There is a lot in our current patent system that is in need of reform. The Patent Office is too lax in granting patents. Federal Circuit case law has consistently favored patentees. Another part of this problem is the forum shopping by patentees that leads to a disproportionate number of cases being filed in the Eastern District of Texas. Back in 2011, This American Life did a one-hour feature called “When Patents Attack!” The story included a tour of ghostly offices in Marshall, Texas, where shell companies have fake headquarters with no real employees. For many people, it was their…
Author: EFFSource
Wikipedia readers and editors can now enjoy a higher level of long-term privacy, thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation’s rollout last week of forward secrecy on its encrypted connections. Forward secrecy is an important Web privacy protection; we’ve been tracking its implementation across many popular sites with our Encrypt the Web Report. And though it may sound like an obscure technical switch, the impact is dramatic: forward secrecy ensures that every new connection uses unique and ephemeral key information, so traffic intercepted once can’t later be decrypted if the private key gets compromised. That kind of compromise can happen at the…
Today, EFF and its partners in the global Our Fair Deal coalition join together with an even more diverse international network of creators, innovators, start-ups, educators, libraries, archives and users to release two new open letters to negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP, although characterized as a free trade agreement, is actually far broader in its intended scope. Amongst many changes to which it could require the twelve negotiating countries to agree are a slate of increased rights and privileges for copyright rights holders. With no official means of participating in the negotiations, the global community of users…
The Intercept published an article last night describing secret foreign intelligence surveillance targeting American citizens. One of those citizens, Nihad Awad, is the executive director and founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s leading Muslim advocacy and civil rights organizations and a long-time client of EFF. In response, EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold stated: EFF unambiguously condemns government surveillance of people based on the exercise of their First Amendment rights. The government’s surveillance of prominent Muslim activists based on constitutionally protected activity fails the test of a democratic society that values freedom of expression, religious freedom, and…
Google’s handling of a recent decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that allows for Europeans to request that public information about them be deleted from search engine listings is causing frustration amongst privacy advocates. Google—which openly opposed interpreting Europe’s data protection laws as including the removal of publicly available information—is being accused by some of intentionally spinning the ECJ’s ruling to appear ‘unworkable’, while others—such as journalist Robert Peston—have expressed dissatisfaction with the ECJ ruling itself. The issue with the ECJ judgement isn’t European privacy law, or the response by Google. The real problem is the impossibility of…
Recent debate about network neutrality has largely focused on how to make sure broadband providers don’t manipulate their customers’ Internet connections (or as John Oliver put it, how to prevent “cable company f*ckery”). But in today’s world of smartphones and tablets people are spending less of their time on the Internet typing at a computer and more of it swiping on a smartphone. This is why it’s critically important for net neutrality principles to apply to mobile broadband too. The good news is that there is greater competition in the mobile broadband space than the wired broadband market. Unsatisfied customers…
EFF is in Ottawa this week for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, to influence the course of discussions over regressive digital policy provisions in this trade agreement that could lead to an increasingly restrictive Internet. But this round is different from the others—the secrecy around the talks is wholly unprecedented. The Canadian trade ministry, who is hosting this round of talks, has likely heightened the confidentiality due to the mass public opposition that is growing against this undemocratic, corporate-driven trade deal. The trade offices from the 12 countries negotiating this deal no longer pre-announce details about the time and location…
Philip Johnson is Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of Johnson & Johnson, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. He is also a representative member of the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, the leading trade group opposing patent reform this past year. And now he’s rumored to be next in line to be the director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. What? That’s exactly what we’re asking ourselves. Why would an administration that has ostensibly been so pro-reform over the last year nominate such an entrenched insider? (Though perhaps this isn’t so shocking a question, as those of…
In early March, Yangon—the former capital of Myanmar (Burma)—played host to a conference held by the East-West Center, called “Challenges of a Free Press.” The event (which I attended) featured speakers from around the world, but was more notable for its local speakers, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Nay Phone Latt, a blogger who spent four years as a political prisoner before being released under a widespread presidential amnesty in 2012. In a country where the Internet was heavily censored for many years, online freedom was discussed with surprising openness, although concerns about hate speech on platforms like Facebook…
Learning about Linux is not a crime—but don’t tell the NSA that. A story published in German on Tagesschau, and followed up by an article in English on DasErste.de today, has revealed that the NSA is scrutinizing people who visit websites such as the Tor Project’s home page and even Linux Journal. This is disturbing in a number of ways, but the bottom line is this: the procedures outlined in the articles show the NSA is adding “fingerprints”—like a scarlet letter for the information age—to activities that go hand in hand with First Amendment protected activities and freedom of expression…
