Mozilla Vows To Fight For Online Privacy, Net Neutrality

• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, December 1, 2016

Mozilla, which recently released a mobile browser that blocks tracking, vowed today to continue advocating for online privacy.

"At Mozilla, we fight to protect privacy and security online. We believe that there must be transparency, trust and user control in cybersecurity," the company said in its 2015 annual report, unveiled Thursday.

The report cites several privacy-related initiatives over the last year, including the company's decision to weigh in on Apple's side in a highly publicized battle with the FBI over encryption. In that matter, the FBI obtained a court order requiring Apple to assist decrypting an iPhone used by a terrorist. The FBI ultimately decrypted the device without Apple's assistance. Before then, however, the companies fought over the order in court.

Mozilla and other tech companies argued in a friend-of-the-court brief that the government has no right "to commandeer a company's own engineers to undermine their products' data security features."

The company also says it will work to preserve the net neutrality rules, passed last year by the Federal Communications Commission, but faces a threat from the incoming Trump administration. Those rules prohibit broadband providers from blocking or throttling traffic, and from charging companies higher fees to prioritize delivery of their material.

"Any new administration can reconsider the issue. We hope they don’t," chief legal and business officer Denelle Dixon-Thayer writes today in a blog post. "But, if the issue is revisited -- we are all still here, and so are others who supported and fought for net neutrality."

The nonprofit is able to fund its work through various search partnerships, which made up the bulk of its $420 million revenue last year, according to its financial statement.