Oversight boards and congressional subcommittees can occasionally be effective, but nothing keeps the government in check like investigative reporting. Here are eight stories about surveillance that made our jaws drop this year: Counter-surveillance Burglars Reveals Themselves One of the earliest scoops of the year was 43 years in the making. For her 2014 book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger convinced several members of an activist group, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, to finally go on record about how, in 1971, they stole records showing the agency’s shocking…
Author: EFFSource
At the end of each year, EFF puts together a list of some of the interesting and noteworthy books that have been published in the past 12 months or so. We don’t endorse all of their arguments, but we find they’ve added some valuable insight to the conversation around the areas and issues on which we work. This year, we’ve included two movies as well—both highly-regarded documentaries that have introduced many people to very important issues. Some notes about this list: it’s presented in alphabetical order by author’s last name, and most links contain our Amazon affiliate code, which means…
The Associated Whistleblowing Press released portions of draft text proposed by the United States for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) this week, revealing some alarming provisions that indicate how tech companies have been involved in influencing a secret international deal. The language of the leaked treaty shows provisions that could impact privacy online, and net neutrality—with no public consultation or opportunities for open debate. What is dispiriting is some of the language of these Internet regulations almost certainly comes from tech companies, who have joined the many other lobbyists fighting for their special interests behind closed doors. TISA is…
For the last three years, EFF has greeted the holiday season by publishing a list of things we’d like to see happen in the coming year. Sometimes these are actions we’d like to see taken by companies, and sometimes our wishes are aimed at governments, but we also include actions everyday people can take to advance our digital civil liberties. This year has seen great progress in areas such as transparency reports and encrypting digital communications. We want to build on that progress in 2015. Here are some of the things we’re wishing for this holiday: News organizations and individual…
A panel of eleven Ninth Circuit federal judges heard oral arguments yesterday in Garcia v. Google, a copyright case arising from the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” video that was associated with violent protests around the world. The appellant, Cindy Lee Garcia, argues that she holds a copyright in her five-second performance in the video (a performance she says was tricked into giving), and is trying to use that claim to get the video pulled off the internet. To the shock of many, last February two Ninth Circuit judges agreed she might have a claim and ordered Google to remove the…
Microsoft has been battling with the federal government over the Department of Justice’s high profile attempt to get access to emails stored abroad in ireland for the better part of 2014. The US government has claimed a US warrant is sufficient to get emails even when stored in another country, while Microsoft has resisted, arguing the US warrant power does not reach that far. The case has made business rivals into temporary allies and forced Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Data Protection to ask the European Commission to formally support Microsoft. Today we joined the Brennan Center for Justice, the…
A panel of eleven Ninth Circuit federal judges will hear oral arguments Monday in a rehearing of Garcia v. Google, a copyright case arising from the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” video that was associated with violent protests around the world. The appellant, Cindy Lee Garcia, argues that she holds a copyright in her five-second performance in the video, and because she was tricked into participating, that the video uses that performance without permission. EFF and many other public interest groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, noting (among other concerns) that it is a matter of firmly established law…
Por Katitza Rodriguez y David Bogado En una audiencia pública en el Congreso Paraguayo el mes pasado, desde la Electronic Frontier Foundation junto con nuestros aliados paraguayos, la ONG TEDIC, dejamos claro nuestro rechazo a la la propuesta legislativa de retener los datos de tráfico de usuarios de Internet por 12 meses en Paraguay. A pesar de ello, hay elementos que ya generan vigilancia masiva a la población. Durante la audiencia, convocada por la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la Cámara de Diputados del Paraguay, propusimos un sistema de preservación de datos, también conocido como «congelación rápida», el cual es…
Groups Demand That Negotiators Release Text of Secret Trade DealWashington, D.C. – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined dozens of civil society groups from around the world in calling for the release of the secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a massive proposed trade agreement that could quash digital rights for Internet users everywhere in the name of intellectual property protection. A representative from OpenMedia International is presenting a letter from the coalition to several TPP delegates on Thursday and Friday at the TPP negotiations in Washington, D.C. The letter demands open debate and oversight of the trade deal,…
Today, Google has announced that it will be permanently shutting down the Spanish version of Google News, effective from December 15, 2014. The shutdown comes in direct response to amendments to the Spanish intellectual property law (Ley De Propiedad Intelectual) imposing a compulsory fee for the use of snippets of text to link to news articles, by online news aggregators that provide a search service. A similar fee was first introduced in German law in 2013, where it was described as an “ancillary copyright” (or Leistungsschutzrecht). But the fee actually has no heritage in copyright law, which preserves the right…
