EFF Joins 18 Civil Rights Organizations Calling on Governor Hochul to Reject the Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined 18 other civil rights organizations in urging New York Governor Kathy Hochul to reject Senate Bill 9934A, also known as the New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act. The letter, penned by the coalition of groups, asserts that the legislation, while ostensibly aimed at protecting local journalism, poses a significant threat to free expression and privacy.

The bill's provisions, which compel web crawlers to divulge their identity and purpose and grant media outlets the power to subpoena unidentified automated web traffic, could potentially deanonymize and criminalize automated access to the open web. The EFF argues that this undermines the foundational architecture of the internet and stifles independent journalism by targeting "stealth crawlers" - automated tools used for various beneficial purposes such as investigative reporting, academic research, cybersecurity protection, and privacy protection tools like Privacy Badger.

The organizations highlight instances where anonymous crawling has facilitated important investigations, such as The Markup's use of anonymous crawlers to expose Amazon's potential anti-competitive practices, and ProPublica's use of automated tools to reveal Amazon's practice of directing shoppers to pricier products. Moreover, anonymous web scraping is crucial for cybersecurity professionals in monitoring the web for signs of malicious activity.

The EFF contends that laws like S9934A should focus on addressing the real technical issue of overaggressive crawling, not sweeping and potentially chilling vital public-interest research and digital privacy. The coalition is thus calling on Governor Hochul to veto the bill.