INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
anyone who reads Boing Boing knows Doctorow and his cohort of bloggers
The part-blogger, part special advisor at the online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has written for years on topics of
technology, hacking, security research, online digital rights and censorship and its intersection with free speech and expression.Yet, this
week it looked like his own free speech and expression could have been under threat.Doctorow revealed in a blog post on Friday that scooter
eBay converter kit.EFF senior attorney Kit Walsh fired back
for Boing Boing to pull down the blog post
motherboard swaps were circumvention, then selling someone a screwdriver could be an offense punishable by a five year prison sentence and a
Convention Center on March 10, 2014 in Austin, Texas
far.TechCrunch reached out to several people who wrote about and were involved with blog posts and write-ups about the Bird converter kit
Of those who responded, all said they had not received a legal demand from Bird.We asked Bird why it sent the letter, and if this was a
one-off letter or if Bird had sent similar legal demands to others
When reached, a Bird spokesperson did not comment on the record.Two hours after we published this story, Bird spokesperson Rebecca Hahn said
overstretched and sent a takedown request related to the issue to a member of the media
findings that they find critical, often using misinterpreted, incorrect or vague legal statutes to get things pulled from the internet
Some companies have been more successful than others, despite an increase in awareness and bug bounties, and a general willingness to fix
security issues before they inevitably become public.Now Bird becomes the latest in a long list of companies that have threatened reporters
or security researchers, alongside companies like drone maker DJI, which in 2017 threatened a security researcher trying to report a bug in
Most recently, password manager maker Keeper sued a security reporter claiming allegedly defamatory remarks over a security flaw in one of
The case was eventually dropped, but not before more than 50 experts, advocates and journalist (including this reporter) signed onto a
letter calling for companies to stop using legal threats to stifle and silence security researchers.That effort resulted in several
disclosure rules to promise that the companies will not seek to prosecute hackers acting in good-faith.But some companies have bucked that
