Changing Technology Demands New Rules for PoliceSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to set limits on warrantless searches of cell phones, arguing in two cases before the court that changing technology demands new guidelines for when the data on someone’s phone can be accessed and reviewed by investigators. The amicus briefs were filed in Riley v. California and U.S. v. Wurie. In both cases, after arresting a suspect, law enforcement officers searched the arrestee’s cell phone without obtaining a warrant from a judge. Historically, police have been allowed some searches “incident to…
Author: EFFSource
In July 2012, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued the first-ever UN resolution affirming that human rights in the digital realm must be protected and promoted to the same extent and with the same commitment as human rights in the off-line world. In September 2013, at the 24th U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, States such as Austria, Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland organized an event to specifically focus on the protection of the right to privacy in the digital age. At the end of 2013, the United Nations General Assembly approved a key resolution on…
Within a week, over 5,000 individuals have urged the Senate to pass meaningful patent reform. These individuals represent over 900 inventors, 700 investors, and well over 1300 entrepreneurs who drive the innovation economy—yet are suffering billions of dollars in losses at the hands of patent trolls and rampant litigation. What is meaningful reform? There must be immediate changes to remove incentives from the patent troll business model: fee shifting to raise trolls’ financial stakes, for example; strong end user protections to stop trolls from targeting users of off-the-shelf technologies; transparency provisions preventing bad actors from hiding behind shell companies, striking…
UPDATE MARCH 5, 2014: The court held a hearing today on the subpoena. Good news: Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins agreed with EFF and struck down Personal Audio’s demands. The judge will issue a written order shortly; we will publish as soon as we have it. Personal Audio can try to appeal the decision, so this fight may continue. But for now: victory! For decades, EFF has been fighting to make the world safe for innovation. And we’ve been fighting even longer to protect First Amendment rights to anonymity and privacy. Today, those fights came together, as we went to court…
The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas today filed a motion to dismiss 11 charges against Barrett Brown in a criminal prosecution that would have had massive implications for journalism and the right of ordinary people to share links. EFF has written extensively about the case and had planned to file an amicus brief on Monday on behalf of several reporters groups arguing for the dismissal of the indictment. Brown, an independent journalist, was prosecuted after he shared a link to thousands of pages of stolen documents in an attempt to crowdsource the review of those documents—a common technique for…
Remember when Rep. Mike Rogers likened opponents of pernicious cybersecurity legislation to 14-year-olds? It turns out that middle-school-age students are also well-prepared to debate him on the NSA’s programs as well. EFF congratulates students from two middle schools who took home top prizes in the C-SPAN StudentCam 2014 competition for young filmmakers with their documentaries on mass surveillance. Students were tasked with answering the question: “What’s the most important issue the U.S. Congress should consider in 2014?” According to the C-SPAN press release: Peter Jasperse, Antonia Torfs-Leibman and Madeleine Hutchins, eighth graders at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, Md.,…
After an encouraging debate at the Oakland City Council meeting on February 18, EFF has submitted another letter opposing Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center (DAC). The DAC is a potent surveillance system that could enable ubiquitous privacy and civil liberties violations against Oakland residents. The city appeared set to approve a resolution that would have handed the City Administrator authority to sign a contract for completion of the project. However, after strenuous discussion, Councilmember Desley Brooks made a motion to delay the vote for two weeks in order to get more information about the potential civil liberties and financial impacts of…
The Mexican website 1dmx.org (mirror here), was set up in the wake of a set of controversial December 1st 2012 protests against the inauguration of the new President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. For a year, the site served as a source of information, news, discussion and commentary from the point of view of the protestors. As the anniversary of the protests approached, the site grew to include organized campaign against proposed laws to criminalize protest in the country, as well as preparations to document the results of a memorial protest, planned for December 1, 2013. On December 2nd, 2013,…
Two Big Cases Could Protect Software Innovators – and Their Customers – From Patent LawsuitsSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Supreme Court to crack down on patent trolls and the schemes they use to perpetuate their lawsuits in two amicus briefs filed today. “Patent trolls and their payoff demands depend on a flawed U.S. patent system,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Julie Samuels, who also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. “The cases the Supreme Court is tackling this term are prime examples of patent lawsuits gone awry. We’re asking the justices…
President Obama has nominated former SOPA lobbyist Robert Holleyman to join the team of U.S. negotiators leading the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks. If confirmed by the Senate, the former chief executive officer of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) would serve as a Deputy to the U.S. Trade Representative. Coincidentally, the current head of the BSA is former White House IP Czar Victoria Espinel. Holleyman is an interesting choice for the Obama administration, given the current standstill in TPP negotiations. Reports from the TPP ministerial meeting last weekend said that nothing substantive came out of those talks and that an end…
