Before there was Big Tech, there was "adversarial interoperability": when someone decides to compete with a dominant company by creating a product or service that "interoperates" (works with) its offerings.In tech, "network effects" can be a powerful force to maintain market domi … | Continue reading
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, aka the CASE Act. This was without any hearings for experts to explain the huge flaws in the bill as it’s currently written. And flaws there are.We’ve seen some version of the CASE … | Continue reading
The latest release of Privacy Badger gives it the power to detect and block a new class of evasive, pervasive third-party trackers, including Google Analytics. Most blocking tools, like uBlock Origin, Ghostery, and Firefox’s native blocking mode (using Disconect’s block lists), u … | Continue reading
The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust held its second hearing on whether our antitrust laws and their enforcement are keeping up with the Internet marketplace. Notably, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple were present as witnesses along with a range of experts … | Continue reading
At EFF, a lot of the imagery we produce has a dystopian flavor — and with good reason. We are currently fighting battles against increased use of facial recognition tech, IMSI-catchers, and expansive copyright laws that may punish ordinary users with thousands of dollars in fines … | Continue reading
Boston, Massachusetts—On Thursday, July 18, at 3:00 p.m., lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU will ask a federal judge to decide that the constitutional rights of 11 travelers were violated by the suspicionless, warrantless searches of their electron … | Continue reading
SAN FRANCISCO — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP filed a class action lawsuit today on behalf of AT&T customers in California to stop the telecom giant and two data location aggregators from allowing numerous entities—including … | Continue reading
Some lawmakers, seeking to hold companies accountable for the way they collect and profit from our personal information, are pushing a new idea: requiring companies to report a dollar value for the data they collect from us.Some frame this reporting as a first step towards requir … | Continue reading
At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA). BnetD … | Continue reading
In a long-awaited ruling, the Second Circuit has found that the replies section on President Trump’s Twitter @realDonaldTrump is a public forum and that the President cannot block his critics from reading his tweets or participating in the forum merely because his dislikes the vi … | Continue reading
At EFF we put security and privacy first. That's why over three years ago we launched EFF's Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Disclosure Program is a set of guidelines on how security researchers can tell EFF about bugs in the software we develop, like HTTPS Everywhe … | Continue reading
EFF has been fighting against DRM and the laws behind it for a decade and a half, intervening in the US Broadcast Flag, the UN Broadcasting Treaty, the European DVB CPCM standard, the W3C EME standard and many other skirmishes, battles and even wars over the years. With that long … | Continue reading
Everyone in the tech world claims to love interoperability—the technical ability to plug one product or service into another product or service—but interoperability covers a lot of territory, and depending on what's meant by interoperability, it can do a lot, a little, or nothing … | Continue reading
The Senate Judiciary Committee intends to vote on the CASE Act, legislation that would create a brand new quasi-court for copyright infringement claims. We have expressed numerous concerns with the legislation, and serious problems inherent with the bill have not been remedied by … | Continue reading
The California Senate Judiciary Committee heard five bills on Tuesday that EFF and other privacy advocates strongly opposed. These measures, backed by big business and the tech industry, would have eviscerated the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a landmark privacy law pas … | Continue reading
2019-06-27_25_memorandum_opinion-1.pdf | Continue reading
A Senate subcommittee recently concluded three days of testimony about a proposed patent bill that, we have explained, would be a terrible idea. Proponents of the bill keep saying that Section 101 of U.S. patent law, which bars patents on things like abstract ideas and laws of na … | Continue reading
Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Libra has garnered attention from lawmakers and consumer groups since it was announced last month. And it’s no wonder: with a wince-inducing history of data disclosure scandals, the Facebook brand has become synonymous with ineptitude at protecting p … | Continue reading
It’s EFF’s 29th birthday, and we need you to help us celebrate! For two weeks only, become an EFF member for just $20 and get a set of Internet freedom-themed enamel pins to help you remember that together we’ve got this.Each summer we renew EFF’s promise to defend the Internet’s … | Continue reading
Our phones hold a plethora of important, private information about our personal lives, and it’s not just their contents that matter: the data that our phones exchange with cell towers during basic connection procedures can reveal critical, and private, information. Perhaps you ca … | Continue reading
Table of ContentsSection 1: Introduction Section 2: Necessary background info Section 3: Overview of attacks Section 3.1: Basic IMSI-catcher Section 3.2: Communication interception ... | Continue reading
After a long dormant stretch, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has signaled it’s ready to tackle another big review of government surveillance and overreach. The PCLOB, an independent agency in the executive branch, last published a 2014 report on warrantle … | Continue reading
San Francisco—On Monday, June 8, at 11 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, Common Sense Media, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and Consumer Reports will hold a conference call to brief reporters about five bills designed to weaken consumer privacy protections th … | Continue reading
The city council of Somerville, Massachusetts voted unanimously last week to become the first city on the East Coast to ban government face surveillance. It is encouraging to see cities across the country take this proactive step in anticipating the surveillance problems on the h … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, the UK government produced the “Online Harms White Paper,” creating a plan for a “system of accountability and oversight for tech companies.” The draft scheme put forth by the government is flawed, and these flaws prompted EFF and OTI to respond to the question … | Continue reading
