Following his pledge to “wipe out” Twitter last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered ISPs to block the site, which they did by tweaking DNS settings and redirecting traffic from the page to a government blockpage. The move was futile; Turkish Internet users have been dealing with censorship for many years and were immediately able to circumvent the ban. Within hours, Turkey’s prolific Twitter users had created hashtags like #TurkeyblockedTwitter, which subsequently landed on the trending topics list. Despite the block, more than an estimated half million tweets were posted within ten hours. By Saturday, authorities had…
Author: EFFSource
There was a moralistic, unnecessary, and wholly unscientific new restriction enacted on funding for the National Institute of Health as part of the appropriations bill passed in January. The new legislative mandate forces researchers who rely on government funding to place anti-pornography filters on their computer networks. There are serious potential consequences, such as filters overblocking sites that are anatomical rather than pornographic in nature as well as lost funding for scientific research that may legitimately need to access pornographic sites. The end result? Members of Congress, rather than the scientific community, imposing restrictions on what researchers should be investigating.…
Today we learned that the Obama administration and the House Intelligence Committee are both proposing welcome and seemingly significant changes to the mass telephone records collection program. Both the Obama administration and the Intelligence Committee suggest that mass collection end with no new data retention requirements for telephone companies. This is good news, but we have not seen the details of either and details, as we have learned, are very important in assessing suggested changes to the NSA’s mass spying. But comparing what we know, it appears that the Obama administration’s proposal requires significantly more judicial review—not just reviewing procedures…
Most of the problems with the patent system stem from the flood of low quality patents granted by the Patent Office. Once a bad patent issues, it is expensive and challenging to fight. The much better solution is for overbroad patents not to issue in the first place. And one way to help that happen is to submit prior art (the pre-existing publications and technology that could invalidate a patent by showing that the invention wasn’t new) while a patent application is still pending. Last year, EFF partnered with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School to challenge six 3D…
If you’re looking for proof that new cultural works speak to and are embedded within a vast array of pre-existing works and ideas, you can’t do much better than “The Office Time Machine,” a new art project by video remix artist Joe Sabia. Over the course of the last 18 months, Sabia has isolated every pop culture and real world reference from the US television show “The Office,” and arranged them by the date of the events, people, and media they reference. It’s much more fun to look at than to read about, so feel free to check it out…
After months of hearing about their own vulnerability at the hands of intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ, next Wednesday, European Parliamentarians and their staff will have an opportunity to learn about defending Internet communications using strong encryption and trusted hardware and software. Unfortunately, unless the Parliament’s own IT department shifts ground, it will be a theoretical discussion, rather than the practical first steps to a secure European Parliament that its organizers had hoped. DebianParl is a version of the popular free software Linux distribution Debian, intended for use in parliaments around the world. It is intended to be…
When it comes to trade policy, we’ve learned over and over that leaks are no substitute for transparency. Leaks can reveal inconvenient facts about what negotiators are advancing in the public’s name; they can help inform and mobilize activists to push back against egregious provisions that haven’t yet been finalized; they can expose lies and half-truths in public statements by officials; but they can’t provide the kind of real accountability that true transparency-by-design can. In the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the more recent Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, or TAFTA), the governments of other countries appear…
EFF has long argued that law enforcement agencies must get a warrant when they ask Internet companies for the content of their users’ communications. In 2013, as part of our annual Who Has Your Back report, we started awarding stars to companies that require warrants for content. It is now unclear whether Microsoft, one of our inaugural “gold star” companies in that category, is willing to live by its own maxim. This controversy was brought to light by the arrest of an ex-Microsoft employee named Alex Kibkalo. According to a criminal complaint sworn in a Seattle federal court, Kibkalo stole…
If you do any kind of shopping online, then you’re probably already familiar with the concept of a metasearch engine—a search engine that searches other search engines. When you’re looking for airline tickets or a used copy of The King in Yellow, you might use a metasearch engine to find out which online retailer is offering the best price. There is also a metasearch for public records: Scout. Created and lovingly maintained by the Sunlight Foundation, Scout will take a search query and run it through six different continually updated databases of documents. The site also allows you to create…
It’s another troubling example in a frustrating trend: despite repeated and pointed calls for answers, the NSA is still relying on word games and equivocation to avoid answering recent questions surrounding potential surveillance of privileged attorney-client communications. The New York Times reported in late February that an American law firm’s privileged attorney-client communications were monitored by the Australian Signals Directorate and potentially shared with the NSA. A few weeks ago, we wrote about the legal community’s response to this issue, highlighting a February 20 letter from the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), James Silkenat, to outgoing NSA director…
