Last month, we asked EFF supporters to help save Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision that has helped stem the tide of stupid software patents and abusive patent litigation. The Patent Office received hundreds of comments from you, telling it to do the right thing a … | Continue reading
Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparencyThe cause of government transparency finally broke through to the popular zeitgeist this year. It wasn’t an investigative journalism exposé or a civil rights lawsuit that did it, but a light-hearted sitcom about a Taiwanese A … | Continue reading
No excuse is needed to celebrate the civil rights icon Rev. Fred Shuttleworth. But this weekend is an especially appropriate time to recognize his contributions to First Amendment jurisprudence, and the inextricable link between modern free speech law and the civil rights movemen … | Continue reading
In his latest announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg embraces privacy and security fundamentals like end-to-end encrypted messaging. But announcing a plan is one thing. Implementing it is entirely another. And for those reading between the lines of Zuckerberg’s pivot-to-priva … | Continue reading
When the FCC announced its intention to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, Americans spoke up. When the FCC ignored the fact that most Americans support net neutrality, Americans spoke up again, asking Congress to reverse the FCC’s decision. And the Senate listened. This fight … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, OpenAI revealed an impressive language model that can generate paragraphs of believable text. It declined to fully release their research “due to concerns about malicious applications of the technology.” OpenAI released a much smaller model and technical paper … | Continue reading
When we publicly demanded that Facebook stop messing with users’ phone numbers last week, we weren’t expecting the social network to double down quite like this: By default, anyone can use the phone number that a user provides for two-factor authentication (2FA) to find that user … | Continue reading
In back-to-back hearings last week, the House and the Senate discussed what, if anything, Congress should do about online privacy. Sounds fine—until you see who they invited. Congress should be seeking out multiple, diverse perspectives. But last week, both chambers largely invit … | Continue reading
German Data Privacy Commissioner Ulrich Kelber is also a computer scientist, which makes him uniquely qualified to comment on the potential consequences of the proposed new EU Copyright Directive. The Directive will be voted on at the end of this month, and its Article 13 require … | Continue reading
Due to an editing error, a draft version of this article was published prematurely.Internet websites and forums are continuing to censor speech with adult content on their platforms to avoid running afoul of the new anti-sex trafficking law FOSTA. The measure’s vague, ambiguous l … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century.Xinjiang is China’s … | Continue reading
Three years ago, we warned of a string of dangerous new policy proposals on the horizon. Under these proposals, platforms would be forced to implement copyright bots that sniffed all of the media that users uploaded to them, deleting your uploads with no human review.It’s happeni … | Continue reading
What if we allowed some people to patent the law and then demand money from the rest of us just for following it?As anyone with a basic understanding of democratic principles can see, that is a terrible idea. In a democracy, elected representatives write laws that apply to everyo … | Continue reading
Recent elections across the Americas from the United States to Brazil have stirred fears about the impact of “fake news”. Earlier this month, EFF made a submission to the Organization of American States (OAS), the pan-American institution currently investigating the extent and i … | Continue reading
San Francisco - Technology is supposed to make our lives better, yet many big companies have products with big security and privacy holes that disrespect user control and put us all at risk. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching a new project called “Fix It Alread … | Continue reading
Today we are announcing Fix It Already, a new way to show companies we're serious about the big security and privacy issues they need to fix. We are demanding fixes for different issues from nine tech companies and platforms, targeting social media companies, operating systems, a … | Continue reading
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the creation of a new task force to monitor competition in technology markets. Given the inadequacies of federal antitrust enforcement over the past generation, we welcome the new task force and reiterate our suggestions for … | Continue reading
Update, 2:35 p.m.: The coalition of groups behind Privacy for All has grown since time of publishing. This update reflects the latest count.Privacy is a right. It is past time for California to ensure that the companies using secretive practices to make money off of our personal … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is standing with Californians demanding more control over their personal data by supporting the Privacy For All bill, which requires tech companies to get their permission to share and use private information.“All eyes are on … | Continue reading
[This is a guest post authored by Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice. It was originally published in The End of Trust (McSweeney's 54)]In December 2017, FBI agents forced Rakem Balogun and his fifteen-year-old son out of their Dallas home. They arres … | Continue reading
The good news: TLS 1.3 is available, and the protocol, which powers HTTPS and many other encrypted communications, is better and more secure than its predecessors (including SSL). The bad news: Thanks to a financial industry group called BITS, there’s a look-alike protocol brewin … | Continue reading
Last year, the U.S. Senate held a hearing about consumer privacy without a single voice for actual consumers. At the time, we were promised more hearings with more diverse voices. And while a hearing a month later with consumer advocates did seem to be a step forward, this week's … | Continue reading
It’s time for governments to confront the harmful consequences of using facial recognition technology as an instrument of surveillance. Yet law enforcement agencies across the country are purchasing face surveillance technology with insufficient oversight—despite the many ways it … | Continue reading
