EFF is shocked and dismayed by the 15-year jail term handed down today in absentia to Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah and 24 other co-defendants, on charges of unlawful protest and attacking a police officer. The judgment was not expected to be made until 10am, but proceedings began at 9am. The ruling against the 25 defendants was made in absentia, despite the fact that several of them were waiting outside to enter the court. According to a report from Mada Masr, Abd El Fattah’s family has stated that they believe the defendants were “purposefully prevented from entering…
Author: EFFSource
One of the most unnerving things about modern communications technology is the way devices constantly leak information about their physical whereabouts—to mobile carriers, network operators, e-mail providers, web sites, governments, even shopping mall owners. Many of these information leakages are simple historical accidents. The designers of technologies never considered that technical standards would let everyone around you notice your device’s presence. They never considered that technical choices would let web sites infer when two people are (or aren’t) spending the night in the same residence, or let your phone company follow you around virtually from moment to moment. This spring…
There has been plenty of bad news when it comes to NSA spying, so it’s encouraging when the news is good. At the end of May, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology signaled the beginning of the end for NSA’s effort to undermine encryption, passing an amendment that extricates the NSA from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) work on encryption standards. In September of last year, ProPublica, the Guardian, and the New York Times broke the story that the NSA had systematically “circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling” that protects the…
Fair use enjoyed a major victory in court today. In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that strongly underscores a fair use justification for a major book scanning program. For those counting along at home, today’s decision marks another in a serious streak of judicial findings of fair use for mass book digitization, including Authors Guild v. Google, Cambridge University Press v. Becker, and the district court opinion in the HathiTrust case itself. Given that consistent fair use record for book digitization, today’s ruling might not be totally surprising. Still, the text…
Book review and discussion questions for reading groups In No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald shows that a modern investigative reporter doesn’t just need the courage to take on the United States government and established media. He also needs a whole lot of crypto. Greenwald’s new book (buy a copy here and a portion of the proceeds go to EFF) details how he and journalist Laura Poitras met NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then published a series of articles that would change Americans’ perception of their government, ignite a worldwide debate around surveillance, and challenge notions about investigative journalism. The…
Public Deserves to See Secret Law Written by Office of Legal Counsel Washington, DC – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked the Supreme Court of the United States to weigh in on a long-standing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in which EFF sought to obtain a secret legal memo authorizing the FBI to obtain phone records without any legal process. As part of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issues opinions that provide the legal justification for a wide variety of executive branch activities, in ways that affect millions of Americans. The opinion…
Students are rising up and fighting to protect our Internet. In response to our call to action, seventeen university groups from across the United States have published open letters about the real chilling effects mass surveillance is having right now on academic freedom and life on campus. Universities are places where the free flow of new ideas and the discussion of controversial topics should be fostered, encouraged, and amplified. But when students and researchers know that the government is recording our communications, our data, and our online behavior, students can’t speak freely. Speech is chilled. In response, we launched our…
It’s election season across the country, and candidates and their supporters are angling for attention in races big and small. Political speech is particularly important in a democracy, and EFF recently weighed in on an important case that demonstrates how over-broad anti-impersonation laws can wrongfully silence vigorous online debate and discussion. In this case, EFF wrote an amicus brief in support of Chris Korpi, who was sued by Julie Collier after Korpi registered the domain name www.juliecollier.com. Korpi and Collier were on opposites sides of a political debate over a California local school board election. Collier sued, alleging that Korpi…
Government Argues Court’s Order Does Not Apply to Certain Categories of SurveillanceSan Francisco – A federal judge asked for more briefing today after an emergency court hearing over destruction in a case challenging NSA spying from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Andrew Crocker, Rick Wiebe, and Cindy Cohn “We are pleased the court is receptive to our arguments – that this is the information that court ordered the government to retain, and is an important element of our litigation,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “It’s unfortunate that the court’s order today allows the government to continue destroying evidence that…
EFF Told Court Yesterday Government Still Destroying Evidence Despite Court OrderOakland, CA – A federal judge today ordered an emergency hearing today at 2 p.m. PT after EFF learned that the government is apparently still destroying evidence of NSA spying despite a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the court in March. Yesterday afternoon, EFF filed an emergency motion with U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White, explaining that communications with government lawyers over the last week had revealed that the government has continued to destroy evidence relating to the mass interception of Internet communications it is conducting under Section 702…