by John Perry Barlow Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.We … | Continue reading
A federal judge has ruled that litigation can go forward to determine whether Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act violates the First Amendment as applied. EFF brought this litigation on behalf of security researcher Matt Green, technologist bunnie Huang, and bunn … | Continue reading
In 2002, Lexmark was one of the leading printer companies in the world. A division of IBM—the original tech giant—Lexmark was also a pioneer in the now-familiar practice of locking customers in to expensive "consumables," like the carbon powder that laser-printers fuse to paper t … | Continue reading
Communities and lawmakers across the country are waking up to the fact that using face recognition for government surveillance is a troubling trend, particularly when used with cameras that police officers wear. On Thursday, Axon—a major police body-worn camera maker—added its vo … | Continue reading
Just as the Trump administration has signaled its interest in a permanent “clean” reauthorization of the Patriot Act’s phone surveillance provision, the NSA proves once again that it is not to be trusted with these tools. New documents obtained by the ACLU and reported in the Wal … | Continue reading
Communities called for police officers to wear cameras with the hope that doing so would improve police accountability, not further mass surveillance. But today, we stand at a crossroads. Face recognition technology is now capable of being interfaced with body-worn cameras in rea … | Continue reading
A California legislative committee today voted to direct the State Auditor to launch a probe into the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) by law enforcement agencies. The audit will include the first comprehensive statewide survey of which agencies use this surveillanc … | Continue reading
There’s been quite a bit of media hype about the improvements 5G is set to supposedly bring to users, many of which are no more than telecom talking points. One aspect of the conversation that’s especially important to get right is whether or not 5G will bring much-needed securit … | Continue reading
This month, in many parts of the world, the LGBTQ+ community is celebrating Pride and, both online and off, the tech industry has paid lip service to supporting the community. Many social media companies participate in Pride parades or offer photo filters or other digital swag fo … | Continue reading
In December of 2016, the city of San Francisco boldly enacted the “Occupant’s Right to Choose Communications Services Provider” ordinance (also known as Article 52) that hinders a payola scheme cooked up between big cable companies like Comcast and landlords. In just a few short … | Continue reading
In response to the looming threat of mass deportations, EFF has sent a letter to California’s Department of Justice (DOJ) asking it to enforce the standing prohibition on using the state’s law enforcement network for immigration enforcement.In February 2019, the DOJ updated its r … | Continue reading
The House Intelligence Committee held a hearing earlier this month examining the issue of “deepfakes,” a term coined to describe images or videos created with a machine learning algorithm that allows people to make false footage that appears real. There is real potential for fake … | Continue reading
Sacramento – On Wednesday, June 26, at 10 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to approve an audit on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPR) by state law enforcement.ALPRs are camera systems that scan the license … | Continue reading
Update December 17, 2015: Added an explanation of how to encrypt Chrome Sync data so that students can take advantage of Chrome Sync without sharing their browsing history and other personal information with Google, and pointed out that enabling autofill and password saving is OK … | Continue reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been opposing A.B. 1366, legislation by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, which would renew a law that effectively shields a huge part of the telecommunications industry from state and local regulation. Comcast and AT&T law backed this law, Pu … | Continue reading
Despite its name, Sen. Josh Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (PDF) would make the Internet less safe for free expression, not more. It would violate the First Amendment by allowing a government agency to strip platforms of legal protection based on their decisi … | Continue reading
Massachusetts has a long history of standing up for liberty. Right now, it has the opportunity to become a national leader in fighting invasive government surveillance. Lawmakers need to hear from the people of Massachusetts to say they oppose government use of face surveillance. … | Continue reading
The NSA has used Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to justify collecting and storing millions of Americans’ online communications. Now, the House of Representatives has a chance to pull the plug on funding for Section 702 unless the government agrees to limit the reach of th … | Continue reading
Strong privacy legislation in the United States is possible, necessary, and long overdue. EFF emphasizes the following concrete recommendations for proposed legislation regarding consumer data privacy.Three Top PrioritiesFirst, we outline three of our biggest priorities: avoiding … | Continue reading
Under the bipartisan Protecting Data at the Border Act, border officers would be required to get a warrant before searching a traveler’s electronic device. Last month, the bill was re-introduced into the U.S. Senate by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). It is co- … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a federal appeals court today to make public a ruling that reportedly forbade the Justice Department from forcing Facebook to break the encryption of a communications service for users.Media widely reported last fall that a f … | Continue reading
It should be clear now that messing around with Section 101 of the Patent Act is a bad idea. A Senate subcommittee has just finished hearing testimony about a bill that would wreak havoc on the patent system. Dozens of witnesses have testified, including EFF Staff Attorney Alex M … | Continue reading
San Francisco and Tunis, Tunisia—While social media platforms are increasingly giving users the opportunity to appeal decisions to censor their posts or shut down their accounts, very few platforms comprehensively commit to notifying users that their content has been removed in t … | Continue reading