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The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate https:/

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

robk 4y ago
I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.
- kajecounterhack 4y ago
  Seems like the obvious answer is no. But if can see that they are doing important stuff, and you're letting your hangups over unrelated political issues keep you from donating to their awesome work, I'd say that's a mistake. They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator for spending their money effectively.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    > They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator You probably mean 4/4: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Charity Navigator does not try to measure effectivess. They measure overhead and transparency.
  - hda2 4y ago
    > I'd say that's a mistake I wouldn't. If the EFF really wants my financial support, they can split their org into two; one that focuses exclusively on defending our digital rights (to whom I would gladly donate) and one that focuses on social justice. This mentality of packaging the bad with the good is precisely what got the US where it is now.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - kajecounterhack 4y ago
      > This mentality of packaging the bad with the good is precisely what got the US where it is now. Well this is inevitable. People just don't have time to be involved in every issue, so you find the parties / organizations / representatives that _most_ represent you, and that's what you get. There's never going to be an org or politician that perfectly represents you; you have to pick which people/orgs will most help shape the world to be the one you want to live in. Also, if among free speech & digital rights supporters you're in a minority that doesn't like stuff like, iono, gender equality... well you can find other ways to express that point of view. I seriously doubt EFF's work is changing peoples' minds about that anyway; their involvement in some of those issues is more reflecting how most EFF constituents feel.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      This is how I feel about Mozilla. MZLA used AI to generate wallpapers for Thunderbird that nobody asked for, somebody is in a salaried role doing it that's funded by donations. What a complete waste of money considering the AI isn't even FOSS, and they are promoting it on the Thunderbird blog. That's without even getting into the arrogance displayed by a big name from their camp on AI ethics. Did all kinds of mental gymnastics to say he was a very talented artist for typing text into Discord. Open source email clients don't need marketing gimmicks, they need substance. BTW, did you know the same person in that role is now introducing a Thunderbird podcast? Who asked for a podcast for a FOSS email client? Nobody. Dude has proven once again that Mozilla should just focus on making great software as they close-to-zero credibility left after working with Meta and shambolic PR disaster after PR disaster. FWIW, even though I'm a huge FOSS evangelist, I switched to Vivaldi and Gmail, because fuck that.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    My problem with these unrelated political issues is that they directly collide with the rights the EFF traditionally tried to defend. Nobody is talking about net neutrality anymore and activists actively try to convince suppliers of net infrastructure to drop the target of the day. These political issues do not converge very well and old liberties are regularly undermined. I know I am painting with a broad brush here, but I am at a point where I want it severed into something else.
- hnbad 4y ago
  This assumes "charitable causes" can be apolitical. I guess the ACLU might be closer to what you want then? They have a recent history of criticism for defending the far-right in the name of free speech while generally being thought of as "liberal". The problem you're facing is that "fighting against power structures" is a political gradient starting short of authoritarianism and ending at anarchism (unless you're Stirner but egoism is a different topic for debate). Because this is a gradient and because most people's political positions evolve over time through lived experience and exposure to other people, it's impossible to pin down a fixed position on that spectrum without eventually veering in one direction or the other. The EFF generally tries to use the ideal of individual privacy as a fixture for its politics but the recent US Supreme Court rulings have shown the implications of that as e.g. Roe v Wade and other decisions that used to cement various civil justice issues ranging from interracial marriage and the abolishment of anti-sodomy laws to legalizing abortion were apparently literally based on the "right to privacy", which the Supreme Court ruled doesn't exist. So if the SCOTUS thinks "right to privacy" is intrinsically tied "various agendas around gender/immigration", it shouldn't surprise anyone that the EFF would think the same, no matter what your stance on those issues is. It's almost like the Overton window has two natural endpoints but will frictionlessly slide in between them if you start pushing, so if you want to prevent it from moving further you have to exert force that will easily cause it to slide back the way you started at. PS: On a complete tangent, I think this is an apt metaphor for how the Russian revolution overthrowing the monarchy turned into the authoritarian Soviet Union as the Bolsheviks tried to reel in the more anarchist revolutionaries and asserted dominance of the party, insisting on a central command bureaucracy instead of a federated direct democracy. But I digress.
  - shaftoe 4y ago
    The ACLU has increasingly become exactly what he seeks to avoid. https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-how-the-aclu-has-lost-its-way/ https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-... I would support a truly civil-liberties-only ACLU, but not what they currently are.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >that are unrelated to their main goal given that we're commenting on a thread about invasive police surveillance it's pretty funny to think there's no very obvious correlation to immigration. Which groups do you think are among the most targeted by law enforcement surveillance tech? People who get hung up on this, what's the underlying mindset? "I love privacy for white dudes, but god forbid they accidentally help a Mexican woman in an iCE camp or an abortion clinic"? Marginalized are always the primary target of police force, and increasingly beta-test subjects of police tech[1], so the relationship should be quite obvious. [1]https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-driven-policing/ https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-drive...
