As John Oliver and others have observed, the net neutrality debate is plagued with jargon—“reclassification,” “Title II,” “information service vs. telecommunications service,” and so on. But there’s one bit of jargon we need to hear more often: “forbearance.” As we explained yesterday, forbearance is the process by which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expressly commits NOT to apply certain rules. It can choose to do that where enforcement of a given rule is not necessary to ensure reasonable and nondiscriminatory practices, or to protect consumers, and forbearance is consistent with the public interest. Normally the FCC forbears in response to…
Author: EFFSource
Government Needs to Reveal Decision-Making Process for Publicizing VulnerabilitiesSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to gain access to documents showing how intelligence agencies choose whether to disclose software security flaws known as “zero days.” A zero day is a previously unknown security vulnerability in software or online services that a researcher has discovered, but the developers have not yet had a chance to patch. A thriving market has emerged for these zero days; in some cases…
Is adding “do it on the Internet” enough to make an abstract idea patentable? That’s the question for the Federal Circuit when it considers, for the third time, Ultramercial’s idiotic patent on showing an online advertisement before a “media product.” The Ultramercial case is the first big test for the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank. If the patent stands, the Federal Circuit will be insisting on business as usual. If it falls, many other abstract software and Internet patents should soon fall with it. The Ultramercial case has been bouncing around the federal courts for years.…
EFF has long been critical of the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to regulate digital technologies and services. We’ve warned against FCC rules and strategies that threatened to (or actually did) give the agency too much power over innovation and user choice. And with good reason: the FCC has a sad history of being captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate. It also has a history of ignoring grassroots public opinion. In the early 2000s, for example, the commission essentially ignored the comments of hundreds of thousands of Americans who opposed media consolidation. When it came to the open Internet, the FCC’s…
Democracy makes the job of our trade negotiators much harder. The light of democratic oversight makes it difficult for them to pander to the incessant demands of industry lobbyists, while ignoring the broader public interest. And the transparency that is central to democratic systems of governments impedes their efforts to hide what they are doing behind closed doors. But they are largely untroubled by this, as there are a range of secretive agreements that they can use to mask their negotiations from public view. Many of these agreements will affect the digital rights of citizens around the world. Readers of…
Flight Promotes StandAgainstSpying.org, New Site Calling on Congress to Act Bluffdale, UT – The environmental campaigning group Greenpeace, digital rights watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) joined forces today to fly an airship over the NSA’s data center in Utah to protest the government’s illegal mass surveillance program. Greenpeace flew its 135-foot-long thermal airship over the Bluffdale, UT, data center early Friday morning, carrying the message: “NSA Illegal Spying Below” along with a link steering people to a new web site, StandAgainstSpying.org, which the three groups launched with the support of a separate, diverse coalition…
Diverse Coalition Reveals Lawmakers Who Aced, Failed and Were Missing in the Debate Over Mass SpyingSan Francisco, CA – A coalition of 22 organizations from across the political spectrum today launched StandAgainstSpying.org, an interactive website that grades members of Congress on what they have done, or often not done, to rein in the NSA. Led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Sunlight Foundation and Greenpeace, the coalition aims to inspire constituents to hold their elected officials accountable on mass surveillance reform, as well as give lawmakers the opportunity to improve their positions. Using a report card-style format, the grading…
Unfortunately, it appears that the lure of bulk surveillance is not just a temptation for the federal government. Last summer, about a month after new leaks exposed the NSA’s bulk content PRISM program, Cyrus Vance, Jr., the District Attorney for Manhattan, decided to go secretly fishing through 381 Facebook accounts, and wanted to ensure no one was allowed to stop him. The DA was looking for evidence of disability fraud, and saw Facebook as a treasure trove. Many people put their lives online, sharing their daily ups and downs with a steady stream of photos, comments, and wall posts to…
It’s no secret that EFF is strongly opposed to the United States’ piecemeal approach to updating sanction provisions for the five U.S.-embargoed countries of Sudan, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. We’ve noted that the fundamental problem with the United States’ reform method is that it’s “largely reactionary and ultimately prioritizes certain countries over others for reasons that are, to put it charitably, hard to discern.” For example, according to an article published by the Open Technology Institute, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Iran a new General License D-1—which replaces the old General License D—making it acceptable…
The murky copyright situation surrounding phone unlocking could get a little bit clearer, thanks to the new and somewhat improved Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, a bipartisan bill in the Senate. As a refresher: the notion that phone unlocking might violate copyright law comes from an ill-conceived section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that prevents the circumvention of technical measures around copyrighted works. If such measures are understood to include restrictions on phone software, then unlocking may violate the DMCA—an outcome Congress never intended. It’s not clear that such an argument would stand up legally, but…
