In response to the rollback of federal network neutrality protections, this year more than 20 states have taken up the mantle of protector of a free and open Internet. Washington has already passed a law and Oregon’s waits to be enacted. Not to be outdone, California has three bills pending...
The State Department has alarmingly declared that it wants to collect social media information from all visa applicants. This appears to be an expansion of a 2017 program that sought social media information only from a subset of initially suspicious visa applicants. This is also the latest effort in a...
EFF along with 93 civil society organizations from across the globe today sent a letter to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland. The letter requests transparency and meaningful civil society participation in the Council of Europe’s (CoE) negotiations of the draft Second Additional...
The general rule in patent law is that each country has its own patent system. If you want damages for sales in the United States, you need a U.S. patent. If you want damages for sales in New Zealand, you need to get a New Zealand patent, and so on....
The recent omnibus bill passed by Congress contains a nugget of good news for those interested in access to publicly funded research.Open access activists have long been asking for reports by the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, to be made publicly and easily available. CRS creates a vast array of...
In a disappointing and deeply divided opinion released today, the California Supreme Court upheld a state law law mandating DNA collection from arrestees. A lower court had held this law violated the privacy and search and seizure protections guaranteed under the California constitution. Today’s decision lets this flawed law...
Since the invention of the remote control, rightsholders and audience have fought a war over ads. The market for tools to skip, mask or mute ads holds publishers and marketers to account: they know that if their ads get too obnoxious, their audiences will be motivated to make them disappear....
Digital Freedom Initiative will host the first of its new monthly Cryptoparty series, scheduled to take place on the second Monday of each month, 7 PM, at Guide to Kulchur.
The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) last week released a new report that supports what EFF has long suspected: that the FBI’s legal fight with Apple in 2016 to create backdoor access to a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone was more focused on creating legal precedent...
A local organization in the Electronic Frontier Alliance (not EFF) will host this event:Cypurr CryptopartyThe recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has raised a lot of questions for Facebook users: How do Facebook and third parties trade my data? In what ways have I given my data...
Despite the full-throated objections of the cybersecurity community, the Georgia legislature has passed a bill that would open independent researchers who identify vulnerabilities in computer systems to prosecution and up to a year in jail.EFF calls upon Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to veto S.B. 315 as soon as it...
One of EFF’s strengths is that we bring together technologists, lawyers, activists, and policy wonks. And we’ve been around long enough to know that while good technology is necessary for success, it is rarely sufficient. Good policy and people who will adhere to it are also crucial. People write and...
