Welcome to the Cyberethics podcast. I am joined today by a very special guest. Rory Mer is the
Associate Director of Community Organizing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They coordinate
EFF's support of local advocacy groups primarily through the grassroots information sharing network,
the Electronic Frontier Alliance. Prior to joining the EFF, Rory studied activist pedagogy
and adolescent use of social media as a doctoral student of psychology. As a student, instructor,
and researcher, they advocated for student and worker privacy, open science, and open education on
campus. They were also active in several New York City community projects like the CYPR Collective,
an EFA member group focused on accessible digital security trainings. Welcome, Rory.
Thanks so much for having me. Well, it's our pleasure. So to get started, I'd like you to just
give us a brief history of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and some examples of the
kinds of projects that they work on. Sure. So, yeah, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a
non-profit civil liberty law firm that has about 33 years of history behind it and has had a lot
of different iterations in that time. It started off as a project answering new infringements on
folks' digital rights. It's most famously kicking off with the Secret Service rating Steve Jackson
Games, a small game maker in Texas under suspicion of file sharing and whatnot.
And our founders basically identified this as, hey, this is a clear infringement, but it's not
getting those same legal protections because it's in the digital space and basically rallied support
for legal representation. EFF's early days was really meant to be a foundation. It's no longer
really a foundation for getting legal support to folks that are facing those sort of issues.
And then it kind of iterated into, well, we'll have some hired lawyers that can build the expertise
in that area and be also a law firm. And then that was the case for a while, tried to have
chapter organizations. So there's a few other Electronic Frontier locals still around. But then
it really came at a point in the late '90s of like, we need to actually advocate for better
legislation, not just fight it in the courts, even though courts are really important to the
lawyers. But if you have better legislation, you can make better legal arguments. And that's
when it really expanded into what it is today. Essentially, a civil liberties defending lobbying
group that wants to make sure that our civil rights apply even when a computer is involved,
which is often treated as this like magical, like you can infringe on people's rights when
there's a computer. And so yeah, and we've been doing that since and have been growing really
rapidly more recently in light of the growing threats. And our mission is to make sure that
technology works for everyone in the world and defend privacy innovation. And yeah,
digital technology is now touching every subject. Our scope has definitely expanded quite a bit
in that time as well. That's right. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that the organization has grown in
light of the, as you say, increasingly online lives that we live. As you mentioned, digital
aspects of existence are creeping into ever new areas as the technology advances. Thank you for
that. Tell us a little bit about your own background. How did you come to the EFF?
Yeah, so I was always into nerdy stuff, like hacking and putting together like my own server
and stuff like that growing up. But I was really going on a different path of how digital technology
can improve education equity. I had kind of a roundabout path, but that's where I landed
going to grad school for that. And in that time, I really dove a lot into community education as
like a form of practice and as a way of taking these often, you know, political things that
require action to improve our lives and make technology more equitable through grassroots
education. And I started doing that kind of as a side project when procrastinating during my
doctoral studies, which so much great organizing work happens with procrastinating grad students.
And yeah, during that time, I co-founded Cypert Collective, a digital security
education group that initially was really focused towards activists and helping improve the Opsuck
of our operational security of activists we were working with. And then had a good arrangement with
the public library to do regular trainings just for the public and found that was actually really
what made our work able to accelerate more. We were doing it more regularly.
We were kind of seeing more regular cases of regular concerns folks were having.
And yeah, in that work, that group joined the Electronic Frontier Alliance right when it started
in 2016, which you mentioned in an intro is information sharing grassroots network that the
EFF maintains. And through that, we got a lot more promotion, we were able to meet a lot more of
other groups and kind of like up our trainings and up our presence. And in doing that work and
getting to know EFF more immediately, not just as like a fan from afar, actually meeting folks
working here. Yeah, eventually, a job opened up on the activism team that worked with the EFA.
I joined that team in 2020, and I've been with the EFF since.
Well, that's great. Sounds like a great fit.
