For decades, journalists, activists and lawyers who work on human rights issues around the world have been harassed, and even detained, by repressive and authoritarian regimes seeking to halt any assistance they provide to human rights defenders. Digital communication technology … | Continue reading
Stupid Patent of the MonthFor years, the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) has been a magnet for lawsuits filed by patent trolls—companies who make money with patent threats, rather than selling products or services. Technology companies large and small were sued in EDTX every wee … | Continue reading
EFF is proud to announce our newest member of our already star-studded advisory board: Michael R. Nelson. Michael has worked on Internet-related global public policy issues for more than 30 years, including working on technology policy in the U.S. Senate and the Clinton White Hou … | Continue reading
EFF has joined a coalition of civil rights and civil liberties organizations to support a California bill that would prohibit law enforcement from applying face recognition and other biometric surveillance technologies to footage collected by body-worn cameras.About five years ag … | Continue reading
If you rely on shared biked or scooters, your location privacy is at risk. Cities across the United States are currently pushing companies that operate shared mobility services like Jump, Lime, and Bird to share individual trip data for any and all trips taken within their bounda … | Continue reading
EFF and Open Rights Group today submitted formal comments to the British Treasury, urging restraint in applying anti-money-laundering regulations to the publication of open-source software.The UK government sought public feedback on proposals to update its financial regulations p … | Continue reading
Sacramento, California—On Tuesday, June 11, at 8:30 am, EFF Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Nathan Sheard will testify before the California Senate Public Safety Committee in support of a measure to prohibit law enforcement from using facial recognition in body cams.Following San F … | Continue reading
Today, EFF is publishing a new white paper, "Caught in the Net: The Impact of 'Extremist' Speech Regulations on Human Rights Content." The paper is a joint effort of EFF, Syrian Archive, and Witness and was written in response to the Christchurch Call to Action. This paper analyz … | Continue reading
Today, Apple is one of the largest, most profitable companies on Earth, but in the early 2000s, the company was fighting for its life. Microsoft's Windows operating system was ascendant, and Microsoft leveraged its dominance to ensure that every Windows user relied on its Microso … | Continue reading
This week the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued an update to its 2016 report on the FBI’s use of face recognition. The takeaway, which they also shared during a Congressional House Oversight Committee hearing: the FBI now has access to 641 million photos—inclu … | Continue reading
Thirty years ago today, the Chinese Communist Party used military force to suppress a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration by thousands of university students. Hundreds (some estimates go as high as thousands) of innocent protesters were killed. Every year, people around the worl … | Continue reading
At a Senate hearing today, EFF Staff Attorney Alex Moss gave formal testimony [PDF] about how to make sure our patent laws promote innovation, not abusive litigation.Moss described how Section 101 of the U.S. patent laws serves a crucial role in protecting the public. She urged t … | Continue reading
Washington D.C.—EFF Staff Attorney Alex Moss will tell U.S. lawmakers today that proposed changes to Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Act—the section that defines, and limits, what can get a patent—will upend years of case law that ensures only true inventions, not basic practices … | Continue reading
San Francisco – Social media companies have long struggled with what to do about extremist content that advocates for or celebrates terrorism and violence. But the dominant current approach, which features overbroad and vague policies and practices for removing content, is alread … | Continue reading
Advertising industry lobbyists have long argued that tracking users is necessary to power a publishing industry that makes its content available to users for “free”— despite a heavy privacy cost. Right now, a majority of publishers make money by working with advertisers that coll … | Continue reading
The California legislature in 2011 passed a law to remove state and local authority over the broadband access market to “ensure a vibrant and competitive open Internet that allows California's technology businesses to continue to flourish and contribute to economic development th … | Continue reading
Great news for EFF’s Threat Lab: Craig Newmark Philanthropies has donated $300,000 to support its work to protect journalists, sources, and others against targeted malware attacks.EFF identifies and tracks the rise of malware attacks, which primarily affect journalists and their … | Continue reading
Recently, we reported on the problems with a proposal from Senators Coons and Tillis to rewrite Section 101 of the Patent Act. Now, those senators have released a draft bill of changes they want to make. It’s not any better.Section 101 prevents monopolies on basic research tools … | Continue reading
The Federal Trade Commission is likely to announce that Facebook’s many violations of users’ privacy in recent years also violated its consent decree with the commission. In its financial filings, Facebook has indicated that it expects to be fined between $3 and $5 billion by the … | Continue reading
Since the California legislature passed a 2015 law requiring cops to get a search warrant before probing our devices, rifling through our online accounts, or tracking our phones, EFF has been on a quest to examine court filings to determine whether law enforcement agencies are fo … | Continue reading
A Motherboard investigation revealed in January how any cellphone users’ real-time location could be obtained for $300. The pervasiveness of the practice, coupled with the extreme invasion of people’s privacy, is alarming.The reporting showed there is a vibrant market for locatio … | Continue reading
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held its first hearing on a major infrastructure bill called the “Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s (LIFT) America Act,” which authorizes $45 billion in broadband infrastructure money. Such a massive infusion of federal dollars would re … | Continue reading
The century-old tradition that the Espionage Act not be used against journalistic activities has now been broken. Seventeen new charges were filed yesterday against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. These new charges make clear that he is being prosecuted for basic journalistic t … | Continue reading