EFF has just filed an amicus brief in support of Google’s petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the long-running case of Oracle v. Google. The case asks whether functional aspects of computer programs are copyrightable, and involves two dangerous court opinions that he … | Continue reading
Article 13 is the on-again/off-again controversial proposal to make virtually every online community, service, and platform legally liable for any infringing material posted by their users, even very briefly, even if there was no conceivable way for the online service provider to … | Continue reading
Great news out of Washington state: a federal judge has ruled that the First Amendment protects speech on the Internet, even from anonymous speakers, and even if it’s embarrassing.EFF has been fighting this statute for a long time. It’s a prime example of how sloppy approaches to … | Continue reading
DarkMatter, the notorious cyber-mercenary firm based in the United Arab Emirates, is seeking to become approved as a top-level certificate authority in Mozilla’s root certificate program. Giving such a trusted position to this company would be a very bad idea. DarkMatter has a bu … | Continue reading
More lessons from "Facebook Research"Last week, Facebook was caught using a sketchy market research app to gobble large amounts of sensitive user activity after instructing users to alter the root certificate store on their phones. A day after, Google pulled a similar iOS “resear … | Continue reading
Patent trolls aren’t a myth. They aren’t a bedtime story. Ask a software developer—they’re likely to know someone who has been sued or otherwise threatened by one, if they haven’t been themselves.Unfortunately, the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is i … | Continue reading
Take ActionContact Luxembourg's Negotiators Today!This month, the EU hopes to conclude the Copyright in the Single Digital Market Directive, with no sign that they will improve or delete Articles 11 and 13. This is a dangerous mistake, because these articles have the power to cru … | Continue reading
Sweden: Take Action Here.Germany: Take Action Here. Luxembourg: Take Action Here.Poland: Take Action Here.The new EU Copyright Directive is progressing at an alarming rate. This week, the EU is asking its member-states to approve new negotiating positions for the final language. … | Continue reading
Every now and then we have to remind someone that it's not illegal for people to report facts that they dislike. This time, the offender is electric scooter rental company Bird Rides, Inc.Electric scooters have swamped a number of cities across the US, many of the scooters carele … | Continue reading
We’ve come a long way since we launched Encrypt the Web, our initiative to onboard the World Wide Web to HTTPS. Not only has Let’s Encrypt issued over 380 million certificates, but also nearly 85% of page loads in the United States are over HTTPS, and both figures are still on an … | Continue reading
This article was first published on Just Security.Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s counterpart to the National Security Agency (NSA), has fired the latest shot in the crypto wars. In a post to Lawfare titled Principles for a More Informed Exceptional Access … | Continue reading
There’s a lot of legitimate concern these days about Internet giants and the lack of competition in the technology sector. It’s still easy and cheap to put up a website, build an app, or organize a group of people online, but a few large corporations have outsized power over the … | Continue reading
When is software free? Is it enough that the software be licensed under a free or open license? What about patents? Software as a service? Trade secrets? What about DRM? Is software ever free?There's a saying in the software freedom movement: "if you can't open it, it's not yours … | Continue reading
end_of_trust_interior_pages_lores.pdf | Continue reading
By Dave Maass and Beryl LiptonEFF and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. We focused excl … | Continue reading
This year, we celebrated the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank. Alice made clear that generic computers do not make abstract ideas eligible for patent protection. Following the decision, district courts across the country started rejec … | Continue reading
With Election Day just hours away, we are seeing reports across the country that electronic voting machines are already inaccurately recording votes and questions are being raised about potential foreign interference after 2016. While the responsibility to deal with these issues … | Continue reading
Spot the Surveillance is a virtual reality (VR) experience that teaches people how to identify the various spying technologies that police may deploy in communities.The user is placed in a 360-degree scene in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco, where a young resid … | Continue reading
Google Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. Chrome routinely leads the pack in features for security and usability, most recently helping to drive the adoption of HTTPS. But when it comes to privacy, specifically protecting users from tracking, most of its rivals leav … | Continue reading
Iris recognition or iris scanning is the process of using visible and near-infrared light to take a high-contrast photograph of a person’s iris. It is a form of biometric technology in the same category as face recognition and fingerprinting. Advocates of iris scanning technology … | Continue reading
Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation won petitions submitted to the Library of Congress that will make it easier for people to legally remove or repair software in the Amazon Echo, in cars, and in personal digital devices, but the library refused to issue the kind … | Continue reading
Welcome to a brand new kind of whodunnit. This one has everything: an extremely popular game, a short-lived takedown, and so very many memes. The ways of the DMCA and YouTube are unknown and unknowable.Trailers are a time-tested and proven way of getting attention for a new piece … | Continue reading
In a democracy, people should have the right to read, and publish, the law. In theory, that should be easier than ever today. The Internet has vastly improved public access to the “operating system” of our government—the local, state, and federal statutes and regulations we are e … | Continue reading
Your strong support helped us persuade California’s lawmakers to do the right thing on many important technology bills debated on the chamber floors this year. With your help, EFF won an unprecedented number of victories, supporting good bills and stopping those that would have h … | Continue reading