  - Karellen 4y ago
    Cory Doctorow's "shitty technology adoption curve" hypothesis covers this quite well. He's written about it a bunch of times, but an example with a really good summary is at https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/18/always-get-their-rationalisation/#telehealth https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/18/always-get-their-rational... > The "shitty technology adoption curve" describes the arc of oppressive technology: when you have a manifestly terrible idea, you can't ram it down the throats of rich, powerful people who get to say no. You have to find people whose complaints no one will listen to. > > So our worst tech ideas start out with prisoners, asylum seekers and mental patients, spread to children and blue collar workers, and ascend the privilege gradient to the wealthy and powerful as they are normalized and have their roughest corners sanded down.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    An ingroup that is protected by the law but not bound by it. An outgroup that is bound by the law but not protected by it. So maximum liberty for me and law and order for thee. Another example: Best defense against a "bad guy with a gun" (outgroup) is a "good guy with a gun" (ingroup). See also Rhodesia, Jim Crow South, apartheid South Africa, and Western Expansion under the Homesteading acts. This is how some people can claim they want both maximum freedom but also, maximum autocracy and arbitrary authority entrusted in deputies. It's how the same people can have cruel hot takes when there's a minority killed by police but pull their hair out if one of their religious or political leaders is taken to court. It's not inconsistent. There's different systems applied to groups that get different labels. Could be based on the geographic coordinates of where they were born, perceived skin color, what religion they may vaguely be associated with, ethnic identity, personal wealth, the gender they sleep with or identify as, political identity, citizenship status, whatever. One group doesn't have the right to have rights. That's the crucial part. How to get there is somewhat arbitrary. It's best if it's just a tiny bit porous so there's a token instance where the classification is broken so it can be pointed to in order to deny the system exists. See antisemitic organizations with an ethnic Jewish person involved, white supremacist organizations run by a non-white person, anti-feminist organizations run by a woman, etc. They play an important role in perpetuating such systems
- weberer 4y ago
  Then you want the Free Software Foundation. https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Independent of the FSF's contributions to FOSS, I don't think this is a good direct substitution: I can't think of the last time the FSF was a significant party to a privacy or law enforcement lawsuit.
- maxehmookau 4y 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.
  - sashahrzg 4y ago
    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.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      "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
    - maxehmookau 4y ago
      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.
  - parineum 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  You can always designate the purposes of donations. Maybe not through their donation portal but the regulations allow for it. Many non profits reject those kind of donations though. But money talks.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  To twist a quote: First, they'll come for gender/immigration, but you didn't say anything. Then they'll come for you and nobody will be left to say anything.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  From experience (not as a donor but as someone familiar with nonprofits) if you donate enough,you can get it to fund specific programs. But, I would just email them, I am sure if they hear enough they'll be happy to set up a dedicated "privacy" or "transparency" initiatives.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    You can always mail a donation and include a designation/restriction.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Once you start following them I think you will find that they are very focused and have been quite successful at not diffusing into other areas.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - parineum 4y ago
    It seems en vogue for every organization to have a position on every topic du jour but the EFF has done well to avoid, at the very least, taking action outside of their scope. I don't keep an eye on any social media of theirs or anything so I can't speak to what they are out there _saying_ but I don't tend to read about them spending money on scope creep.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    They denounced Richard Stallman.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? For fifty dollars, no. If you’re giving more substantially, of course.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jononomo 4y ago
    money is fungible
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > money is fungible To an extent, depending on the fraction of the budget you're contributing.
      - jononomo 4y ago
        No, it doesn't depend on the fraction of the budget you're contributing. Money is fungible even if it is only $0.01.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > it doesn't depend on the fraction of the budget you're contributing. Money is fungible even if it is only $0.01 Practice versus theory. If I'm donating 50% of an organization's budget, I get to say what my 50% does as well as the other 50%. That's power. (If they don't comply, I pull my funding. Assuming the other half is diffuse.)
- sophacles 4y ago
- more_corn 4y ago
  EFF is dedicated to online privacy and preventing government and law enforcement overreach with technology. That’s basically all they do.
- _V_ 4y ago
  I'd also donate if I could be sure that the money would go to the (online) privacy. I honestly don't give a damn about abortions in the US and I don't care about any local policital movement, that is cool for the season.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Do you have more info on this specifically with the EFF? First I've heard of it, but admittedly lived under a rock in terms of news for a long time.
93po 4y ago
I always shop at Amazon after clicking their affiliate link. Not sure if this is bad form on HN to paste it directly but it's available on their website. You have to visit it before adding items to cart.

