As the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) continue to trudge along, little new information has leaked because the negotiations are being conducted under conditions of strict secrecy. But this week, the launch of the TPP: No Certification website by a coalition of activists has shed new light on one issue that has been often overlooked before now. The United States, exclusively amongst the dozen negotiating partners, is reserving the right to vet other countries’ implementation of the agreement before its own obligations come into effect. This has worrying implications for other countries planning to take advantage of whatever…
Author: EFFSource
Today, Mexico’s newest data retention law entered into force. The Mexican telecom law compels telecom providers to retain, for two years, the details of who communicates with whom, for how long, and from where. It also allows the authorities access to these details without a court order, exposing geolocation information that reveals the physical whereabouts of Mexicans. Across the Pacific, the Australian government plans to introduce a data retention mandate for Australian Internet Service Providers. These developments come on the heels of widespread opposition, and skepticism about whether blanket data retention mandates can ever be consistent with human rights law.…
At the SOUPS conference in July, we convened the first EFF CUP Workshop. The one-day event brought together a diverse group of software developers and researchers around the common goal of developing an end-to-end encryption communication tool which is both secure and usable. Specifically, our goal was to explore the current state-of-the-art and evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of awarding a prize for the solution today that is closest to this goal. We began the day with an invited talk from Trevor Perrin (slides here), who’s been prolific in this space and started the excellent Modern Crypto mailing lists. Trevor…
In a bold and welcome move to protect users, Google announced on Wednesday that they have started prioritizing sites offering HTTPS (HTTP over TLS) in their page ranking algorithm. Google’s Online Security Blog explains that domains with transport layer encryption have a slight advantage in search results, and the preference may grow stronger in the coming months: For now it’s only a very lightweight signal—affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content—while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because…
The Australian government announced new anti-terrorism measures this week, in response to the alleged involvement of Australian citizens with extremist groups in countries including Syria and Iraq. Quietly omitted from the briefing at which those changes were announced, but separately leaked to the press this week, were the government’s plans to introduce mandatory data retention requirements for Australian Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These changes are causing an outcry from privacy advocates and political parties alike. And they should. The new measures remain shrouded in confusion—some of which is coming from its very proponents. There have been conflicting reports about whether…
The FCC is slated to close the written comment window for the net neutrality proceeding on September 10th, but that doesn’t mean that the FCC is going to make up its mind anytime soon. In fact, it doesn’t even mean that the FCC will be done hearing from the public. Technically, the public can continue to comment, and the FCC, if it decides to do so, can continue to listen to Americans who speak out against proposed rules that would allow Internet providers to discriminate against how we access parts of the Net. This is about the future of our…
Earlier this week, AB 609, a California bill promoting better public access to taxpayer-funded research, passed through the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill, which flew out of the Assembly last year, heads next to the Senate floor. It’s great that California is just two steps away from passing the first meaningful state-level public access legislation in the US. We are disappointed, however that the current version of the bill has been watered down significantly. In its initial stages, the bill required all publicly funded research in California to be made freely available six months after publication. But then politics stepped…
Ever since the Snowden revelations, honest (and some dishonest) efforts have been made in Congress to try to scale back at least some of the NSA’s spying. It’s a complex problem, since the NSA has overstepped reasonable bounds in so many different directions and there is intense secrecy surrounding the NSA’s activities and legal analysis. The bill with the best chance to make some positive change currently is the Senate version of USA FREEDOM Act, a new piece of legislation with an older name. After extensive analysis and internal discussion, EFF has decided to support this bill. But given the…
The NSA pulls no punches when it comes to the surveillance of innocent people in every corner of the world in its attempt to “collect it all.” Those in the U.S. prepared to vigorously oppose mass government spying need to fight back and hold our representatives to account for the routine human rights violations perpetrated by the National Security Agency. And this activism needs to occur on all levels, from lobbying local and state officials to setting up meetings with Congress members. That’s part of the inspiration behind StandAgainstSpying.org, a tool that grades members of Congress on their track record…
We have often written about how software patents feed trolls and tax innovation. We’ve pushed for patent reform in Congress, in the courts, and at the Patent Office. While new legislation has stalled (for now), reformers have won significant victories in the courts. Of these, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank may be the most important. In this case, the court issued a landmark decision cutting back on abstract software patents. While the decision in Alice is promising, it will mean nothing if the Patent Office fails to apply it. Vested interests support the status…