Yeah, it was really, I wouldn't have left my grad studies for any other job.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I mean, the education component is so important, right, especially in,
like we said, this kind of technology that's ever changing, ever developing at a
pace that's difficult for the professionals to keep up with, the people who are just trying to
live their lives and have these necessary digital components, you know, really value that kind of
education to have someone who can translate what the cutting edge advances actually mean for us
trying to live our everyday lives. For sure. Definitely. Perfect. So towards that point,
I understand that one of the projects that you're working on or one of the topics that you're always
interested in is privacy concerns. So it just does a little bit about some of your work and how it
touches on concerns surrounding privacy. Definitely. And that definitely comes from that background
of meeting with everyday folks and the concerns that they're having, because as much as folks
can kind of succumb to privacy nihilism, where they're like, oh, the big companies have everything
anyway, who cares what's, you know, but then, you know, you meet people who are actually being
impacted by that surveillance, which, you know, anyone can be when you're being surveilled. That
information can always be used against you. But different points people encounter those kind of
sharp points of, oh, this really abusive person in my life is manipulating my phone in ways I don't
understand. Or, you know, simply like this information about me is online. And I have no
real way of controlling it. And even just having those creepy moments where you search for something
online, and then you get a bunch of advertisements on a bunch of different apps about that thing,
you know, different degrees of things that kind of raise that concern. So I definitely see it as
a really important thing about privacy is really essential for preserving individual autonomy
in society, but also a collective autonomy. I really think communities, you know, there's a lot
of like treating people like islands and digital security, where if you just harden everything,
if you install Linux, and you only use Tor and all these like really difficult things,
then you'll be this perfectly preserved egg. But at the end of the day, privacy is a team sport,
you're only as private and secure as the folks in your community and you're working with.
So I think, yeah, there's the individual trainings of like risk mitigation, making sure folks
understand the technology they're using. There's encouraging folks to work together and form new
norms in how they're working together. And then there's the big societal thing of it does require
advocacy at the end of the day to kind of ensure that, you know, your ring doorbell isn't just
giving information to the police if you don't want it to. Right. Yeah, it's a couple of interesting
and really important points that you make there. Like your phrase, privacy nihilism, I think that
that is a problem a lot of people suffer, right? They sort of throw up their hands and they feel
like it's a battle that's already been lost and maybe they don't see the significance of it.
But it's an important point that you raise. Some people learn too late the significance of not
having proper privacy protections. And then there is the knock on effect. Like you said,
we are an interconnected web. And so our privacy decisions have an effect outside of our personal
lives. Yeah. And for some folks, privacy, frankly, isn't as important because they're in a relatively
safe position in society or a privileged position. And they can kind of just ignore it. But even for
those folks, I'd really encourage thinking about the other people in your life. Not everyone is,
you don't actually know to what extent folks have things that they need to preserve.
So just out of compassion for other people in your community and in your life,
doing some kind of basic privacy work, I think is really essential.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. So you might be from a population that doesn't regularly face difficulty
from the authorities. But that doesn't mean that other populations aren't facing that leverage.
Right. And then there's the not to be too doom and gloom. But you might be okay with the current
powers that be. You might trust current tech executives and current leaders in government.
But information lasts longer than that. There can be new powers that arise in your life
that you don't trust as much. And that information doesn't expire typically. And it can still be
used against you. Yeah, that's an incredibly important point, I think. So not only in terms of
corporations, but also governments, right? You might be fine with your government having
that information about you now. But regimes change. And do you want it to be the de facto
position that whatever a regime has power has access to this information about you and the
population? Yeah. And frankly, we saw a lot of that. I wasn't with the EFF at the time. But in 2016,
there was a big growth support of EFF. And I experienced as a trainer, we went from kind of
a fringe, kind of nerdy meetup group to we were doing multiple trainings a month because everyone
was really freaked out by Trump winning the election. And what that meant for their personal
security and safety. So, you know, it's always around the corner, maybe not when you expect it.
So context can change pretty quickly. For sure. Yeah. Perfect. Another topic that we mentioned
last time when we were chatting was concerns around artificial intelligence, right? So it's
the hot topic these days. And so obviously, there are as much excitement as there is. There's also
concerns that come with any new prevalent technology. And so with artificial intelligence,
one of the initial concerns that have been raised by other content creators is intellectual
property rights and how these are affected. Could you speak a little bit to that topic?
Yeah, definitely. So I think like the really core concerns with artificial intelligence
that I, as I think of it, one is the underlying data set, which I think is what this is getting at,
where we want to make sure it is transparent and whenever possible consensual by the folks that
are in that data set. There's some even privacy concerns that come out of that if an AI is trained
on personal information, let's say your personal emails or something, you know, there's the risk
of it kind of regurgitating snippets of that personal information to someone else because
it kind of forms this mosaic of the underlying data that it's trained on. So, you know, it also
hallucinates. So there's a little bit of plausible deniability if it does do that. But you know,
it's that kind of thinking of like, people want to have a say in whether or not they're in a data
set. At the same time, kind of counter to that, reexpression online includes being able to scrape
information and remix it and put it together in a new way. So I think there's a lot of questionable
copyright claims being thrown on as a way to combat the negative uses of AI, not to say that
those impacts aren't negative, but copyright likely isn't the best tool for it. And I think a
really current example is with workers rights, basically the fear that AI is going to train on
a screenwriters writing and then just write for the screenwriter. And the studio will just pocket
all that money because chat GBT wrote it instead of a writer. And I think that sort of concern is
very present and something that really falls under labor. And I think
labor regulations around how AI is used is probably the most appropriate way to address it.
