One (Busy) Day in the Life of EFF’s Activism Team

EFF is an organization of lawyers, technologists, policy professionals, and importantly–full-time activists–who fight to make sure that technology enhances rather than threatens civil liberties on a global scale. EFF’s activism team includes experienced issue experts, master communicators, and grassroots organizers who help to coordinate and orchestrate EFF’s activist campaigns that include but go well beyond litigation, technical analyses and solutions, and direct lobbying to legislators.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to work on the activism team at EFF, or if you are curious about applying for a job at EFF, take a look at one exceptional (but also fairly ordinary) day in the life of five members of the team:

Jillian York, Director For International Freedom of Expression

I wake up around 9:00, make coffee, and check my email and internal messages (we use Mattermost, a self-hosted chat tool). I live in Berlin—between four and nine hours ahead of most of my colleagues—which on most days enables me to get some “deep work” done before anyone else is online.

I see that one of my colleagues in San Francisco left a late-night message asking for someone to edit a short blog post. No one else is awake yet, so I jump on it. I then work on a piece of writing of my own, documenting the case of Alaa Abd El Fattah, an Egyptian technologist, blogger, and EFF supporter who’s been imprisoned on and off for the past decade. After that, I respond to some emails and messages from colleagues from the day prior.

EFF offers us flexible hours, and since I’m in Europe I often have to take calls in the evening (6 or 7 pm my time is 9 or 10 am San Francisco time, when a lot of team meetings take place). I see this as an advantage, as it allows me to meet a friend for lunch and hit the gym before heading back to work. 

There’s a dangerous new bill being proposed in a country where we don’t have so much expertise, but which looks likely to have a greater impact across the region, so a colleague and I hop on a call with a local digital rights group to plan a strategy. When we work internationally, we always consult or partner with local groups to make sure that we’re working toward the best outcome for the local population.

While I’m on the call, my Signal messages start blowing up. A lot of the partners we work with in another region of the world prefer to organize there for reasons of safety, and there’s been a cyberattack on a local media publication. Our partners are looking for some assistance in dealing with it, so I send some messages to colleagues (both at EFF and other friendly organizations) to get them the right help.

After handling some administrative tasks, it’s time for the meeting of the international working group. In that group, we discuss threats facing people outside the U.S., often in areas that are underrepresented by both U.S. and global media.

After that meeting, it's off to prep for a talk I'll be giving at an upcoming conference. There have been improvements in social media takedown transparency reporting, but there are a lot of ways to continue that progress, and a former colleague and I will be hosting a mock game show about the heroes and anti-heroes of transparency. By the time I finish that, it's nearly 11 pm my time, so it's off to bed for me, but not for everyone else!

Matthew Guariglia, Senior Policy Analyst Responsible for Government Surveillance Advocacy

My morning can sometimes start surprisingly early. This morning, a reporter I often speak to called to if I had any comments about a major change to how Amazon Ring security cameras will allow police to request access to user’s footage. I quickly try to make sense of the new changes—Amazon’s press release doesn’t say nearly enough.  Giving a statement to the press requires a brief huddle between me, EFF’s press director, and other lawyers, technologists, and activists who have worked on our Ring campaign over the last few years. Soon, we have a statement that conveys exactly what we think Amazon needs to do differently, and what users and non-users should know about this change and its impact on their rights.. About an hour after that, we turn our brief statement into a longer blog post for everyone to read. 

For the rest of the day now, in between other obligations and meetings, I take press calls or do TV interviews from curious reporters asking whether this change in policy is a win for privacy. My first meeting is with representatives of about a dozen mostly-local groups in the Bay Area, where EFF is located, about the next steps for opposing Proposition E, a ballot measure that greatly reduces the amount of oversight on the San Francisco Police Department concerning what technology they use. I send a few requests to ou