EFFector Volume 37, Issue 11
ICE 🤝 Cyber Mercenaries
Welcome to an all-new EFFector, your regular digest on everything digital rights from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In our 829th issue: A "joyful warrior for internet freedom" starts drafting her next chapter, an interview with Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, and ICE's troubling $2 million deal with a spyware vendor.
When you lose your rights online, you lose them in real life. Become an EFF member today!
Featured Story: ICE Defrosts Deal With Notorious Phone-Hacking Firm
When governments have the power to break into people's phones, they have a nasty habit of hacking reporters, dissidents, and anyone else who might make it harder to violate our rights. Just look at Italy: After it signed a contract with spyware maker Paragon Solutions, the company's malware was found on devices belonging to Italian journalists and human rights activists. In the wake of that scandal, the cyber-mercenary firm ended its contract with Italy. Paragon is now poised to share its "solutions" with a new state client: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Earlier this month, a $2 million contract between ICE and Paragon was quietly reactivated. The company's signature product is a spyware tool called "Graphite." Using so-called "zero click" exploits, this malware is designed to infect a device without any user interaction, making the attacks invisible to its targets. From there, it seeks to give Paragon's clients secret access to the target's private messages on encrypted platforms. WhatsApp, for instance, notified 90 users, including journalists and members of civil society, that they had been targeted by Paragon earlier this year.
How will ICE use the company's technology? The contract doesn't specify, but without strong legal guardrails, there is a risk it will be similarly misused in the U.S. And don't look to the government for self-restraint: Despite the strongly established right to film law enforcement in public in the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said she considers videotaping ICE operations to be "violence" against officers.
In the meantime, this contract will require all U.S. users to adjust their threat models. As we write on our blog, Paragon’s Graphite isn’t magic, it’s still just malware. The best thing you can do to protect yourself against Graphite is to keep your phone up-to-date and enable Lockdown or Advanced Protection Mode, depending on whether you're using an iPhone or Android device. Turning on disappearing messages can also help prevent your entire message history from being revealed if someone in your network does get compromised. For more tips on protecting yourself from malware, check out EFF's Surveillance Self Defense guides.
READ MORE… EFF Updates
🦸♀️ A VISIONARY LEADER: After more than 25 years with EFF and a decade as its top leading officer leading the fight for digital freedoms, Executive Director Cindy Cohn will step down by mid-2026. “It’s been the honor of my life to help EFF grow and become the strong, effective organization it is today, but it’s time to make space for new leadership," said Cohn. "I also want to get back into the fight for civil liberties more directly than I can as the executive director of a thriving 125-person organization." EFF's Board of Directors has assembled a search committee with hopes to hire someone next spring.
📚 LIBRARY PRIVACY: In an era of pervasive online surveillance, organizations have an important role to play in protecting their communities’ privacy. Read our blog post to learn how libraries and schools can safeguard their computers by installing Privacy Badger, EFF’s free browser extension that automatically blocks hidden trackers.
💰 SF $URVEILLANCE: A local billionaire has an unusual "gift" to the people of San Francisco: $9.5 million towards a new police surveillance hub to watch their every move. On our blog, we explain the danger of unaccountable corporations and billionaires buying police whatever surveillance tech their hearts desire.
🎧 ON THE POD: How do you build the library of everything? On this episode of EFF's "How to Fix the Internet" podcast, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle discusses his vision of universal access to knowledge and what it will take to create internet archives all over the world.
Get in the Fight
What the future will look like is being decided today. Join the movement to protect our digital rights.
Whether it’s governments trying to censor the internet, private companies exploiting our data for profit, or police using advanced technologies to track our every move, EFF is resisting the forces threatening our digital freedom.
Technology should serve all people, not just the powerful. With your support, we can take back control. "The danger is now ICE could infect somebody's phone and read their messages. This essentially allows ICE to surreptitiously spy on high-value targets."EFF's Cooper Quintin in this week's EFFector audio companion on what makes ICE's contract with Paragon Solutions so dangerous. Hear our discussion with Cooper here. MiniLinks🗣️ Free Speech - "Cindy Cohn Is Leaving the EFF, but Not the Fight for Digital Rights" (Wired)
- "Abortion advocates raise alarm about social platforms removing posts in apparent overreach" (Associated Press)
🔒 Privacy - "ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers" (404 Media)
💡 Creativity and Innovation
- "'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'" (PC Gamer)
- "Judge who ruled Google is a monopoly decides to do hardly anything to break it up" (The Register)
🌎 International - "Nepal internet crackdown part of global trend toward suppressing online freedom" (Associated Press)
🗝️ Security - "Signal Rolls Out Secure Backups Just After I Had To Nuke My Message History" (Aftermath)
- "Not so secret: X’s new encrypted chat feature puts users at risk, experts say" (Straight Arrow News)
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