Throwing copyright stuff onto it is a little more, it has knock on effects that would affect free
expression, not from AI, that yeah, we're wary of those precedents.
That's very interesting. I hadn't thought about that side of things. Obviously I thought about
our remix culture and the right to reuse things, but I hadn't thought about the viability of
approaching AI or large language models and trying to sue them for copyright infringement
or something like that. And the knock on effect on what we might consider valid or accepted reuse
and remixing. Yeah, and one of the main ones that is coming up is basically using personas as a new
copyrighted class of things that you can't use someone's face and just CG or use AI to put it on
an actor or something and then not pay the actor for that. Which again, I think is more of a labor
concern that having that sort of wide reaching thing in an actor's contract that by the way,
we can use your face forever. That kind of right to publicity thing is concerning. But being able
to use a public figure's face is essential for expression. If you want to do a satire of say,
the president or some other powerful person, being able to use their face in an animation
is protected expression. So generally copyright is not the right tool for addressing very legitimate
labor concerns in a lot of cases. Right, that's very interesting. And then another topic I'd
like to touch on with you is I know when you're talking about your background and the way you
come up, I know that education is a passion of yours. And so did you want to talk a little bit
about open source education? Yeah, so this is something while in my graduate studies, I've
learned more about I was always into open source as a concept, this kind of everyone collaborating
on this transparent project together, you know, again, doing little nerdy hosting servers and stuff
as a teenager. But it wasn't until I was in grad school and learning more about kind of critical
pedagogy. And I was part of a program that talked about specifically critical use of technology
in pedagogy that I learned more about open education and open access, which I think has a lot of
intuitive, especially on the open access side of, you know, publicly funded research,
the fruits of that the findings of that should be shared to the public and science is inherently
collaborative. It doesn't really make sense to hide results from other scientists if you're
working to the same end. And I think the same really holds to education as well. I don't think
teachers are particularly protective of their lesson plans or use they're not usually
and are often, you know, I experienced, I would have had a much harder time teaching if I didn't
have other instructors just give me their lesson plan since I here's everything I've done, you
know, make it your own, and being able to pick and choose from different things I saw. So that
collaborative process is already there. What things like open education does is let's it be
hosted online and be more open to not just rely on those kind of connections that people have
to different instructors. And that has the same empowering effect that open access does when
we talk about things on a global scale, where someone who doesn't have a friend that works at
Columbia or something, you know, can still access these high quality materials based on current
research. And then, I mean, for the students, it's free free textbooks and not making students pay
hundreds of dollars for often kind of outdated textbooks. These are easy to keep current are
more peer reviewed because it's more collaboratively written. It's just less known about generally,
when instructors learn about it, they're very quick to adopt it in their own classrooms.
Right. That's interesting. Yeah, I know that there's also a sort of push amongst educators or some
pressure being put on colleagues to publish with journals that are open access rather than the
ones that are behind paywalls. Definitely. Yeah, and there's a lot of now publishers are kind of
finding these sort of mitigations of like it'll be open access after a few years or these sort of
different halfway points because it is a popular idea. And they have to kind of adapt to it.
Yeah, unfortunately, one of the adaptations and there's a group called Spark or a scholarly
publishing and academic resource coalition that actually recently has been writing about
how publishers in adapting to the popularity of open access are going for more, you know,
the articles are more readily available. However, they're on these lockdown platforms that actually
surveil academics and kind of collect information about, you know, who's reading what and who's
being productive with what. So like they recently released this interesting report on Elsevier
and it's data collection. So we're seeing publishers kind of meeting halfway with the open
access movement with some more surveillance heavy offerings and offering more data surveillance work.
And is that with a model to try to then monetize the data that they're collecting?
That seems to be subscriptions for the journal. Yeah, I see. It's concerning.
Right. And you know, and it's part of the same like kind of fake open access alternatives and
fake open education alternatives, where it's like you buy a subscription to a suite of things that
gives you free access to these things, but you can't then take it and remix it and it's not free.
