New video: The Electronic Frontier Foundation on user privacy in the digital world

As a mobile phone and internet provider, defending civil liberties in a digital world is near and dear to our hearts here at CREDO. We understand first hand how vital it is to protect our digital freedoms, rights and particularly our customers’ privacy.

That’s why, this July, CREDO was honored to host Rainey Reitman, activism director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for a discussion about how EFF defends civil liberties and protects user privacy in the digital world through strategic litigation with potential to set key precedents, policy analysis, grassroots activism and technology development.

CREDO members have voted to donate more than $320,000 to EFF, which is a longtime CREDO ally and partner, dating back to our work together in 2003 in opposition to electronic voting machines. Today, CREDO and EFF are closely partnering together to protect net neutrality and defend civil liberties.

During her visit, Rainey highlighted why the legal work they do protect the open internet and internet users is so important:

“Unless we do something, the internet of the future is going to be one of surveillance, one of no privacy. Today, we take it for granted that so many of our communications and our applications and our family photos and our lives are all held in databases, often that someone else controls. When we think about law in the digital world, you have to remember that laws only matter if they are enforceable. You can see the long arm of the law takes a lot of resources, effort, and time.”

That work to fight for our civil liberties in a digital world is at the core of EFF’s mission.

Rainey also commended CREDO as the only mobile phone company to receive a 5-star rating from the EFF for protecting customer privacy, as highlighted in its report, “Who Has Your Back? Government Data Requests 2017.”

As part of their campaign to pressure technology companies to do a better job protecting customer privacy, EFF holds up CREDO as a prime example of a telecommunications company that can successfully protect customer privacy from government intrusion. When other providers of internet and telephone service criticize EFF’s criteria as unrealistic, EFF points to CREDO and says “If CREDO can do it, why can’t you do it?”

In addition to EFF’s work protecting internet privacy, Rainey touched on the organization’s work pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties and net neutrality. EFF developed a 100-day plan to begin defending digital rights and civil liberties the day Trump began occupying the White House, and they have redoubled their efforts to defend net neutrality in the face of a White House, Congress and FCC chairman hostile to the idea of a free and open internet. As she put it very succinctly:

We have all of our teams standing by ready to fight back against Trump in whatever he attempts.

And here at CREDO, we are proud to work alongside EFF to resist Trump’s attacks on net neutrality, civil liberties and our digital privacy.

You can watch the entire Facebook Live event below: