Today is the start of my last week as an employee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I will be leaving after nearly 15 years as EFF’s President and Executive Director, having started as a Staff Attorney back in 1992. As I wrap up things here, I’ve been thinking a lot about where we’ve been and where we are now, and I thought it would be fun to share some of my reflections in a final blog post. EFF was founded in July of 1990 in response to a series of raids on small bulletin board systems (BBSs) that were believed…
Author: EFFSource
We have known for some time that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community looks to find and exploit vulnerabilities in commercial software for surveillance purposes. As part of its reluctant, fitful transparency efforts after the Snowden leaks, the government has even officially acknowledged that it sometimes uses so-called zero-days. These statements are intended to reassure the public that the government nearly always discloses vulnerabilities to software vendors, and that any decision to instead exploit the vulnerability for intelligence purposes is a thoroughly considered one. But now, through documents EFF has obtained from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit,…
Today, EFF filed a second round of comments to the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) on its proposed regulatory rules for digital currencies like Bitcoin. EFF, the Internet Archive, and reddit filed initial joint comments to NYDFS back in October 2014, opposing the first draft of the “BitLicense” proposal. Thousands of concerned EFF members and friends also used our website to send in comments. In response to the deluge of public comments received on the initial regulations, the Department issued revised regulations on February 25, 2015. But while the second draft of the BitLicense proposal is better,…
Promising public access legislation FASTR (Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act) has been re-introduced by a bipartisan coalition in Congress. Lawmakers now have an important opportunity to strengthen and expand rules that allow taxpayers to freely read articles resulting from research their tax dollars support. EFF continues to encourage legislators to pass this bill as an important step forward—though there are still some measures to improve. Take action to support FASTR right now. Shortly after FASTR was initially introduced in 2013, the White House released a directive requiring the results of research funded by major federal government entities…
A letter sent from major tech companies and civil society groups demanded Congress end the mass collection of calling records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act before an upcoming June 1 expiration date. The letter was signed by the Reform Government Surveillance coalition; which represents major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo; and, privacy groups like ACLU and EFF. Specifically, the letter urges a clear, strong, and effective end to bulk collection practices under the USA PATRIOT Act, including under the Section 215 records authority and the Section 214 authority regarding pen registers and trap & trace devices. …
This week, on the edges of RightsCon Southeast Asia in Manila, Philippines, digital rights groups from around the world came together for two days of intensive work to finalize a new, ambitious standard to safeguard freedom of expression and innovation online. The approach the document takes to further these objectives is by focusing on the liability of Internet intermediaries—such as search engines, web hosts, social networks, domain hosts and ISPs—for online content of their users. Hence the document, officially launched today to applause from delegates of every continent, is named the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability. The six simple principles…
New ‘Best Practice’ Roadmap to Protect Rights and Promote Innovation Manila – An international coalition launched the “Manila Principles on Internet Liability” today—a roadmap for the global community to protect online freedom of expression and innovation around the world. “All communication across the Internet is facilitated by intermediaries: service providers, social networks, search engines, and more. These services are all routinely asked to take down content, and their policies for responding are often muddled, heavy-handed, or inconsistent. That results in censorship and the limiting of people’s rights,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm, who helped…
Facebook recently updated its community standards. As the company noted in the announcement accompanying the change, their “policies and standards themselves are not changing,” but that they wanted to provide more clarity to a set of existing rules that have often been misunderstood by users. While some of the changes provide significantly more detail as to the reasoning behind certain content restrictions, others fall short. And unfortunately, the updated standards do very little to solve the continuing problem of account suspensions for “real names” violations. “Real Names” Even in the last week and a half Facebook has continued to suspend…
When does an online fantasy cross the line into criminal conspiracy? That’s the issue the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is currently weighing in United States v. Gilberto Valle, the so-called “cannibal cop” case. EFF filed an amicus brief in support of Valle today, arguing that finding him guilty of conspiracy based on his online statements would put us in the scary realm of “thoughtcrime.” Valle was a New York City police officer charged with and convicted of both conspiracy to kidnap and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). Earlier this month, we filed a separate amicus brief in…
Last week, the ACLU filed a welcome additional challenge to the NSA’s warrantless Internet backbone surveillance (aka “Upstream” surveillance) on behalf of Wikimedia and a number of other media and human rights organizations. We applaud all of those involved in bringing the case. It adds another avenue of attack on one of the NSA’s most audacious programs—tapping into the very backbone of the Internet and thereby putting all of our online activities under scrutiny. Wikimedia, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, succinctly explained in a blog post why the NSA’s “collect it all” mentality is dangerous: it forces Wikipedia users to…
