The White House updated the nation on its commitment to curtail the patent troll problem and tie up some egregious loose ends in our patent system, announcing progress made on all fronts—as well as three new executive actions. While the Innovation Act (and other patent bills) is pending in the Senate, it is encouraging to see the White House and Patent Office taking steps on their own to address these rampant problems. One of the most useful announcements is a toolkit put out by the Patent Office called Been Sued or Gotten a Demand Letter? that highlights a variety of…
Author: EFFSource
For the last month, Venezuela has been caught up in widespread protests against its government. The Maduro administration has responded by cracking down on what it claims as being foreign interference online. As that social unrest has escalated, the state’s censorship has widened: from the removal of television stations from cable networks, to the targeted blocking of social networking services, and the announcement of new government powers to censor and monitor online. Last night, EFF received reports from Venezuelans of the shutdown of the state Internet provider in San Cristóbal, a regional capital in the west of the country. The…
The net neutrality fight is moving in new directions, and quickly. Today FCC Chair Tom Wheeler announced that the FCC would press forward with new “Open Internet” rules, undeterred by last month’s court decision striking down most of the old ones. Last week, Comcast and Time Warner Cable announced plans to merge. The merger would create the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the nation, with five times the subscribers of its closest competitor. With only one or two broadband providers available in most parts of the country, prices may soar while the quality of services plummets. A lack of…
The Intercept recently published an article and supporting documents indicating that the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ surveilled and even sought to have other countries prosecute the investigative journalism website WikiLeaks. GCHQ also surveilled the millions of people who merely read the Wikileaks website. The article clarifies the lengths that these two spy organizations go to track their targets and confirms, once again, that they do not confine themselves to spying on to those accused of terrorism. One document contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices discuss whether to categorize WikiLeaks as…
Senior Staff Technologist Seth Schoen Will Speak at Wednesday ConferenceWashington, D.C. – Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Senior Staff Technologist Seth Schoen will warn attendees at a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conference Wednesday that most people don’t realize the current extent of mobile device tracking and just how sensitive cell phone location data can be. The conference is set for 10 a.m. on Wednesday, February 17 at the FTC Conference Center. “The ability for marketers and others to recognize where a particular device is located is actually an unintended consequence of technologies like wifi,” said Schoen. “It’s not a designed-in feature…
EFF submitted a letter to the Oakland City Council opposing the Domain Awareness Center, a surveillance system that would aggregate information from multiple sources across the city—including 35 CCTV cameras, 40 live video surveillance cameras, 25 traffic camera sites, license plate readers, and Oakland’s “[gun]shot spotter” system. The project would also include partnerships with other agencies and intelligence centers, such as the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center located in San Francisco that has access to the FBI’s eGuardian database, among others. Today’s letter joins earlier statements from ACLU of Northern California and the Oakland Privacy Working Group…
Months of Electronic Espionage Put American Citizen and Family at RiskWashington, D.C. – An American citizen living in Maryland sued the Ethiopian government today for infecting his computer with secret spyware, wiretapping his private Skype calls, and monitoring his entire family’s every use of the computer for a period of months. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing the plaintiff in this case, who has asked the court to allow him to use the pseudonym Mr. Kidane – which he uses within the Ethiopian community – in order to protect the safety and wellbeing of his family both in the…
Another day, another stupid copyright claim silences a lawful use online. Copyright abuse is all too common, but some forms deserve special attention and a place in EFF Takedown Hall of Shame. First up: a particularly offensive use of the DMCA to force offline a series of videos debunking AIDS denialists. It seems there’s a community of people trying to convince the world that the medical science behind, and treatment for, HIV/AIDS is all wrong. What is worse, they are trying to convince HIV positive people not to take life-saving medications. One of their principal propaganda tools is the movie…
South Dakota has put forth new legislation to support to a simple principle: if you own something, you ought to be allowed to fix it. The new bill, SB 136, would require manufacturers of electronics and appliances that contain embedded software to make available to consumers and independent repair shops the information and parts they need to repair those devices, and fully disclose any contract provision standing in the way of full repair and reuse. That seems like a pretty uncontroversial goal, but lots of major manufacturers that purport to “sell” you all kinds of products are doing their level…
On February 18, prominent Vietnamese activist and blogger Le Quoc Quan will appear in a Hanoi court to begin the appeal of his politically-motivated October 2013 conviction of evading corporate income tax. The Vietnamese government has pursued a campaign of harassment against Quan for his human rights work since at least 2007, including disbarment, periodic arrests, and an attack by unknown assailants that led to his hospitalization in 2012. The Vietnamese government’s latest efforts to silence the human rights lawyers and high-profile blogger began on December 27, 2012, when Quan was arbitrarily arrested and detained while taking his daughter to…