Justices Rule Changing Technology Demands Limits for Police but Requires Permission from TV BroadcastersSan Francisco – The U.S. Supreme Court issued two big rulings in important technology cases today. In a groundbreaking decision on cell phone privacy, the court set powerful limits for police searches of cell phones, ruling in two consolidated cases that law enforcement must get a warrant before accessing the data on an arrested person’s cell phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed amicus briefs in both of the cell phone search cases that were at issue in today’s decision. “These decisions are huge for digital privacy,”…
The FBI plans to roll out the face recognition component of its massive Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database this summer—but the Bureau has six years of catching up to do in explaining to Americans exactly how it plans to collect, use and protect this data. Today we called on Attorney General Eric Holder to do just that. As we explained in the letter: The capacity of the FBI to collect and retain information, even on innocent Americans, has grown exponentially. It is essential for the American public to have a complete picture of all the programs and authorities the…
Thailand’s censorship regime has grown ever more pervasive since the military took over last month, with punishments aimed at both speakers and consumers of prohibited media. On the streets, Thais have been arrested for wearing the wrong message on a T-shirt, or reading George Orwell’s “1984” in public. Online, according to the regime’s own reports, hundreds of new websites have been added to the Thai government’s official blacklist including politics and news sites covering the coup. Now the authorities are deceiving Internet users into disclosing their personal details, including email addresses and Facebook profile information, when they try to visit…
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1979 decision of Smith v. Maryland turned 35 years old last week. Since it was decided, Smith has stood for the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information they expose to others. Labeled the third party “doctrine” (even by EFF itself), Smith has come up over and over in the debates surrounding electronic surveillance and NSA spying. But the idea that information exposed to others is no longer private has been oversold. Millions of Americans expect all sorts of things exposed to third parties remain private under state law. And as technology advances and the information we give to ISPs and telcos…
Big law should not be a big bully. Last week, the nation’s largest law firm, Jones Day, tried to use trademark law to censor a website critical of Detroit’s emergency manager (a former Jones Day partner). As is typical, since the website criticized the firm, it included a Jones Day trademark. The law firm responded with an ominous cease and desist letter demanding that its trademarks be removed from the site. In taking this step, the firm joins a long, long list of companies that have improperly demanded that critics stop “using” their trademarks. But we’re not talking about just…
Nominations are now open for EFF’s 23rd Annual Pioneer Awards, to be presented this fall in San Francisco. EFF established the Pioneer Awards in 1992 to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. Nominations are open until midnight on Wednesday, July 2. Nominate the next Pioneer Award winner today! What does it take to be a Pioneer? There are no specific categories, but nominees must have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications. Their contributions may be technical, social, legal, academic, economic or cultural. This…
Some of the world’s most recognized companies began on college campuses. Think of Facebook, invented by Mark Zuckerberg while an undergraduate at Harvard, or Microsoft, started by Bill Gates when he was a college sophomore. Yet universities are not necessarily the most welcoming places for student innovation. Harvard reprimanded Zuckerberg for “breaching security” and hacking into dorm websites to obtain photos of students for an early version of Facebook. Luckily, the university did not involve law enforcement, but they certainly could have. Likewise, Bill Gates and his Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen innovated at the boundaries of the law before founding…
Last month, we harshly criticized Twitter for responding to questionable legal orders from russia and Pakistan to take down content. We argued that the company that once called itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” had caved in the midst of corporate expansion. We are therefore pleased to see that Twitter has reversed course on its approach to Pakistan. As the New York Times reported, Twitter explained its decision in a statement issued to Chilling Effects. The statement reads: We always strive to make the best, most informed decisions we can when we’re compelled to reactively withhold…
This weekend at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas, some mayors will take a strong stand in support of net neutrality. According to an op-ed by Mayors Ed Lee of San Francisco and Ed Murray of Seattle, the city leaders are unveiling a resolution calling on the FCC to preserve an open Internet. This is good and welcomed news. The mayors get it: a free and open Internet is critically important for the health of U.S. cities. “The Internet has thrived because of its openness and equality of access,” reads the mayors’ op-ed. “It has spurred great…
A bipartisan coalition of 38 civil liberties and public interest organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent a letter to Congress yesterday that draws a line in the sand on NSA reform. The coalition made it clear that it cannot support the watered-down version of the USA FREEDOM Act passed in the House of Representatives without significant changes to the legislation, and outlined clear steps that Congress can take to address problems with the bill. USA FREEDOM as it was originally introduced was a genuine step towards addressing out-of-control NSA spying. We had all along called it a floor, not…