On June 23, Amnesty International—along with IFEX, Human Rights Watch, FIDH, and seven other organizations—issued a joint statement on the “existential threat” faced by Egyptian civil society. In recent months, the statement reads:Many people working with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been detained and ill-treated, charged with...
As the debate over the future of the DMCA safe harbors heats up, the US Copyright Office is proposing a plan that could undermine those safe harbors much sooner.
One of the myriad conditions of DMCA safe harbor protection from copyright liability (protection on which thousands of intermediaries...
Net Neutrality’s Opponents in Congress Are Determined to Defund, Stall, and Hamstring the FCC Internet users recently enjoyed a historic victory in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet Order was upheld...
EFF has observed an alarming trend: when certain parties face challenges in attempting to monetize their contributions to copyrighted works, lawmakers often attempt to address it by handing out new copyright-like veto powers. We've dubbed this trend "copyright creep", and it's running rampant all over the world.
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In a dangerously flawed decision unsealed today, a federal district court in Virginia ruled that a criminal defendant has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his personal computer, located inside his home. According to the court, the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual's...
Rhode Island legislators recently decided not to advance a bill that would have made that state’s bad “anti-hacking” law even worse. This is good news. But the struggle continues against other vague and overbroad computer crime laws. As EFF previously explained, this Rhode Island bill was a...
You spoke, and the California Legislature listened. We’re happy to report that A.B. 2880 was amended in the State Senate to remove the dangerous sections that EFF and over 25 other organizations opposed. Your messages to the Legislature were vital to this effort.
Update June 22, 2016: The Senate failed to pass an amendment to expand the FBI's National Security Letter powers and to make the "lone wolf" provision of the Patriot Act permanent; however, the amendment will probably be voted on again soon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell switched his vote...
It's Not Too Late to Write to Congress About the Disastrous Rule Change What happens when you try to push a dangerous policy through without the Internet noticing? The Internet fights back.
A few days ago, we warned of an impending rule change that...
Today at the OECDMinisterial Meeting on the Digital Economy in Mexico, the Global Commission on Internet Governance released its final report, One Internet. Despite its important-sounding name, the Commission is not an official body, but a think tank convened in 2014 by the Center for...
It’s time to lift the cloak of secrecy that has until now shielded the NSA from judicial scrutiny. EFF served the agency with information requests late last week in Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s signature case challenging government surveillance. Since we filed the case in 2008, leaks about government...
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Tor Project, and dozens of other organizations are calling today on citizens and website operators to take action to block a new rule pushed by the U.S. Justice Department that would greatly expand the government’s ability to hack users’ computers and interfere with...
EFF celebrates the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In Alice, the court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer.
After hurdling procedural barriers, a congressional attempt to protect privacy and encryption failed on the House floor yesterday, falling short of a majority by a mere 24 votes.
Warrants are not difficult to secure when appropriate. They prevent the government from abusing its powers, as it repeatedly...