robk 4y ago

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

kajecounterhack 4y ago
Seems like the obvious answer is no. But if can see that they are doing important stuff, and you're letting your hangups over unrelated political issues keep you from donating to their awesome work, I'd say that's a mistake. They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator for spending their money effectively.
- fsflover 4y ago
  > They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator You probably mean 4/4: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431.
- lupire 4y ago
  Charity Navigator does not try to measure effectivess. They measure overhead and transparency.
- hda2 4y ago
  > I'd say that's a mistake I wouldn't. If the EFF really wants my financial support, they can split their org into two; one that focuses exclusively on defending our digital rights (to whom I would gladly donate) and one that focuses on social justice. This mentality of packaging the bad with the good is precisely what got the US where it is now.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kajecounterhack 4y ago
    > This mentality of packaging the bad with the good is precisely what got the US where it is now. Well this is inevitable. People just don't have time to be involved in every issue, so you find the parties / organizations / representatives that _most_ represent you, and that's what you get. There's never going to be an org or politician that perfectly represents you; you have to pick which people/orgs will most help shape the world to be the one you want to live in. Also, if among free speech & digital rights supporters you're in a minority that doesn't like stuff like, iono, gender equality... well you can find other ways to express that point of view. I seriously doubt EFF's work is changing peoples' minds about that anyway; their involvement in some of those issues is more reflecting how most EFF constituents feel.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    This is how I feel about Mozilla. MZLA used AI to generate wallpapers for Thunderbird that nobody asked for, somebody is in a salaried role doing it that's funded by donations. What a complete waste of money considering the AI isn't even FOSS, and they are promoting it on the Thunderbird blog. That's without even getting into the arrogance displayed by a big name from their camp on AI ethics. Did all kinds of mental gymnastics to say he was a very talented artist for typing text into Discord. Open source email clients don't need marketing gimmicks, they need substance. BTW, did you know the same person in that role is now introducing a Thunderbird podcast? Who asked for a podcast for a FOSS email client? Nobody. Dude has proven once again that Mozilla should just focus on making great software as they close-to-zero credibility left after working with Meta and shambolic PR disaster after PR disaster. FWIW, even though I'm a huge FOSS evangelist, I switched to Vivaldi and Gmail, because fuck that.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  My problem with these unrelated political issues is that they directly collide with the rights the EFF traditionally tried to defend. Nobody is talking about net neutrality anymore and activists actively try to convince suppliers of net infrastructure to drop the target of the day. These political issues do not converge very well and old liberties are regularly undermined. I know I am painting with a broad brush here, but I am at a point where I want it severed into something else.
hnbad 4y ago
This assumes "charitable causes" can be apolitical. I guess the ACLU might be closer to what you want then? They have a recent history of criticism for defending the far-right in the name of free speech while generally being thought of as "liberal". The problem you're facing is that "fighting against power structures" is a political gradient starting short of authoritarianism and ending at anarchism (unless you're Stirner but egoism is a different topic for debate). Because this is a gradient and because most people's political positions evolve over time through lived experience and exposure to other people, it's impossible to pin down a fixed position on that spectrum without eventually veering in one direction or the other. The EFF generally tries to use the ideal of individual privacy as a fixture for its politics but the recent US Supreme Court rulings have shown the implications of that as e.g. Roe v Wade and other decisions that used to cement various civil justice issues ranging from interracial marriage and the abolishment of anti-sodomy laws to legalizing abortion were apparently literally based on the "right to privacy", which the Supreme Court ruled doesn't exist. So if the SCOTUS thinks "right to privacy" is intrinsically tied "various agendas around gender/immigration", it shouldn't surprise anyone that the EFF would think the same, no matter what your stance on those issues is. It's almost like the Overton window has two natural endpoints but will frictionlessly slide in between them if you start pushing, so if you want to prevent it from moving further you have to exert force that will easily cause it to slide back the way you started at. PS: On a complete tangent, I think this is an apt metaphor for how the Russian revolution overthrowing the monarchy turned into the authoritarian Soviet Union as the Bolsheviks tried to reel in the more anarchist revolutionaries and asserted dominance of the party, insisting on a central command bureaucracy instead of a federated direct democracy. But I digress.
- shaftoe 4y ago
  The ACLU has increasingly become exactly what he seeks to avoid. https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-how-the-aclu-has-lost-its-way/ https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-... I would support a truly civil-liberties-only ACLU, but not what they currently are.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Barrin92 4y ago
>that are unrelated to their main goal given that we're commenting on a thread about invasive police surveillance it's pretty funny to think there's no very obvious correlation to immigration. Which groups do you think are among the most targeted by law enforcement surveillance tech? People who get hung up on this, what's the underlying mindset? "I love privacy for white dudes, but god forbid they accidentally help a Mexican woman in an iCE camp or an abortion clinic"? Marginalized are always the primary target of police force, and increasingly beta-test subjects of police tech[1], so the relationship should be quite obvious. [1]https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-driven-policing/ https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-drive...