Today, President Obama is meeting with prominent American tech companies to discuss the ongoing NSA spying controversy. This comes just two days after Rajesh De, the general counsel of the NSA, stated before a government oversight board that tech companies were legally mandated to assist the government in mass surveillance programs and companies were aware of the surveillance. Specifically, the general counsel indicated that the collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act was carried out with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained.” De indicated that tech companies probably just didn’t know the word…
In a single year, the public learned more information about the NSA and its global surveillance dragnet than we learned during the previous 30 years combined. Much of that knowledge can be attributed to whistleblower Edward Snowden and the journalists tirelessly working to inform the public about the NSA’s surveillance programs. But another force, one that has received far less attention, has been hard at work, too: the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. FOIA can get a bad rap. It can be slow, it can be tedious, and it can be frustrating—but when FOIA works, it can recalibrate the…
“Twitter and so on, we will root them out. The international community can say this or that – I don’t care. They will see the power of the Turkish Republic.” The above is a statement made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during an election rally in Bursa just before banning Twitter late Thursday. Most reports state that the decision to block the site is in response to a leak of a voice recording of the prime minister that was published on YouTube and popularized on Twitter. The recording, purportedly of Erdoğan speaking to his son by phone,…
EFF has delivered a letter to Washington Governor Jay Inslee today, urging him to sign into law EHB 2789 to establish a reasonable set of rules under which drones may be operated in the state. The bill, which has already passed through the state House and Senate, creates a requirement for law enforcement agencies to obtain warrants in most cases, and additionaly sets up a data minimization framework and short retention limit. From our letter to the governor: As the power of high-tech surveillance gear increases, and the cost of deploying and using that gear decreases, legal limits must be…
This week, EFF joined over 5,600 individuals in a letter (PDF) pressing the Senate for meaningful patent reform—reform that goes beyond the current Senate proposals and provides strong fixes to the patent troll problem. As we wrote: We need to increase transparency in the litigation process, starting with demand letters and patent ownership; we need to control the costs of litigation by, when appropriate, shifting fees and limiting expensive discovery; we need better programs for challenging bad patents; and we need to protect end-users and consumers. Patent reform affects everybody involved in an innovation’s lifecycle. The 5,600 individual signers included over 1,500…
Sunshine Week may be just seven days in March, but fighting for government transparency is a year-round mission for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In fact, it’s not unusual for litigation over public records to drag on for years upon years. To help make sense of it all, here’s a handy infographic illustrating EFF’s current Freedom of Information Act caseload. For more information on EFF’s FOIA lawsuits: EFF v. CIA – Intelligence Oversight Board Reports EFF v. DOJ – Expanding Surveillance Law EFF v. DOJ – Secret Interpretations of Section 215 of the Patriot Act EFF v. DOT – Drone Authorization…
Over 25 leading technology companies have joined a public letter urging Senator Ron Wyden, the newly appointed Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, to firmly oppose any form of “fast track” authority for trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Fast Track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, is a mechanism that in practice limits Congressional oversight over U.S. trade policy, and gives the White House sweeping power to negotiate and finalize trade agreements. The companies call on Senator Wyden, already an outspoken advocate for greater transparency and public participation in TPP negotiations, to uphold his dedication to users and…
The Freedom of Information Act is not the only law the public can use to obtain records from the government. Most states have similar laws for accessing documents on the state and local levels. Here in California, EFF is using the California Public Records Act to learn what new technologies local law enforcement agencies are using and whether these technologies violate our rights. Do you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff’s Department, your car is part of a vast criminal investigation. The agencies took a novel approach…
Government Claims EFF’s Lawsuits Don’t Cover Ongoing Surveillance – Raising Fears Key Documents May Have Been DestroyedSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will fight disturbing new government claims in an emergency court hearing Wednesday – claims that may imply records documenting ongoing government surveillance have been destroyed despite a judge’s order. Over the last several weeks, EFF has been battling to ensure that evidence of the NSA surveillance program will be preserved as part of its two cases challenging the illegal government spying: Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA. But in a…
California State Sen. Monning (D-Carmel) has introduced legislation intended to protect Californians’ privacy rights behind the wheel. We have not yet completed our analysis of the bill, sponsored by the Automobile Association of America, but apparently a thorough analysis wasn’t required for the automotive industry to come out slinging FUD against it. In a hyperbolic statement, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group representing 12 of the largest car makers in the world, immediately condemned the bill as an “unacceptable threat to motorist safety, privacy” and a “data grab” by the AAA. The bill is no such thing. While we…