Foreign adversaries and domestic dirty tricksters can secretly hack our nation’s electronic voting systems. That’s why information security experts agree we must go back to basics: paper ballots. We also need “risk-limiting audits,” meaning mandatory post-election review of a sam … | Continue reading
Digital ads—and control of the user data that makes them so profitable—are the heart of the consumer privacy debate. Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “Understanding the Digital Advertising Ecosystem and the Impact of Data Privacy and Co … | Continue reading
Nominations are now open for the 2019 Barlows to be presented at EFF's 28th Annual Pioneer Award Ceremony. Established in 1992, the Pioneer Award Ceremony recognizes leaders who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of technology. In honor of Internet visionary, Grate … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, a critical free speech law in Texas came under attack. Texas bill H.B. 2730, as introduced, would have gutted the Texas Citizens Protection Act, or TCPA.The TCPA has been one of the strongest laws in the nation protecting citizens against SLAPPs. SLAPP is a sho … | Continue reading
A fight over unmasking an anonymous Reddit commenter has turned into a significant win for online speech and fair use. A federal court has affirmed the right to share copyrighted material for criticism and commentary, and shot down arguments that Internet users from outside the U … | Continue reading
Fresno – On Wednesday, May 22, at 9 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will argue that criminal defendants have a right to review and evaluate the source code of forensic DNA analysis software programs used to create evidence against them. The case, California v. Johnso … | Continue reading
Today we are launching TOSsed Out, a new iteration of EFF’s longstanding work in tracking and documenting the ways that Terms of Service (TOS) and other speech moderating rules are unevenly and unthinkingly applied to people by online services. As a result of these practices, pos … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched TOSsed Out, a project to highlight the vast spectrum of people silenced by social media platforms that inconsistently and erroneously apply terms of service (TOS) rules.TOSsed Out will track and publicize the w … | Continue reading
Sen. Ron Wyden’s new proposal to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act of 2019, takes a much needed step forward by requiring a return to paper ballots.The bill forcefully addresses a grave threat to American democracy—out … | Continue reading
When social media platforms enforce their content moderation rules unfairly, it affects everyone’s ability to speak out online. Unfair and inconsistent online censorship magnifies existing power imbalances, giving people who already have the least power in society fewer places wh … | Continue reading
It has taken more than a year, but the California Attorney General’s Office has implemented steps to protect immigrants from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies that abuse the state’s public safety network, the California Law Enforcement Telecommunic … | Continue reading
Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh published a report exploring the potential Constitutional concerns should aggressive regulators attempt to crack down on the coders developing ideas for cryptocurrencies and decentralized exchanges.For long-time readers of the EFF blog, some of … | Continue reading
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that consumers who buy apps through the Apple app store are direct purchasers and may seek antitrust relief under well-settled law. On the one hand, the decision carries major implications not only for Apple, but also for other companies th … | Continue reading
American cities across the country face the same problem: major private Internet providers, facing little in the way of competition, refusing to invest and upgrade their networks to all residents. But not every city has gone through the trouble to analyze the problem, come up wit … | Continue reading
If you are one of WhatsApp’s billion-plus users, you may have read that on Monday the company announced that it had found a vulnerability. This vulnerability allowed an attacker to remotely upload malicious code onto a phone by sending packets of data that look like phone calls f … | Continue reading
If a company disclosed information about your cable subscription without your permission, you already have the legal right to take them to court. Why should it be any different if a company ignores your requests about how to treat some of your most private information—where you g … | Continue reading
In the wake of the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed fifty-one people and injured more than forty others, the New Zealand government has released a plan to combat terrorist and violent content online, dubbed the Christchurch Call. The Call ha … | Continue reading
Two Senators are working on a bill that will make it much easier to get, and threaten lawsuits over, worthless patents. That will make small businesses even more vulnerable to patent trolls, and raise prices for consumers. We need to speak up now and tell Congress this is the wro … | Continue reading
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted today by 8-to-1 to make San Francisco the first major city in the United States to ban government use of face surveillance technology. This historic measure applies to all city departments. The Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance also t … | Continue reading
A federal district court in San Francisco has ruled strongly in favor of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records of how and when the FBI lifts gag orders issued with National Security Letters (NSLs). These records will provide a window into the FBI’s use of a highl … | Continue reading
San Francisco – The creator of popular post-fight commentary videos on YouTube is demanding an end to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)’s unfair practice of sending takedown notices based on bogus copyright claims. The creator, John MacKay, is represented by the Electronic … | Continue reading
The Internet, and social media in particular, is uniquely designed to promote free expression, so much so that the Supreme Court has recognized social media as the “most important places” for speech and sharing viewpoints. Like most of us. government agencies and officials have c … | Continue reading
Californians have successfully pushed the state's legislature to restore two-thirds of the 2015 Open Internet Order through state laws. Stopping legislation from Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez—backed by AT&T and Comcast (A.B. 1366)—is the final piece to bringing back those critic … | Continue reading
A member of the U.S. House of Representatives last week called for a bill outlawing Americans from making cryptocurrency purchases, aligning with anti-cryptocurrency policies in countries such as Iran and Egypt. There is no language for this potential bill or any explanation of w … | Continue reading