Electronic Frontier Foundation Mission Statement


[editor's note: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
provided support for Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility to organize both the large conference on
"Computers, Freedom and Privacy" in San Francisco in March '91
and a public policy roundtable with 50 invited participants on
"Civil Liberties and the Electronic Frontier" in Washington,
D.C. in February '91.]


A new world is arising in the vast web of digital, electronic media which connect us. Computer-based communication media like electronic mail and computer conferencing are becoming the basis of new forms of community. THese communities without a single, fixed geographical location comprise the first settlements on an electronic frontier.

While well-established legal principles and cultural norms give structure and coherence to users of conventional media like newspapers, books, and telephones, the new digital media do not so easily fit into existing frameworks. Conflicts come about as the law struggles to define its application in a context where fundamental notions of speech, property, and place take profoundly enw forms. People sense both the promise and the threat inherent in new computer and communications technologies, even as they struggle to master or simply cope with them in the workplace and the home.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been established to help civilize the electronic frontier, to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with our society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication.

To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:

* Engage in and support educational activities which
increase popular understanding of the opportunities and
challenge posed by developments in computing and
telecommunications.

* Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of
the issues underlying free and open telecommunications,
and support the creation of legal and structural
approaches which will ease the assimilation of these
new technologies by society.

* Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues
arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new
computer-based communications media. Support
litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect,
and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of
computing and telecommunications technology.

* Encourage and support the development of new tools
which will endow non-technical users with full and easy
access to computer-based telecommunications.

For more information contact:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation
One Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 864-1550