Carrier IQ Drops Empty Legal Threat, Apologizes to Security Researcher | Hacker News Reader

Carrier IQ Drops Empty Legal Threat, Apologizes to Security Researcher

eff.org

74 pointswglb13 comments

Are there any reasons why I should not donate to EFF?

The only one I can think of is if you’re not in the US. The UK (for example) has the more locally focused Open Rights Group ( http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ ).

Problem is that these are often far less aggressive than the EFF. The EFF excels in the ability of spotting situations that are so obviously "wrong" that they make great stories.

Most European organizations unfortunately appear to me far less professional organized and more a bunch of activists who are lacking the firepower of EFFs legal and PR team.

True, but the EFF didn’t get involved in fight against the Digital Economy Act [1]. Local groups can effectively fight against local problems.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010

"most" ? Like which ones? Bits of Freedom seems pretty professional and organized from what I've seen.

Also what do you mean with "bunch of activists", well I can guess what you mean, but technically the EFF are activists just as well.

I contacted the EFF a while ago about their European links and they suggested me to get in touch with http://www.edri.org/.

Now taking a look at their member associations: http://www.edri.org/about/members Europe has a super fractioned structure of EFF alike associations. Sure, one could argue some "regional networks", "local strength" and "European situation" and I am sure most member associations are doing good work.

But with lawmaking increasingly trickling from the central European Union Administration to the state levels it is hard to say if this lose structures are providing enough counter balance to professional lobbying efforts.

And the EFF seems to me playing on a level playing field with strong industry/lobby organization by combining a top notch legal and public relations team.

Similarly, the Netherlands has Bits of Freedom https://bof.nl/ . They're doing some really good work on reporting data leaks and even are trying to get a law passed that would require companies to report their data leaks as they find them.

I'm glad for him that they apologised and dropped the action before it got too onerous for him.

I'm a bit confused about the legality of this software in the EU - does any data get sent outside the EU? Is it compliant with various EU countries' data protection laws? UK privacy campaigners might be interested, and want to take it up (if appropriate) with the ICO.

I believe it's installed by the carriers, so it's probably not used in EU.

It's too bad that this still won't help inform people about what an egregious invasion of privacy that this and other "metrics" of their usage of online services are.

By acquiescing Carrier iQ has made sure that the public will stop hearing about this, and the noise will die down until someone else discovers a further breach of trust and privacy.

The value of attention to peoples actions is demonstrated once again

"The world is a dangerous place to live not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" -- Edmund Burke (probably[1][2])

[1] http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html

[2] http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com