In the 36-year existence of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the government has never disclosed classified FISA materials—the specific applications for surveillance and the factual affidavits that support the surveillance request—to a criminal defendant. That all changed in January 2014 when a federal judge in Chicago ordered the government to turn over surveillance applications and affidavits to the attorneys representing Adel Daoud, a 19 year-old accused of attempting to blow up a bar in Chicago. As the government appeals that decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, we’ve signed onto an amicus brief written by the ACLU and the…
Author: EFFSource
We’re still digesting today’s lengthy decision in the Oracle v. Google appeal, but we’re disappointed—and worried. The heart of the appeal was whether Oracle can claim a copyright on Java APIs and, if so, whether Google infringed that copyright. According to the Federal Circuit today, the answer to both questions was a qualified yes—with the qualification being that Google may have a fair use defense. Quick background: When it implemented the Android OS, Google wrote its own version of Java. But in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google relied on Java APIs. Application Programming…
A group of United States Senators and Representatives is asking Internet advertising networks to create a blacklist of alleged “piracy sites” and refuse to serve ads to those sites. If this idea sounds familiar, that’s probably because it was an integral part of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, legislation that was stopped in its tracks two years ago after a massive protest by Internet users. It’s disturbing that members of Congress are pressuring ad networks to follow a law that Congress didn’t pass, and probably never will. But it’s downright shocking for them to ask ad networks…
The most recent disclosure of classified NSA documents revealed that the British spy agency GCHQ sought unfettered access to NSA data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Not only does this reveal that the two agencies have a far closer relationship than GCHQ would like to publicly admit, it also serves as a reminder that surveillance under Section 702 is a real problem that has barely been discussed, much less addressed, by Congress or the President. In fact, the “manager’s amendment” to the USA FREEDOM Act, which passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, has weakened…
This statement was updated at 2:35 PM PST 5/7/14. Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee passed a revised version of the USA FREEDOM Act. We’re pleased by Congress’ strong step toward ending bulk surveillance of phone records of Americans. This bill is a good start toward reforming an out-of-control surveillance state, and we urge members of Congress to support it as the bill moves forward through the legislative process. The USA FREEDOM Act includes a definition of call detail records which excludes cell site location data, a provision that will help safeguard the location privacy of millions of Americans from…
As centers of learning, universities are places where the exploration and investigation of new and often controversial topics is encouraged, where freedom of speech and thought should flourish. Under mass government surveillance, academic freedom and freedom of speech are severely chilled. When the government is monitoring communications, social media activity, and phone calls, students are less likely to organize and be politically active. That’s why we invite university communities across country to organize and raise their voices to join the call to stop the NSA’s illegal mass surveillance by writing and signing onto open letters to express deep concern about…
EFF has been fighting for years for the principle that if you bought it, you own it. The first sale doctrine – the law that allows you to resell books and that protects libraries from claims of copyright infringement – is crucial to consumers. Unfortunately, first sale has been under threat in the digital realm, as copyright holders increasingly insist on saddling “sales” with onerous restrictions. You may think you are buying a product (like software, music and ebooks), but as far as they are concerned, you are just renting it, on their terms, whether you know it or not.…
One of the bitterest struggles against DRM is still taking place on the Web’s own home turf — at the World Wide Web Consortium, the Web’s own standards organization. Last year, the consortium accepted as in scope the development of Encrypted Media Extensions, an addition to the HTML5 standard intended to support DRM within browsers. EME envisages a future where restricted content could be served within Web pages, apparently as a fully-fledged element of the Web ecosystem, but locked away from user control or fair use, and controlled by tools that can override user preferences. It’s been over a year…
EFF and the ACLU of Pennsylvania have joined forces to file an amicus brief in a long-running challenge to two criminal statutes that unconstitutionally limit the free expression of millions of adults who use the Internet and other electronic forms of communication. These statutes bring the threat of criminal sanctions for private, lawful speech and also violate important privacy rights, including both the First and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. At issue in the case, Free Speech Coalition v. Attorney General, are provisions of federal law that require anyone who produces a visual depiction of sexually explicit expression to…
Laws that make it illegal to interfere with digital rights management (DRM) technologies—also known as “anti-circumvention” laws—are already much too broad and restrictive in most countries. Unfortunately, the US Trade Representative is working hard to expand its reach even more using the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The TPP’s anti-circumvention provisions, if adopted, would introduce new barriers to users’ abilities to tinker with their devices and content, even for entirely lawful purposes. When the “Intellectual Property” chapter initially leaked in February 2011, we discovered that some of the most threatening provisions were found in the anti-circumvention portion of the copyright enforcement…