Coordinated enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights—copyright, patents and trade marks—has been an elusive goal for Europe. Back in 2005, the European Commission struggled to introduce a directive known as IPRED2 that would criminalize commercial-scale IP infringements, but abandoned the attempt in 2010 due to jurisdictional problems. IP maximalists took another run at it through ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but that misguided treaty was roundly defeated in 2012 when the European Parliament rejected it, 478 votes to 39. Undeterred, the European Commission is trying once again. This time, it is trying to avoid a similarly humiliating defeat in Parliament…
Do you own an Android device? Is it less than three years old? If so, then when your phone’s screen is off and it’s not connected to a Wi-Fi network, there’s a high risk that it is broadcasting your location history to anyone within Wi-Fi range that wants to listen. This location history comes in the form of the names of wireless networks your phone has previously connected to. These frequently identify places you’ve been, including homes (“Tom’s Wi-Fi”), workplaces (“Company XYZ office net”), churches and political offices (“County Party HQ”), small businesses (“Toulouse Lautrec’s house of ill-repute”), and travel…
“Are you being blocked?” asks Open Rights Group’s (ORG) newly-revamped website, “Blocked!” The site, which relaunched today, allows users to test whether their websites are being blocked by one of the UK’s 10 major Internet service providers (ISPs). Anyone who suspects their website to be a target of the ISPs’ filters can detect a block by simply entering the URL of their site into the search bar provided. The project seeks to address the problems of arbitrary blocking of websites prompted by concerns about child protection, copyright, and other issues. As ORG explains: The UK government has pressured Internet Service Providers (ISPs) into promoting filters…
The main battlefield for the net neutrality fight right now is at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a “rulemaking” underway this summer, which asks for public comment about a new set of proposed rules that the FCC claims will protect the open Internet. This process is one of the most important ways Internet users, businesses, trade groups, and public interest organizations can make their voice heard in this critically important national debate. To help that along, let’s take a close look at the process and the proposal the FCC has put on the table. The quick version This isn’t…
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) issued a legally flawed and factually incomplete report late Tuesday that endorses Section 702 surveillance. Hiding behind the “complexity” of the technology, it gives short shrift to the very serious privacy concerns that the surveillance has rightly raised for millions of Americans. The board also deferred considering whether the surveillance infringed the privacy of many millions more foreigners abroad. The board skips over the essential privacy problem with the 702 “upstream” program: that the government has access to or is acquiring nearly all communications that travel over the Internet. The board focuses…
EFF is pleased by the adoption of a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) reaffirming the “promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.” The resolution — sponsored by Brazil, Tunisia, Nigeria, Turkey, Sweden, and the United States—was adopted by consensus at the twenty-sixth session of the UNHRC and supported by a total of 82 member states. Last month, EFF joined 62 civil society groups in calling on the UN to uphold fundamental rights online. As we’ve affirmed in the 13 Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, any mass surveillance, including…
Just as you take steps to protect your personal safety and health while engaging in real-life encounters, a sex worker should also be mindful of the dangers of the online world. As we wrote in a separate blog post today, the sex worker forum MyRedBook, along with its companion sites, have been seized by the FBI in connection with a criminal indictment. This could potentially mean that sensitive user data is in the hands of law enforcement. We will be watching the situation closely to see how it develops. In the meantime, we hope that sex workers take advantage of…
Just as you take steps to protect your personal safety and health while engaging in real-life encounters, a sex worker should also be mindful of the dangers of the online world. As we wrote in a separate blog post today, the sex worker forum MyRedBook, along with its companion sites, have been seized by the FBI in connection with a criminal indictment. This could potentially mean that sensitive user data is in the hands of law enforcement. We will be watching the situation closely to see how it develops. In the meantime, we hope that sex workers take advantage of…
Last week, an online community for sex workers disappeared from the Internet. Visit SFRedbook.com, MyPinkBook.com, or MyRedBook.com right now, and you’ll only find the seals of the law enforcement agencies—the FBI, the DOJ, and the IRS—that seized the sites as part of a prostitution and money laundering investigation. The seizure is part of a disturbing trend of targeting sex workers, but more than that, it is an attack on the rights to free speech and free association exercised by a diverse group of people, many of whom have nothing to do with the alleged crimes. MyRedBook and its companion sites…
Updated: July 1st at 6:30PM to add information about traffic correlation attacks. We posted last week about the Tor Challenge and why everyone should use Tor. Since we started our Tor Challenge two weeks ago we have signed up over 1000 new Tor relays. But it appears that there are still some popular misconceptions about Tor. We would like to take this opportunity to dispel some of these common myths and misconceptions. 1. Tor Still Works One of the many things that we learned from the NSA leaks is that Tor still works. According to the NSA “Tor Stinks” slides revealed by…