Este articulo ha sido co-escrito por Maricarmen Sequera, Luis Pablo Alonso Fulchi y Katitza Rodríguez El proyecto de ley de retención de datos de Paraguay obliga a los proveedores de servicios de Internet (ISPs) a conservar, durante 12 meses, los detalles de quién se comunica con quién, por cuánto tiempo, y desde dónde. También permite a las autoridades tener acceso a estos datos mediante una orden del juez de garantías, exponiendo la información de geolocalización que revela el paradero físico de los paraguayos. Este régimen expande la capacidad del gobierno Paraguayo de vigilar masivamente a sus ciudadanos, en última instancia,…
Author: EFFSource
Over the past year, millions of Internet users have spoken out in defense of the open Internet. Today, we know the White House heard us. In a statement issued this morning, President Barack Obama has called on the Federal Communications Commission to develop new “net neutrality” rules and, equally importantly, establish the legal authority it needs to support those rules by reclassifying broadband service as a “telecommunications service.” This is very welcomed news. Back in May, the Federal Communications Commission proposed flawed “net neutrality” rules that would effectively bless the creation of Internet “slow lanes.” After months of netroots protests,…
EFF recently began a new Campaign for Secure & Usable Crypto, with the aim of encouraging the creation and use of tools and protocols that not only offer genuinely secure messaging, but are also usable in practice by the humans who are most vulnerable to dangerous surveillance, including those who are not necessarily sophisticated computer users. The first phase of this campaign is the Secure Messaging Scorecard, which aims to identify messaging systems that are on the right track from a security perspective. In subsequent phases of the campaign, we plan to delve deeper into the usability and security properties…
When you buy a book, a record, or a movie, you can expect to be able to enjoy it, on your own terms, for as long as you want. But the same cannot always be said about video games. Over the past several years, video game publishers have increasingly required connection with one of their own servers in order to “unlock” core functionality for gameplay. Publishers often take those servers offline once they stop being economical to run, leaving a typical gamer unable to play her lawfully purchased games. And this affects not just video game players, but archivists and…
The FTC has announced a settlement with MPHJ, the infamous scanner troll. MPHJ owns some patents that it claims cover the basic business practice of scanning to email. It sent thousands of letters to small businesses around the country demanding $1,000 per employee. Its letters misrepresented how many other businesses were paying up and often included false threats to sue. To make its deceptive activities harder to track, MPHJ set up 101 shell companies with obscure names. The scheme was run by Jay Mac Rust (the owner and manager of MPHJ) with help from Texas law firm Farney Daniels. By…
We at EFF think remix art is an important part of modern culture, one that helps ordinary people critique mass media and create new art that builds on media they love. This week we teamed up with the Organization for Transformative Works to help make sure remix continues to thrive. The problem lies with a particular provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Here’s an experience we’ve had many times at EFF. A remix artist has made a fun, important video and then receives an unfair DMCA takedown notice. She reaches out to us to ask whether she should challenge…
Longtime ED Shari Steele to Step Down After 22 Years at EFFSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Legal Director Cindy Cohn will become EFF’s new executive director in April, after Executive Director Shari Steele steps down from the post she’s held for 14 years. With more than 20 years at EFF, Steele has been a driving force of the organization since its earliest days. She has overseen the growth of EFF from a handful of staffers to a 60-person organization at the forefront of every major digital rights issue the world faces today. As executive director, she built a…
The reach of copyright law has expanded so far that it now threatens people’s ability to repair their own cars and protect them against malware. Yesterday, EFF launched a legal campaign to fend off that threat. Some background: Section 1201, the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, was created, supposedly, to help discourage people from breaking DRM restrictions in order to infringe, but in practice it has chilled a wide array of legitimate activities that require users to break DRM in order to do completely legitimate, non-infringing things that were often never even contemplated by device designers and rightsholders. But once…
EFF’s ‘Secure Messaging Scorecard’ Rates Digital Communication ToolsSan Francisco – In the face of widespread Internet data collection and surveillance, we need a secure and practical means of talking to each other from our phones and computers. Many companies offer “secure messaging” products – but how can users know if these systems actually secure? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released its Secure Messaging Scorecard today, evaluating dozens of messaging technologies on a range of security best practices. “The revelations from Edward Snowden confirm that governments are spying on our digital lives, devouring all communications that aren’t protected by encryption,” said…
Back in May the Federal Communications Commission proposed flawed “net neutrality” rules that would effectively bless the creation of Internet “slow lanes.” After months of netroots protests the FCC is now reportedly considering a new “hybrid” proposal. EFF is deeply concerned, however, that this “compromise” risks too much, for too little. To see why, a little background is helpful. As we explained back in June, if the FCC is going to craft and enforce clear and limited neutrality rules, it must first do one important thing: reverse its 2002 decision to treat broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications…