The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ordered Google to remove entire domains from its search results—a decision that could have enormous global implications on free expression. This is the latest of several instances of courts exercising dangerous jurisdictional overreach, where they have applied local laws to remove content on the Internet. Not only did the Court order Google to delete the site from its search results on the Canadian “Google.ca” domain, it went even further by demanding it censor the domain worldwide by deleting every instance of the site from its global index. The case, titled Equustek Solutions Inc.…
Author: EFFSource
Today, the US House of Representatives passed an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill designed to cut funding for NSA backdoors. The amendment passed overwhelmingly with strong bipartisan support: 293 ayes, 123 nays, and 1 present. Currently, the NSA collects emails, browsing and chat history under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, and searches this information without a warrant for the communications of Americans—a practice known as “backdoor searches.” The amendment would block the NSA from using any of its funding from this Defense Appropriations Bill to conduct such warrantless searches. In addition, the amendment would prohibit the NSA from using…
In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank today, striking down an abstract software patent. Essentially, the Court ruled that adding “on a computer” to an abstract idea does not make it patentable. Many thousands of software patents—particularly the vague and overbroad patents so beloved by patent trolls—should be struck down under this standard. Because the opinion leaves many details to be worked out (such as the scope of an “abstract idea”), it might be a few years until we understand its full impact. Alice Corp.’s patent claimed a form of escrowing…
Exactly one year ago, Amy Ngai of the Sunlight Foundation visited EFF’s offices in San Francisco to introduce our staff to the rather large and versatile collection of transparency tools they’ve developed. Midway through her presentation, there was a moment when you could clearly perceive several pieces click into place in our activism team’s collective mind. Sunlight is developing new technologies for engaging with Congress and the legislative process, while EFF has been at the forefront of mobilizing the online community to defend Internet freedom. With a shared hacker and tinkerer mentality and a love of exposing government secrets, a…
UPDATE: June 18, 2014 Yesterday, the Email Privacy Act, H.R. 1852, reached 218 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. That’s great news, since 218 is the crucial number representing a majority of members of the House. It also means that there’s no better time to demand that the House leadership allow the bill to come to a vote. EFF and the Digital Due Process Coalition (DDP), a coalition of companies and civil liberty organizations, have been fighting for years to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The law, which has been used by the government to seize email older than…
EFF sent a letter this week opposing SB 962, a bill by California Senator Mark Leno that mandates every phone that will be sold in the state to have a “kill switch”—a technological solution that would remotely disable a smartphone if, say, it were stolen or lost. Despite our concerns, the bill passed out of committee in the Assembly. There’s a simple reason why we opposed this particular bill—and why we almost always oppose bills with technological mandates. Technology is fast; the law is slow. While there is an important place for policy in a world where the Internet and…
A neutral Internet—one where Internet service providers (ISPs) can’t unfairly limit our access to parts of the Net, create special fast lanes for some services, or otherwise handle data in non-neutral ways—will require more than just rules that prohibit bad conduct. We’re also going to need real transparency. Transparency is the crucial first step toward meaningful network neutrality. Without a detailed and substantive window into how providers are managing their networks, users will be unable to determine the reason why some webpages are slow to load. New services that hope to reach those users will have a harder time figuring…
The NSA may seem like an intimidating giant, but it has a serious Achilles’ heel— the enormous budget it claims from taxpayer dollars every year. While change to the actual words of the laws that govern NSA surveillance seems to be a difficult task, a group of representatives have decided to take the battle to the bank. Within the next few days, the House of Representatives will be considering the 2015 Department of Defense Appropriations bill, H.R. 4870. Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Zoe Lofgren have introduced a bipartisan amendment to the bill to prohibit use of appropriated funds for certain…
On May 25, 2014, a Vietnamese blogger and human rights activist, Tran Thi Nga, was seriously injured during a violent attack in Hanoi, a local human rights organization reported. Tran Thi Nga, a savvy social media user in documenting human right abuses in Vietnam, was returning home after visiting fellow blogger Nguyen Tuong Thuy when five men—now suspected to be undercover police members—surrounded her motor bike, on which she was riding with her two children, the report said. The assailants attacked Tran Thi Nga in front of her children and chased her before beating her with a metal pole. The…
When courts issue new decisions about how law enforcement can obtain records and data from companies, it’s not just the police who have to follow the new rules. The companies that turn over the data have a big role to play in ensuring that the law is followed. A new court decision requiring police to use a search warrant in order to obtain cell tracking records underscores the importance phone companies can play in extending important privacy protections throughout the country. In United States v. Davis, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that because people have a Fourth Amendment expectation…
