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Articles by Anna Bonesteel
Papers, Please? The Republican Plan to Wall Off the Internet
Anna Bonesteel is an artist, researcher, and Senior Writer at Fight for the Future. During the Biden presidency, 11 US states passed laws that aim to restrict people under 18 from accessing certain websites. These online ID check laws force websites that host a certain amount of “adult content” to verify their users’ ages, either via a government ID or through a third-party service.
KOSA, a Bill That Purports to Protect Kids from Big Tech, Poses Grave Danger to LGBTQ+ Youth
Pride Month is over. As the “LOVE IS LOVE” banners come down and companies lose the rainbow gradients from their logos, we’re faced with a painful truth: LGBTQ+ people, especially the most marginalized among us, are in the crosshairs of a queerphobic backlash that is targeting our health, our histories, and especially our youth. And things are getting worse, not better. According to NPR, half of all US states now ban gender-affirming care for people under 18.
Pride as in Stop KOSA
Pride Month is a complex affair for many of us in "the community." Though it brings great organizing opportunities and delightful cocktail specials, it’s also the month of rainbow cop cars and corporate pinkwashing. They’re advancing DE&I at Lockheed Martin, where you can put the rainbow stamp on an MK-80 before it murders children in Gaza.
Ending Amazon Ring's police partnerships, for good
In late January it seemed like every news outlet ran a story about a doorbell. Well... not just a doorbell: Amazon Ring is more panopticon than pizza alarm. Ring's ubiquity and the pleasure with which it collaborates with police have made the device a huge target for anti-surveillance organizing like ours: Fight for the Future's first anti-Ring campaign launched in 2019. Unusually, January's news was about the death of a feature.
ShotSpotter on the rocks
On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced that he won’t renew the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a heavily criticized police surveillance system that says it “detects” gunshots with a network of always-on microphones. It’s a long-established fact that ShotSpotter is inaccurate, wasteful, and racist, but venture capital money and insistent federal lobbying have kept the company afloat. The Chicago news might start to turn the tide.
Meta is suppressing Palestinian speech during a deadly siege
The following is a post by campaigner Sarah Philips about an anti-censorship action we’ve just launched today. At Fight for the Future, we’re looking for ways to balance our ongoing campaigns with the need to support Palestinian-led groups and activists. This post, and the associated action targeting Meta, is one way we think we can help. It’s important: in many places, Instagram, Whatsapp, or Facebook are the most-used communications tools. Please take a look and take action.
Wireless spectrum is a natural resource. Who says it's owned by the FCC?
Darrah Blackwater is an attorney and artist from Farmington, New Mexico and a citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her research into the Indigenous digital divide led her to become a powerful advocate for spectrum sovereignty, the idea that the wireless spectrum on and above Native land should be owned and governed by the Native people on that land. I first met Darrah at a human rights conference in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her talk did what all the best do—it pushed at the edges of imagination.
Can we housebreak AI with copyright law?
After five long months, late night is back, baby—I mean, the Hollywood writers strike ended last week. It’s a huge win for workers at the tail end of Hot Labor Summer, and one of the more talked-about parts of the deal is a list of limitations on what studios and production companies can do with AI. If the agreement is ratified, studios won’t be able to replace writers with language models in any significant way.
Cops is internet is cops
Hey everyone, It’s week 3! A thousand thanks to everyone who’s subscribed. This is an ongoing experiment and I’m so happy you’re a part of it. This week, I’m covering an undercover FBI operation that targeted a progressive group in Colorado. It involves a shady program that might mean your Facebook groups are full of undercover cops, and makes the case that abolishing the police means abolishing Big Tech, too.
Policing the Playhouse
Hey everyone, This isn’t quite a tech piece, but it’s got a connection, I promise. I was hit pretty hard by Paul Reubens’s passing. For this week, I’ve put down some thoughts on Reubens’s work, what we consider obscene, and what’s at stake in the fight to stop bills like KOSA, which would wipe so-called “harmful content” from the internet. Here we go… As a kid, I watched back-to-back hours of Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
"Think of the children" bills will break free speech
Hey, welcome to our young list. Today I’m going to dive in by unpacking what we’re calling the Bad Internet Bills, a group of five proposed laws that would drastically expand censorship and surveillance online… whether they mean to or not. KOSA, EARN IT, STOP CSAM, RESTRICT, and the Cooper Davis Act all come out of a pessimistic-at-best vision of what the internet can be. Because of flaws in their logic and method of action, they’d do irreparable damage to online communities.
Touching grass in 3, 2, 1...
Hey everyone, welcome to Touch Grass, a weekly-ish newsletter that will update you on the internet’s knottiest problems while exploring the junctions of the online and offline worlds. I’m Anna, a writer and artist working at the digital rights group Fight for the Future. By subscribing, you’ll get news, analysis, and interviews in your inbox. But overall, I’ll be treating this like a laboratory where internet-focused activists can experiment with new ideas.
Amazon's Ring doorbell videos make America less safe from crime Original
Nov. 2, 2022, 12:21 AM UTC By Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future and Anna Bonesteel, strategic response manager at Fight for the Future In October, a man walked down his Florida street to return a neighbor’s package that had been accidentally delivered to his address. But unbeknownst to this good Samaritan, he was being watched by an Amazon Ring doorbell camera on the front porch, reported The Washington Post.
Time for firms to end abusive data practices
* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. To truly protect ourselves and our communities from abortion surveillance, we have to make surveillance less profitable - and that’s the responsibility of companies and lawmakers, not individuals. By Jordyn Paul-Slater and Anna Bonesteel, Fight for the Future In the wake of the Dobbs decision, fears of reproductive surveillance have spawned a new urgency around digital security.
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