The Mozilla Blog

We’re excited to announce the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that will help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future.

Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the “analog” age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around “papers,” for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.

The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they’ll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative.

Led by Kaitlin Thaney

The project will be led by Kaitlin Thaney, a long-time open science advocate. Kaitlin helped found and manage the science program at Creative Commons, and previously worked at Digital Science, a tech company focused on research tools and incubation for science startups. She also advises policymakers on digital infrastructure, data-intensive science and education to make scientific research more collaborative, open and reproducible.

Digital literacy for scientists

Kaitlin is joined by Greg Wilson, the founder of Software Carpentry, a program that teaches basic computing skills to researchers to help them become more productive. Over the past year, Software Carpentry has run over 70 workshops for more than 2200 attendees, and is on track to double those numbers over the next 12 months. As part of the Mozilla Science Lab, Software Carpentry will explore what “digital literacy” means for scientific researchers and how these digital skills can further aid their work.

Convening a global conversation

With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Mozilla Science Lab will start by convening a broad conversation about open web approaches and skills training, working with existing tool developers and supporting a global community of researchers.

Get involved

Stay tuned for more about how you can join the conversation. In the mean time, you can:

• Learn more about the project at the Mozilla Science Wiki.
• Follow @MozillaScience and @kaythaney on Twitter.
• Follow the project’s progress on Kaitlin’s blog.

Additional Perspectives from Mozilla:
Mitchell Baker’s post, “Total Surveillance”
Ben Adida’s post, “No User is an Island”
Chris Lawrence’s post, “NSA Surveillance Revelations
are a Teachable Moment”

Last week, media reports emerged that the US government is requiring vast amounts of data from Internet and phone companies via top secret surveillance programs. The revelations, which confirm many of our worst fears, raise serious questions about individual privacy protections, checks on government power and court orders impacting some of the most popular Web services.

Today Mozilla is launching StopWatching.Us — a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations from across the political and technical spectrum calling on citizens and organizations from around the world to demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.

What’s at stake

Whenever we share information online, there’s an intuitive risk of exposure that someone we didn’t intend to share with might access it. That’s part of using an open, highly distributed, worldwide communications medium.

But there are various levels of exposure.

• There’s using a service where you interact with friends, look for new employment opportunities or just play a game, where these activities are logged by the service.
• There’s enabling geolocation on a mobile app so it can personalize your experience, thereby providing the app with data on your movements.
• There’s the unintended consequence of over-sharing on a social network.
• Then, there are more serious levels of exposure — like governments, law enforcement or intelligence agencies gaining access to our private data stored in the cloud, logs created by our Internet service providers and other companies who track things about us.

The first three are pretty well understood and users are able to take some steps to learn about these data practices through their experience using them or by referring to privacy policies and terms of service. Technology has also been getting better at providing additional controls and transparency. Mozilla, for instance, provides tools like Do Not Track, Persona and the Collusion Add-on for Firefox, among others.

However, exposures resulting from government-sponsored online surveillance are entirely separate from whether we choose to share information and what those sites say they will or will not do with our data. That’s because, at least in the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not. Mozilla hasn’t received any such order to date, but it could happen to us as we build new server-based services in the future.

There are a number of problems with this kind of electronic surveillance. First, the Internet is making it much easier to use these powers. There’s a lot more data to be had. The legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance has grown over the past few years, because the laws are written broadly. And, as users, we don’t have good ways of knowing whether the current system is being abused, because it’s all happening behind closed doors.

Get involved

When we look back at the public response to SOPA/PIPA, two Congressional anti-piracy bills, where Mozilla and other organizations asked the public to get involved, we were blown away by the response. Hundreds of thousands of people contacted their representatives with concerns over the potential impact to the Web. We saw the same thing with ACTA in the EU. We need to rekindle that energy more than ever so our elected officials take the necessary actions to illuminate how current surveillance policies are being implemented.

Mozilla believes in an Internet where we do not have to fear that everything we do is being tracked, monitored and logged by either companies or governments. And we believe in a   government whose actions are visible, transparent and accountable.

What’s unique for Mozilla is that our only commitment is to Internet users who rely on an open Web where content, imagination, trust and innovation can thrive.

We’re taking a stand for users. We want every user to take a stand, as well. StopWatching.Us

Twitter: @stopwatchingus
#stopwatchingus

A recent report by Citizen Lab uncovered that commercial spyware produced by Gamma International is designed to trick people into thinking it’s Mozilla Firefox. We’ve sent Gamma a cease and desist letter today demanding that these illegal practices stop immediately.

As an open source project trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world, defending Mozilla’s trademarks from this type of abuse is vital to our brand, our users and the continued success of our mission. Mozilla has a longstanding history of protecting users online and was named the Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy in 2012 by the Ponemon Institute. We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be – and in several cases actually have been – used by Gamma’s customers to violate citizens’ human rights and online privacy.

It’s important to note that the spyware does not affect Firefox itself, either during the installation process or when it is operating covertly on a person’s computer or mobile device. Gamma’s software is entirely separate, and only uses our brand and trademarks to lie and mislead as one of its methods for avoiding detection and deletion.

Through the work of the Citizen Lab research team, we believe Gamma’s spyware tries to give users the false impression that, as a program installed on their computer or mobile device, it’s related to Mozilla and Firefox, and is thus trustworthy both technically and in its content. This is accomplished in two ways:

1. When a user examines the installed spyware on his/her machine by viewing its properties, Gamma misrepresents its program as “Firefox.exe” and includes the properties associated with Firefox along with a version number and copyright and trademark claims attributed to “Firefox and Mozilla Developers.”
2. For an expert user who examines the underlying code of the installed spyware, Gamma includes verbatim the assembly manifest from Firefox software.

The Citizen Lab research team has provided us with samples from the following three instances that demonstrate how this misuse of our brand, trademarks and public trust is a designed feature of Gamma’s spyware products and not unique to a single customer’s deployment:

• A spyware attack in Bahrain aimed at pro-democracy activists;
• The recent discovery of Gamma’s spyware apparently in use amidst Malaysia’s upcoming General Elections; and
• A promotional demo produced by Gamma.

Each sample demonstrates the exact same pattern of falsely designating the installed spyware as originating from Mozilla. Gamma’s own brochures and promotional videos tout one of the essential features of its surveillance software is that it can be covertly deployed on the person’s system and remain undetected.

Unfortunately, Mozilla is no stranger to the misuse of our brand. We’ve fought against companies that use our trademarks to deceive users into downloading malware, providing personal information or paying for Firefox, sometimes in a highly organized and syndicated fashion. Not only are these activities illegal, but we take them seriously because they are deceptive, harm users, cause consumer confusion, and jeopardize Mozilla’s reputation.

We’re grateful for the important work of groups such as Citizen Lab, Privacy International, European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights and Reporters without Borders, and encourage anyone interested in the growing prevalence and societal implications of online surveillance to support their efforts.