This statement was drafted with SMEX, Global Voices, and individual actors. The original post can be found here. Today, on Human Rights Day, we remind the world of our many friends who have broken the silence of oppression by expressing their thoughts, asking questions, and thinking critically and constructively about how to solve the problems before them. We remember today Alaa Abd El Fattah and Bassel Khartabil (aka Bassel Safadi), two jailed friends who are serving arbitrary sentences that jeopardize their futures as innovators and free thinkers from the Arab region. Bassel has been behind bars in Syria since March…
It’s no secret that the US Trade Representative (USTR) has approached the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations with a disappointing lack of transparency. For years now, leaks have been an inadequate substitute to reasonable public policy, and non-corporate groups have resorted to reading between the lines of press statements even as the stated timeline of the agreement has blown by. There’s another tool that members of the public can use to pry information out of agencies like the USTR: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Through FOIA, groups like EFF can demand certain kinds of information, and the agency has a…
You may be shocked to hear that EFF doesn’t think technology is a solution to every problem. That includes problems with the police and with public safety. And, as we’ve pointed out when it comes to drones and other types of local surveillance, we think adoption of new technology requires communities to understand and discuss the pros and cons. That’s why we think President Obama’s announcement last week about federal assistance to local law enforcement was a little lackluster. The President made it clear that he plans to leave largely untouched the controversial programs that funnel military equipment and surveillance…
EFF is in Geneva this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where the organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is gathered to debate proposals for a treaty to give new legal rights to broadcasters, and for instruments that would standardize copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, educators and researchers. More about those proposals will be coming in a series of updates this week. But first, why are we at WIPO at all? Here’s a short history lesson to explain. The DMCA’s Origins at WIPO Way back in 1995, the Clinton administration put forward a bill…
The lawsuit filed last week by music publishers BMG and Round Hill against Cox Communications could be the next battle in the major media companies’ long-term campaign to turn Internet service providers into copyright police. BMG and Round Hill are asking a federal court to declare that ISPs like Cox must terminate their customers’ accounts whenever the publishers’ agent—a company called Rightscorp—says so. Because Cox didn’t immediately kick subscribers off of its service after Rightscorp accused those subscribers of copyright infringement, BMG and Round Hill say that Cox should pay potentially millions of dollars in penalties. BMG and Round Hill…
EFF, ACLU Support Smith in Fighting Mass Surveillance Before Ninth Circuit Seattle – An appeals court will hear oral arguments in Smith v. Obama, a case filed by an Idaho nurse against a controversial National Security Agency (NSA) telephone data collection program, in Seattle on Monday, Dec. 8. Anna Smith, a neonatal nurse from Coeur d’Alene, filed her lawsuit against President Barack Obama and several U.S. intelligence agencies in June 2013, shortly after the government confirmed that the NSA was collecting telephone records on a massive scale under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Smith, a Verizon customer, argues the…
Paraguay understands the dangers of pervasive surveillance. Its ex-dictator, Alfredo Stroessner, maintained his grip on power with the help of “pyragues”, informers who monitored the civilian population on his behalf. That’s why so many in the country recognise the dangers in its new proposed data retention bill. The bill, currently being debated by its politicians, would compel local ISPs to retain communications and location details of every user for a period of 12 months. No wonder it’s been described as creating a new gang of “pyrawebs”: online informers that the authorities can ask to pinpoint the movements, connections, and associations…
Following recent reports in the Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica, there’s been new interest in the government’s use of a relatively obscure law, the All Writs Act. According to these reports, the government has invoked the All Writs Act in order to compel the assistance of smartphone manufacturers in unlocking devices pursuant to a search warrant. The reports are based on orders from federal magistrate judges in Oakland and New York City issued to Apple and another unnamed manufacturer (possibly also Apple) respectively, requiring them to bypass the lock screen on seized phones and enable law enforcement access. These…
This week EFF joined an amicus brief in support of a college student who was expelled from school for comments he made on Facebook. Craig Keefe was a nursing student at a public college in Minnesota when he posted several comments on his Facebook profile expressing frustration about certain aspects of the nursing program, including what he considered to be favoritism of female students. Keefe also engaged in a dispute with one of his classmates, calling her a “stupid bitch.” While his Facebook profile was publicly viewable, he was off-campus when he posted his comments and did not use any…
Faulty Decision from Ninth Circuit Panel Endangers Free Speech, Historical RecordSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of technology and free speech organizations are asking the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to fix a disastrously wrongheaded copyright ruling that required an online service provider to take offline—and keep offline—a controversial video that has been the center of a global debate. This case, Garcia v. Google, centers on “The Innocence of Muslims,” a short video on YouTube that sparked protests worldwide in the fall of 2012 with its anti-Islamic content. The video was…