Last month the FCC released its proposal for America’s new network neutrality rules. Unfortunately, the agency’s proposal included rules that would permit Internet providers to prioritize certain websites, e.g., make deals with some services for a faster and better path to subscribers. While the FCC claims it is not endorsing such deals, the proposed rules will inevitably be read as exactly that. The parties most threatened by this kind of network discrimination are those who are trying to make novel and unanticipated uses of the network and who cannot afford payola. But innovators need more than a level playing field…
With almost double the population of the United States—packed into a much smaller land area—the eleven countries of Southeast Asia are home to more than eight out of every hundred people in the world.Two Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, are in the top ten global users of Facebook. Another, Brunei, is amongst the top ten global users of Twitter. A fourth, Singapore, was the first country to offer a commercial ADSL (wired broadband) service. In this highly connected region, citizens have taken every opportunity to engage online with each other, their governments, and the rest of the world.But…
Judge Requires Explanation by Friday About Whether Government Is Still Destroying Evidence Despite Court OrderSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a judge today to schedule an emergency hearing, after learning that the government is apparently still destroying evidence of NSA spying despite a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the court in March. In an order issued in response this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White instructed the government not to destroy any more materials and file a brief responding to EFF’s allegations by 12 p.m PT on Friday. “In communications with the government this week,…
Este texto ha sido editado por Carlos Wertheman Hoy un conjunto de más de 400 organizaciones y expertos, junto con 350.000 particulares, continúan una carrera en apoyo de los 13 Principios Internacionales sobre la Aplicación de los Derechos Humanos a la Vigilancia de las Comunicaciones (Principios Necesario y Proporcional) un año desde el día en que Edward Snowden revelará por primera vez cómo los gobiernos están monitoreando a los individuos en una escala masiva. Los expertos internacionales que han apoyado los Principios han emitido un comunicado de prensa con testimonios de expertos haciendo hincapié en la necesidad de poner fin…
It’s been one year since the Guardian first published the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, that demonstrated that the NSA was conducting dragnet surveillance on millions of innocent people. Since then, the onslaught of disturbing revelations, from disclosures, admissions from government officials, Freedom of Information Act requests, and lawsuits, has been nonstop. On the anniversary of that first leak , here are 65 things we know about NSA spying that we did not know a year ago: 1. We saw an example of the court orders that authorize the NSA to collect virtually…
Today, a group of over 400 organizations and experts, along with 350,000 individuals, continue to rally in support of the 13 International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the Necessary and Proportionate Principles) a year to the day after Edward Snowden first revealed how governments are monitoring individuals on a massive scale. The international experts who supported the Necessary and Proportionate Principles has issued a press release containing quotes from professionals weighing in on the need to end the mass surveillance. For Immediate Release: Thursday, June 05, 2014 A huge international collection of experts have called…
On June 4, 2014, one day before the anniversary of the Snowden revelations, Poland celebrates 25 years since the fall of an authoritarian regime. On this occasion, President Obama is visiting Poland and meeting with many heads of states—including officials who were affected by the mass surveillance scandal carried out by the NSA. The United States and Poland have a long tradition of official visits between their leaders. These visits symbolize a close, allied relationship between the two countries and “help advance many political and economic issues.” Since October 2013, the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish NGO, has tried to understand…
For the past few years, EFF has been working on promoting the universal use of encryption for Internet protocols. We started by pushing major sites to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, and gave individual users ways to pull things along. Last November, we launched our Encrypt the Web Scorecard, which in addition to Web encryption, added a second focus on securing SMTP email transmissions between mailservers. We believe this is a vital protection against non-targeted dragnet surveillance by the US and other governments. In the months after we started rating their support for STARTTLS email encryption, a number of major…
Back in April, the Supreme Court issued a significant ruling in a case called Octane Fitness that makes it easier for defendants to collect attorney’s fees when they win patent suits. We predicted this decision could be bad news for patent trolls who bring weak cases and use the high cost of defense to extort settlements. Last Friday, Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York awarded attorney’s fees to the startup FindTheBest after it defeated a patent troll. The decision shows that Octane, in the hands of a thoughtful judge alert to patent troll abuse, can provide…
Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many others, the arguments are often eerily similar. But as we approach the one year anniversary, it’s time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them. So if you hear any one of these in the future, you can…