Promoting And Protecting Digital Rights Since 1994
EFA is an independent non-profit association that relies on membership subscriptions and donations. If you’re concerned about digital rights in Australia, please join or donate today.
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It’s time for news organisations to embrace Creative Commons
For the past several years, Cards Against Humanity has been Amazon’s No. 1 bestseller in the “Toys and Games” category. But the card game, which has raked in millions of dollars and inspired dozens of imitations, is also available for free on the Cards Against Humanity website. Anyone can download, remix, or share the game, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. Why would Cards Against Humanity…
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Why you might want to become a Jedi Knight for this year’s Census
In the week before Christmas last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics quietly trashed your privacy. We have only a few months to claim it back. In December 2015, the ABS announced its plans to collect and keep the name and address of every person in Australia, starting with the August 2016 census. And to then use your name and address, to link your census answers to other sets of…
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The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp
In a recent edition of the New York Times, Matt Apuzzo reports that the Department of Justice is locked in a “prolonged standoff” with WhatsApp. The government is frustrated by its lack of real-time access to messages protected by the company’s end-to-end encryption. The story may represent a disturbing preview of the next front in the FBI’s war against encryption. For the past month, we’ve been closely tracking Apple’s fight…
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Opinion: The game is up for Malcolm’s pseudo-NBN
Anyone watching or listening to today’s day-long forensic deconstruction by former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy of the current state of the NBN rollout could but not conclude that the entire project is being neutered for entirely political reasons. Even NBN CEO Bill Morrow, by the end of the day, effectively conceded that he was no longer able to defend the Prime Minister’s stated belief that a Fibre-to-the-Node approach was the…
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Google expands the ‘right to be forgotten’, but Australia doesn’t need it
Search engines play an indispensable role in our information age. They are how we navigate the internet. Without their assistance, most of us would be lost. When access to their functionality is limited, our substantive access to information is limited. This is exactly the point behind the so-called “right to be forgotten”. The term refers to the European Union law that aims to protect privacy by requiring search engines to…
Help fight for our digital rights
What We Do
Policy
We actively monitor a number of policy areas and specific issues. The topics below provide a detailed view of EFA’s policy positions.
Copyright
Australia’s copyright laws are outdated, inflexible and not fit for the digital age. As such, EFA is a long-standing supporter of reform of Australia’s Copyright Act.
Privacy & Security
Privacy is fundamentally about consent and control over access to information, and goes hand-in-hand with security. Privacy is a human right.
Censorship
Adults should be able to make their own informed decisions about what content they create and consume.
Encryption
Access to encryption technologies is vital for individuals and groups to be able to safeguard the security and privacy of their information.
Internet Safety
Surveillance is not safety. Safety for whom, against what? This complex problem is more likely to be exacerbated, rather than solved, by measures that allow for unaccountable surveillance and the undermining of communications security.
Surveillance
EFA is committed to ensuring that Australian’s home life is not subject to arbitrary interference.