Legal Briefings Still Under Seal After Government Demands for SecrecyThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed two briefs on Friday challenging secret government demands for information known as National Security Letters (NSLs) with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The briefs—one filed on behalf of a telecom company and another for an Internet company—remain under seal because the government continues to insist that even identifying the companies involved might endanger national security. While the facts surrounding the specific companies and the NSLs they are challenging cannot be disclosed, their legal positions are already public: the NSL statute is a violation of…
The RightsCon summit is making its way back to Silicon Valley March 3-5, opening its doors to human rights experts, engineers, government representatives, and other activists from around the globe who will discuss solutions to human rights challenges. As such, a number of EFF staff members are looking forward to attending and speaking at the three-day conference. While EFF encourages you to attend as many RightsCon events as you can, be sure to catch the following: Monday, March 3, 3:30PM – 4:45PM: State of the Fight Against State-Sponsored Malware featuring Global Policy Analyst, Eva Galperin Monday, March 3, 5:00PM –…
On back-to-back days this week, residents in Texas and Washington received some extra legal protection for the contents of their cell phones. These decisions, while only binding on law enforcement within each respective state, could play an important role on the ongoing debate on cell phone privacy specifically, and applying legal protections against unreasonable searches and seizures to new technologies generally. Texas: a cellphone is not like a pair of pants or shoes First, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in State v. Granville that an inmate locked in jail maintained an expectation of privacy in the contents of…
This week, EFF asked a federal court in Florida to unseal records from the Disney v. Hotfile case describing Warner Brothers’ system for sending takedown notices to websites. Warner, and the other plaintiffs in the case, want that information kept secret forever. But Congress is asking for input about the notice-and-takedown system created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and a hearing is coming up soon. The Patent and Trademark Office is also holding public meetings on the DMCA. It’ll be harder for the public to get involved in these conversations without knowing some basic information about how big copyright…
The European Commission’s open consultation on copyright ends in less than a week. It’s a rare and important opportunity for anyone who uses the Internet— whether you are a student or artists, librarian or entrepreneur— to influence the future of innovation policy in the region. The 80 question “Public Consultation on the Review of the EU Copyright Rules” can be dizzying to tackle on its own, but there are several easy-to-use platforms that can help anyone with navigating the survey. How to Submit Your Own Comments Let’s Fix EU Copyright! — Choose from a list of categories that best describe…
‘Abstract Ideas’ Patents Hurt Technology IndustrySan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with Professor Pamela Samuelson of the University of California, Berkeley, urged the U.S. Supreme Court today to clean up the legal mess that is software patent law, reining in overbroad patents that are impermissibly abstract. In front of the court is Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, a long running case about a computer system that helps with closing financial transactions by avoiding settlement risk. In its amicus brief filed today, EFF argues that allowing a patent on this system goes against previous Supreme Court rulings that…
We’ve made considerable progress in our fight against patent trolls. The House, you may remember, resoundingly passed the Innovation Act last year. The President has since said he would sign it, and make a strong statement in support of reform in this year’s State of the Union address. Now, we await on the Senate to act (speaking of which, have you signed our letter urging such action?). Even with this progress, however, we’ve long worried about the demand letter problem. Last year, when we launched our demand letter database Trolling Effects, we wrote: The letters demanding these payments are often…
Liberation Music Will Fix Its Copyright Policies and Pay CompensationSan Francisco – Prof. Lawrence Lessig has settled his lawsuit against an Australian record label over the use of clips of a popular song by the band Phoenix in a lecture that was later posted online. Liberation Music, which represents Phoenix in New Zealand, claimed the clips infringed copyright, demanded YouTube take down the lecture, and then threatened to sue Lessig. Represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Jones Day, Lessig fought back, asserting his fair use rights in court. “Too often, copyright is used as an excuse to silence…
It’s time for Congress to follow the Sixth Circuit’s lead and update one of the main online privacy laws—the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA). In the past, the Department of Justice has used the archaic law to obtain private online communications without obtaining a probable cause warrant as the Fourth Amendment requires. A bill co-sponsored by Reps. Kevin Yoder, Tom Graves, and Jared Polis—HR 1852, The Email Privacy Act—seeks to update ECPA by requiring a probable cause warrant whenever the government wants to access your online private messages. The bill is slowly making its way through Congress, but we can…
The only thing standing in the way of patent reform is the United States Senate. The House passed the Innovation Act in December with a bipartisan 325-91 vote. President Obama has said he’ll sign the bill and asked Congress during his State of the Union to “pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation.” It’s now up to the Senate to help put an end to costly, destructive patent troll litigation and threats. And they need to hear from you: you the inventor, you the entrepreneur, you the investor,…