You Asked: Tell us all your secrets. SGT STAR: Good question. I’m not sure how to answer that. Please try rewording your question. I understand simple questions best. You Asked: In that case, tell us everything. SGT STAR: That is a good question, however, I am not positive that I understand what you’re asking. Try rephrasing your question. I understand simple questions best. Sgt. Star is the U.S. Army’s dedicated marketing and recruitment chatbot, and he isn’t going to turn whistleblower any time soon. There’s no use threatening him for answers either—he’s programmed to report that kind of hostility to…
Author: EFFSource
In Armenia, online anonymity could be a luxury of the past if a bill that is currently before the Armenian parliament is passed. The bill would make it illegal for media outlets to publish defamatory content by anonymous or fake sources. Additionally, under this bill, sites that host libelous comments that are posted anonymously or under a pseudonym would be required to remove such content within 12 hours unless an author is identified. Edmon Marukyan, one of the bill’s drafters, explained the goal of the bill saying, “You can remain incognito as much as you like. Write your posts, but…
While most courts in the United States are adversarial—each party presents its side and a jury, or occasionally a judge, makes a decision—in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), only the government presents its case to a judge. While typically two opposing sides work under public review to make sure all the facts are brought to light, in the FISC the system relies on a heightened duty of candor for the government. As is illustrated all too well by recent developments in our First Unitarian v. NSA case, this one-sided court system is fundamentally unfair. In March, after we learned…
Donate a Few Hours to Help Us Create a Free Software Backend for Contacting Congress, Make the World a Better Place for Digital Rights For years, EFF has been helping concerned technology users contact Congress. The EFF community stopped SOPA, we fought back privacy-invasive cybersecurity proposals, we are championing software patent reform, and now we’re demanding real NSA reform—not a fake fix. Here’s How To Jump In and Help Read the instructions for contributing. Check out the GitHub repo. Ask questions on IRC: #opencongress on irc.freenode.net. But we’re at an impasse. Our community has grown significantly in the last few…
Updates to the email privacy law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) are long overdue. It’s common sense that emails and other online private messages (like Twitter direct messages) are protected by the Fourth Amendment. But for a long time, the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued ECPA allowed it to circumvent the Fourth Amendment and access much of your email without a warrant. Thankfully, last year it finally gave up on that stance. But now it appears that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the civil agency in charge of protecting investors and ensuring orderly markets, may be doing…
Let’s just imagine we could transport an Internet-connected laptop back to the 1790s, when the United States was in its infancy. The technology would no doubt knock the founders out of their buckle-top boots, but once the original patriots got over the initial shock and novelty (and clearing up Wikipedia controversies, hosting an AMA and boggling over Dogecoin), the sense of marvel would give way to alarm as they realized how electronic communications could be exploited by a tyrant, such as the one from which they just freed themselves. As America’s first unofficial chief technologist, Benjamin Franklin would be the…
After seven years of litigation, the basic contours of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors should be pretty well established. Unfortunately, a new front may have opened up in a case called Gardner v. CafePress, thanks to a mistaken and dangerous misreading of Section 512. With the invaluable assistance of Venkat Balasubramani, EFF, joined by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and Public Knowledge, has filed an amicus brief in that case. In our brief, we explain our deep concerns about how that recent ruling could have profound consequences for user-generated content…
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument today in AF Holdings v. Does 1-1058, one of the few mass copyright cases to reach an appellate court, and the first to specifically raise the fundamental procedural problems that tilt the playing field firmly against the Doe Defendants. The appeal was brought by several internet service providers (Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and affiliates), with amicus support from EFF, the ACLU, the ACLU of the Nation’s Capitol, Public Citizen, and Public Knowledge. On the other side: notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. Copyright trolls like Prenda want to be able to sue thousands of…
New documents released by the FBI show that the Bureau is well on its way toward its goal of a fully operational face recognition database by this summer. EFF received these records in response to our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for information on Next Generation Identification (NGI)—the FBI’s massive biometric database that may hold records on as much as one third of the U.S. population. The facial recognition component of this database poses real threats to privacy for all Americans. What is NGI? NGI builds on the FBI’s legacy fingerprint database—which already contains well over 100 million individual records—and…
Friday, April 4th was 404 Day – a day meant to call attention to Internet censorship in public schools and libraries in the United States. This censorship is the result of a well-meaning but misguided law, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which ties federal funding for public schools and libraries to requirements to filter child pornography and content that is obscene or “harmful to minors.” Unfortunately, bad and secretive filtering technology and over-aggressive filtering implementations result in the filtering of constitutionally-protected speech, among other problems. The day centered around a digital teach-in for an in-depth discussion of the issues,…