Government agencies sure love their black markers. For transparency activists, receiving overly redacted documents is a guilty pleasure. Sure, we’d all prefer to have the records unmarred by secrecy (except for narrow occasions, such as when the black-outs legitimately protect people’s privacy), but sometimes those redactions are the first indication that we’ve hit pay dirt. Other times, these redactions provide comic relief. In anticipation of Sunshine Week, EFF called for the public to submit the most absurd redactions they’ve seen for for The Foilies, our new “awards” for shenanigans in the Freedom of Information process. The big takeaway from the…
The Supreme Court took a major step in cutting back on abstract software patents last June when it issued its landmark ruling in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. In essence, the court said that abstract ideas implemented by conventional computer process are not eligible for patent protection. Since then, the PTO has attempted to write guidance applying the law to pending patent applications. Unfortunately, the PTO has floundered and continues to grant far too many invalid patents. This week EFF filed public comments asking the Office to do more to ensure its examiners apply the new law. In our comments,…
Last year, the current President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker, declared that his number one priority was to “create a digital single market for consumers and businesses,” in which “consumers can access music, movies and sports events on their electronic devices wherever they are in Europe and regardless of borders”. This is a dream that many Europeans share, and is reflected in the draft report for the European Parliament put together by Julia Reda, which EFF commented on last month. Reda’s proposals to the Commission provide a road-map for how to get from here to there—from a convoluted system…
When was the last time you can remember your city government asking for feedback on privacy? What about the last time you could comment on privacy online, rather than attending a meeting? If you are a resident of Oakland, CA, you can comment right now on how you’d like to see the city handle the recommendations of the Domain Awareness Center Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Privacy and Data Retention (aka the DAC Privacy Policy Committee). These recommendations will be considered by the Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee (PSC) on April 14, and the PSC will pass its recommendations…
EFF is encouraging Canadians to join together tomorrow for a day of action against a dangerous bill that’s navigating through the Canadian legislature and threatening to strip its citizens of their rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, introduces a wide range of sweeping changes to how the Canadian government handles its national security and anti-terrorism efforts. The bill just passed its second reading in the conservative-led House of Commons in late February and the government is now hastily rushing to pass it with less than two weeks of debate. On the surface, this flawed bill seeks to…
Today, the FCC published its new order [PDF] on net neutrality. As promised, the rules start by putting net neutrality on the right legal footing, which means they have a much stronger chance of surviving the inevitable legal challenge. This is the culmination of years of work by public interest advocates and a massive outpouring of public support over the past year. Make no mistake, this is a win for Team Internet! Now, what about the rules themselves? We’re still reviewing, but there’s much to appreciate, including bright line rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of Internet traffic. For…
Yesterday, a jury found that the 2013 song “Blurred Lines” was an infringement of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” composition from 1977. Following the 7-million-dollar verdict, professional musicians are waking up to a fact that ordinary Internet users have long known: our overbearing copyright laws are a threat to creativity. Numerous musicians are expressing disbelief at the verdict, seeing little similarity between the two songs aside from a general “feel” or “vibe.” According to the LA Times: Los Angeles composer and producer Gregory Butler said Tuesday afternoon that his friends and colleagues in the industry were stunned by…
Apple, that’s who. Or Microsoft, or any of the other vendors whose products US government contractors have successfully exploited according to a recent report in the Intercept. While we’re not surprised that the Intelligence Community is actively attempting to develop new spycraft tools and capabilities—that’s their job—we expect them to follow the administration’s rules of engagement. Those rules require an evaluation under what’s known as the “Vulnerabilities Equities Process.” In the White House’s own words, the process should usually result in disclosing software vulnerabilities to vendors, because “in the majority of cases, responsibly disclosing a newly discovered vulnerability is clearly…
Ugly facts often make bad law. But it’s important to not let opinions about the specific defendants that appear in court influence how the law will be applied to millions of other individuals. That’s why today, EFF filed an amicus brief urging the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a dangerous decision that would make employees criminally liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) for violating an employer’s computer use restriction. The case, United States v. Gilberto Valle, has already received a lot of attention in the press, as it involves the so-called “cannibal cop,” a New York…
Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Orrin Hatch are now in a stand-off over a bill that would put secretive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement on the Fast Track to passage through Congress. The White House meanwhile, has intensified their propaganda campaign, going so far as to mislead the public about how trade deals—like the TPP and its counterpart, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)—will effect the Internet and users’ rights. They are creating videos, writing several blog posts, and then this week, even sent out a letter from an “online small business owner” to everyone on…