- Karellen 4y ago
  Cory Doctorow's "shitty technology adoption curve" hypothesis covers this quite well. He's written about it a bunch of times, but an example with a really good summary is at https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/18/always-get-their-rationalisation/#telehealth https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/18/always-get-their-rational... > The "shitty technology adoption curve" describes the arc of oppressive technology: when you have a manifestly terrible idea, you can't ram it down the throats of rich, powerful people who get to say no. You have to find people whose complaints no one will listen to. > > So our worst tech ideas start out with prisoners, asylum seekers and mental patients, spread to children and blue collar workers, and ascend the privilege gradient to the wealthy and powerful as they are normalized and have their roughest corners sanded down.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  An ingroup that is protected by the law but not bound by it. An outgroup that is bound by the law but not protected by it. So maximum liberty for me and law and order for thee. Another example: Best defense against a "bad guy with a gun" (outgroup) is a "good guy with a gun" (ingroup). See also Rhodesia, Jim Crow South, apartheid South Africa, and Western Expansion under the Homesteading acts. This is how some people can claim they want both maximum freedom but also, maximum autocracy and arbitrary authority entrusted in deputies. It's how the same people can have cruel hot takes when there's a minority killed by police but pull their hair out if one of their religious or political leaders is taken to court. It's not inconsistent. There's different systems applied to groups that get different labels. Could be based on the geographic coordinates of where they were born, perceived skin color, what religion they may vaguely be associated with, ethnic identity, personal wealth, the gender they sleep with or identify as, political identity, citizenship status, whatever. One group doesn't have the right to have rights. That's the crucial part. How to get there is somewhat arbitrary. It's best if it's just a tiny bit porous so there's a token instance where the classification is broken so it can be pointed to in order to deny the system exists. See antisemitic organizations with an ethnic Jewish person involved, white supremacist organizations run by a non-white person, anti-feminist organizations run by a woman, etc. They play an important role in perpetuating such systems
weberer 4y ago
Then you want the Free Software Foundation. https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Independent of the FSF's contributions to FOSS, I don't think this is a good direct substitution: I can't think of the last time the FSF was a significant party to a privacy or law enforcement lawsuit.
maxehmookau 4y 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.
- sashahrzg 4y ago
  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.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    "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
  - maxehmookau 4y ago
    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.
- parineum 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
yieldcrv 4y ago
You can always designate the purposes of donations. Maybe not through their donation portal but the regulations allow for it. Many non profits reject those kind of donations though. But money talks.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
To twist a quote: First, they'll come for gender/immigration, but you didn't say anything. Then they'll come for you and nobody will be left to say anything.
jvanderbot 4y ago
From experience (not as a donor but as someone familiar with nonprofits) if you donate enough,you can get it to fund specific programs. But, I would just email them, I am sure if they hear enough they'll be happy to set up a dedicated "privacy" or "transparency" initiatives.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  You can always mail a donation and include a designation/restriction.
kornhole 4y ago
Once you start following them I think you will find that they are very focused and have been quite successful at not diffusing into other areas.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- parineum 4y ago
  It seems en vogue for every organization to have a position on every topic du jour but the EFF has done well to avoid, at the very least, taking action outside of their scope. I don't keep an eye on any social media of theirs or anything so I can't speak to what they are out there _saying_ but I don't tend to read about them spending money on scope creep.
- Jiro 4y ago
  They denounced Richard Stallman.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? For fifty dollars, no. If you’re giving more substantially, of course.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jononomo 4y ago
  money is fungible
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > money is fungible To an extent, depending on the fraction of the budget you're contributing.
    - jononomo 4y ago
      No, it doesn't depend on the fraction of the budget you're contributing. Money is fungible even if it is only $0.01.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > it doesn't depend on the fraction of the budget you're contributing. Money is fungible even if it is only $0.01 Practice versus theory. If I'm donating 50% of an organization's budget, I get to say what my 50% does as well as the other 50%. That's power. (If they don't comply, I pull my funding. Assuming the other half is diffuse.)
sophacles 4y ago
more_corn 4y ago
EFF is dedicated to online privacy and preventing government and law enforcement overreach with technology. That’s basically all they do.
_V_ 4y ago
I'd also donate if I could be sure that the money would go to the (online) privacy. I honestly don't give a damn about abortions in the US and I don't care about any local policital movement, that is cool for the season.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Do you have more info on this specifically with the EFF? First I've heard of it, but admittedly lived under a rock in terms of news for a long time.

93po 4y ago

I always shop at Amazon after clicking their affiliate link. Not sure if this is bad form on HN to paste it directly but it's available on their website. You have to visit it before adding items to cart.