You know, there's all these kind of, you know, embracing open access because it's popular, but
in ways that still let them leverage control. Right. Well, that's interesting.
And I'm sure it's going to be an area of growth. As you mentioned, more and more journals are going
to try and find alternatives to revenue that they were getting through per journal charges or
subscriptions. Definitely. But I do see it as a mark of success for the open access movement that
and open education movements that people are aware of it. They see it as really valuable when
they have good research. They'll often advocate like I'm only going to publish this if it is open
access. And yeah, as more academics do that, yeah, this information will become more readily
available. And I think, again, that open education thing to highlight not only does it help
universities in different parts of the world that might have fewer resources,
it's also nice for people who aren't in university and are just trying to learn about
things on their own. Having those educational materials can let people kind of build expertise
and introduce themselves to an area on their own. Absolutely. Yeah, it fits much more nicely with the
concept of these things being public institutions. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Thank you so much for all of that, Roy. That's very informative. A lot of our
listeners will be people who are about to enter the digital professions in various capacities.
Given your experience in the sort of wide net that the EFF casts and the experience that you have,
is there any advice that you'd give to people who are about to enter the digital professional sphere?
Yeah, I mean, I think already thinking about ethics going into these careers is essential. It's
something that, yeah, a surprising number of folks don't teach or prioritize when going into it.
And remember that you as a worker for these companies have a lot of say that we've seen
a lot of good pushback from developers when a company wants them to implement an unpopular
or invasive feature. So thinking about, you know, is my work empowering users? Is it
yeah, allowing for autonomy of the users and kind of thinking about those questions at every
step in the development process, not just at the very end when there's a PR push,
and advocating for the changes in their own workplace. You know, of course, I'll have to say
going to EFF and keeping up to date on what are the current issues and our positions on things
can be a helpful guide in that process. But also, in your own community, I really encourage folks to
in a way of giving back tech professionals really have a unique ability to go into,
say, an activist space or just a community group that they're sympathetic towards
and offering that expertise to regular people and hear how they're experiencing the tech,
what difficulties they're running into and taking that back in in your own work.
You know, I think generally people are happy to complain about tech and the way is that it's
annoying to them. It's often usability and I think usability and access is really important.
But you know, sometimes people will voice like, this thing, why can't I just do what I want to do?
Why can't I read this book I bought in Germany on my American Kindle, right?
And those frustrations, I think, letting those lead their work. And yeah, speaking up in the
workplace when it's not doing right by the user. Right. That's great advice. Yeah, I think sometimes
people feel a bit lost, especially if they're part of a larger organization, but I think you're
right. Those people who are there sort of the grassroots or the fundamental level can have an
impact. Definitely. Yeah, and I definitely think that inside-outside approach is really essential
to moving the needle, advocating in the workplace and working with folks outside of the workplace to
understand the needs and maybe even do some advocacy with EFF. Right. Well, that leads perfectly
on to my next question. I was going to ask if you want to tell people where they can learn more
about EFF or some of these projects and any other resources you'd like to promote.
Definitely. So you can become a member of EFF at EFF.org/donate. You can follow our
writings at EFF.org/deeplinks. We have RSS and all that if you'd like. And if you'd like to kind of
get involved in a more hands-on way, I administer that graph network I mentioned earlier, the EFA,
EFF.org/EFA. And there you can learn a little bit more about organizing. We have a tool,
a few toolkits to get you started. And you can reach out to us at
[email protected].
Unfortunately, we are currently just in the U.S. So unfortunately, Canadian groups wouldn't be able
to join the EFA. That said, always welcome to reach out to us. We're always excited to help
people and guide them on their local advocacy work. And then if you ever find yourself in hot water
and maybe need some legal representation, you can always reach out to
[email protected].
Our legal intake coordinator is really great. You'll get a quick response.
Either EFF will take your case or we make sure that you're referred to a volunteer
attorney that will take it on our behalf. So yeah, so those are kind of the best ways to get
connected. Yeah, and like I said, reach out to
[email protected] or
[email protected].
If you have any questions or want to get involved with EFF, I'm happy to chat with people.
Excellent. Thanks so much. And we'll put links to all of those things in our show notes.
Great. I want to thank you, Rory, for coming out today. We covered a wide gamut of topics from
privacy concerns to AI and IP to open source education. I really appreciate your valuable
insights on this wide range of topics. So thanks so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thank you for having me and for raising these issues.
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