David Ruiz

Privacy advocate

Written work

Trained and practiced as a journalist, much of my work involves words. Below is a selection of pieces from my time as a legal affairs journalist (The Recorder), a policy analyst and activist (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and a cybersecurity and online privacy advocate and writer (Malwarebytes).

Malwarebytes

“In the weeks since the Supreme Court of the United States removed a nationwide right to choose to have an abortion, millions of Americans have been forced to relearn what is and isn’t safe to do online, as their actions, words, and choices—many of which are tracked digitally—could potentially be used as evidence of wrongdoing in the future.”

“The threats and dangers posed by this conflict will be borne by the combatants and the people of Ukraine, and they are in our thoughts. Our collective priority must be people’s physical safety, but Russia’s assault could also produce a range of cybersecurity-related risks that organizations and people will need to protect themselves against, starting today.”

“Importantly, ‘killware’ fails to recognize that, already, attacks on computers, machines, devices, and networks have a dramatic impact on the people who use them. Ransomware attacks already cause tremendous emotional and mental harm to the people tasked with cleaning them up. Online scams already ruin people’s lives by emptying their bank accounts.”

“Nine months ago, Malwarbytes recommitted itself to detecting invasive monitoring apps that can lead to the excessive harm of women—most commonly known as stalkerware. We pledged to raise public awareness, reach out to advocacy groups, and share samples and intelligence with other security vendors.

Now, for International Women’s Day (March 8), we decided to take measure of our efforts, examining the effects of our campaign and outreach, as well as the formation of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, of which we were a founding member. Have we actually made a difference?”

“After we recommitted our staunch opposition to this type of malware—called stalkerware—we received questions about something else: Parental monitoring apps.

The capabilities between the two often overlap.”

The above story won the “Best Blog Post” award from the Content Marketing Awards 2020 competition

“Secure messaging is supposed to be just that—secure. That means no backdoors, strong encryption, private messages staying private, and, for some users, the ability to securely communicate without giving up tons of personal data.

So, when news broke that scandal-ridden, online privacy pariah Facebook would expand secure messaging across its Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram apps, a broad community of cryptographers, lawmakers, and users asked: Wait, what?“

The above story achieved a “finalist” ranking for the “Best Feature Article – Digital” category from the Content Marketing Awards 2020 competition

EFF

“Despite… renewed rhetoric, most experts continue to agree that exceptional access, no matter how you implement it, weakens security. The terminology might have changed, but the essential question has not: should technology companies be forced to develop a system that inherently harms their users? The answer hasn’t changed either: no.”

“There’s a new, proposed backdoor to our data, which would bypass our Fourth Amendment protections to communications privacy. It is built into a dangerous bill called the CLOUD Act, which would allow police at home and abroad to seize cross-border data without following the privacy rules where the data is stored.”

“Newly-minted FBI Director Christopher Wray threw out several justifications for the continued, warrantless government search of American communications. He’s wrong on all accounts.”

The Recorder

Articles only accessible through paywall

“Ever since employees began sharing too much information on Twitter and Facebook, employers have found reasons to fire them.”

“Expanding to more than 300 cities throughout 57 countries requires a little legal work. So does raising a couple billion dollars. To carry that load, ride-hailing service Uber has built a 43-lawyer legal department almost overnight.”

“Google Inc.’s lawyers are not afraid of change. And they can’t be, not at a company that is creating or entering new businesses, expanding around the globe and hit with novel litigation and regulatory challenges seemingly every month. And now, of course, the company’s structure is undergoing a transformation, and so too the legal department.”

“At Google, Apple, Facebook and HP, more than 96 percent of outside counsel in local open matters are white or Asian-American, and less than a third are women.”