Phil Zimmerman, says, the need for protecting our rights to private conversation has never been stronger. We agree. This next one's from NPR, When Worlds Collide. On June 4th, NPR re-eared an episode of This American Life, featuring EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, describing an experience that began at the boundary of two conventions. This next one's from the Chicago Sun Times, CPD launched secret drone program off the book's cache. Did you know that law enforcement can seize money from a person that has not been found guilty and never will be? This money often goes straight to funding surveillance technology. And for our last mini-link, Venmo will now let you hide your friend list because we found Biden's account. It took two and a half years and one national security incident, but Venmo did it folks. Users now have privacy settings to hide their friends list. Now, it should make privacy the default, not an option buried in the settings. And that's it. 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. See past issues and subscribe at EFF.org slash EFF. That's EFF.org slash EFF E-C-T-O-R. Before we end this issue of the newsletter, I just want to let you know that EFF is a member-supported non-profit 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 effect. That's EFF.org slash EFF E-C-T. And from now till July 20th, 2021, you can become a member for as little as $20 and grab some of our digital freedom analog postcards. Or you can choose to 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.