Advocacy Group to Tech Companies: Delete Your Records Before Trump Gets To Them

An online privacy advocacy group has a strong message for tech companies preparing for the next administration: Delete user activity logs.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that has historically opposed surveillance and promoted encryption for consumers, has taken out a full-page ad in Wired's January 2017 issue, encouraging tech companies to "defend internet users" by ensuring their technology "is not conscripted into a tool of oppression."

President-elect Donald Trump's policy could "ratchet up surveillance and censorship, while threatening the future of net neutrality, privacy and encryption," that group wrote. In addition to planning to deport "millions of your friends and neighbors" and to "track people based on their religious beliefs," Trump "wants to use your servers to do it," EFF warned.

EFF recommended companies use the HTTPS-protocol, use end-to-end encryption for user transactions and activity logs by default, and to scrub records, because "you cannot be made to surrender data you do not have."

If faced with a request from the government to "monitor users or censor speech," tech companies should "tell the world," EFF added.

EFF has disagreed in the past with Trump's technology stances. Earlier this year, the advocacy group supported Apple in a stand-off with the FBI when that agency demanded the tech company create a back-door into the iPhone of a suspected terrorist. Apple refused and defended its use of encryption, arguing "while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control." Trump supported the FBI in that debate, calling for a boycott of Apple.

Nextgov has requested more comment from EFF about the impetus for the ad.