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by maxehmookau 1390 days ago
To say that agendas around "gender and immigration" are unrelated to the EFF's goals is missing the point.

You can guarantee that if society moves towards criminializing trans people, or further demonising immigrants, or tracking women's fertility for the purposes of further restricting access to abortion; surveillance technology will be at the forefront of that effort and the EFF's goals of technological privacy and free speech will be important to fight against it.

To support the EFF is, in my opinion, an inherently political act and to say you support their overall aims of online privacy and free speech but also "get upset" when they support groups that directly benefit from their causes is (IMO) a contradiction.

2 comments

People don't realize that once they're done coming after "them" they're coming after you. I think the EFFs efforts to support adjacent groups is awesome and completely inline with their goals. Thanks for pointing this out.
It concerns me that this is such a contentious argument. _Everything_ is political. Censorship, free speech and data privacy are about as political as you get. If the EFF did not take a political stance on these things, there would be no point to their existance.
"First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me"

- Pastor Martin Niemöller

Grand-parent and most folks interested in EFF are typically concerned with unnecessary surveillance of innocents, rather than protecting "law breakers." (Not all laws are legitimate of course; it's a factor but orthogonal.)

But you seem to have grand-parent's take backwards.