Last Thursday, the best legal minds in the Bay Area gathered to participate in EFF’s Seventh Annual Cyberlaw Pub Trivia Night. Over 110 lawyers and friends attended, making this our largest trivia night to date. Competition was fierce as teams put their heads together to test their knowledge of the legal minutiae occurring in the spaces where the law meets technology. Teams included representatives from a host of major technology law firms and Internet companies, representing the best and the brightest luminaries of cyberlaw. The seven rounds of questions were written collaboratively as EFF’s attorneys, technologists and activists joined forces…
Courtroom sketch by Susie Cagle. Click to enlarge. A federal judge today ordered the Department of Justice to hand over key opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the “FISA court”) so the judge can directly review whether information about mass surveillance was improperly withheld from the public. The order is another victory in EFF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the DOJ, which sought to reveal how the government uses Section 215 of the Patriot Act to secretly gather communications records from millions of American citizens. The suit has already forced the government to release thousands…
EFF recently kicked off our second Tor Challenge, an initiative to strengthen the Tor network for online anonymity and improve one of the best free privacy tools in existence. The campaign—which we’ve launched with partners at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Tor Project, and the Free Software Foundation—is already off to a great start. In just the first few days, we’ve seen over 600 new or expanded Tor nodes—more than during the entire first Tor Challenge. This is great news, but how does it affect you? To understand that, we have to dig into what Tor actually is,…
Microsoft Fights to Protect Data Held on Servers in IrelandSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has urged a federal court to block a U.S. search warrant ordering Microsoft to turn over a customer’s emails held in an overseas server, arguing that the case has dangerous privacy implications for Internet users everywhere. The case started in December of last year, when a magistrate judge in New York signed a search warrant seeking records and emails from a Microsoft account in connection with a criminal investigation. However, Microsoft determined that the emails the government sought were on a Microsoft server…
The Office of the United States Trade Representative published its updated objectives for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, including its priorities in the Intellectual Property (IP) chapter of the multilateral trade agreement. Its new objectives in copyright enforcement mostly contain some vague rhetorical changes while continuing to bolster bloated claims about the necessity of IP enforcement for the U.S. economy without any commitment to protecting users’ rights. The U.S. Trade Rep’s language reflect the underlying, ongoing problem with the executive agency’s misplaced priorities on negotiating international trade deals. Exaggerated Claims of Importance of “IP-Intensive Industries” The U.S. Trade Rep starts…
The last few years have seen many examples of patents hindering, rather than helping innovation. Patent trolls run rampage while some big companies spend more money on patent wars than research and development. This is why it is so encouraging when companies commit to openness, ensuring their patents do not obstruct future innovation. Today Tesla Motors announced it is opening up its patent portfolio. Founder Elon Musk wrote that the company “will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use [Tesla’s] technology.” While the precise details of this pledge aren’t clear yet, it is great…
Thailand’s military took over the country in a coup d’état last month. As part of its seizure of the apparatus of government, it has also taken steps to extend its control over the country’s Internet users. The army immediately “asked for the cooperation” of Thai ISPs to block over 200 new web sites, including independent sites such as Prachatai, and, briefly, Facebook. Global Voices author Aim Sinpeng describes the situation in Thailand as an “information war,” adding that the push for censorship is driven by the newly-formed National Peace and Order Maintaining Council’s fear that “non-censored information flows could pose…
Earlier this month, the Senate took patent reform off the table for this legislative session. The Senate leadership did this despite the fact that a strong bill passed in the House with overwhelming support. And thousands of constituents have called for meaningful reform to finally put an end to patent trolling. Instead of listening to innovators and entrepreneurs across the country, the Senate followed marching orders from big biotech, pharmaceutical, and trial lawyer lobbyists. We were particularly disheartened to see universities oppose critically needed reform of our broken patent system. In a letter organized by the Innovation Alliance, over 100…
Copyright law began in England in 1710. At that time, copyright only limited you from copying—it didn’t limit you from making a derivative work, such as a translation or a fan homage (such as the many spin-offs of Gulliver’s Travels that flourished after its 1726 publication). It didn’t attempt to control your personal use of the products in which copyright works were embodied (books had no DRM!). If you wanted to comment on a work, or parody it, copyright owners had no say in how much of the original work you could use, or how widely you could share or…
It has been one year since the first Snowden disclosure and in lieu of this first anniversary, world privacy expert and publisher of The Privacy Surgeon, Simon Davies, conceived and published a report titled “A Crisis of Accountability: A global analysis of the impact of the Snowden revelations.” The report includes contributions from individual countries, summarizing the extent to which the Snowden revelations have produced tangible changes. Additionally, the analysis discusses what needs to happen, moving forward, to enact substantial change in light of these disclosures. With 29 countries from all over the globe included in the analysis, Davies’ report…