Late last week, a group of four peers on Britain’s House of Lords attempted to insert the entirety of the “Snoopers’ Charter”—the Internet surveillance bill that was savaged by a Parliamentary overview, and abandoned by the UK’s current coalition government—into a new counter-terrorism bill. Under an incredibly tight deadline, thousands of UK citizens coordinated to warn the House of Lords what these amendments represented, and why they should oppose such an underhanded move. Over twenty-eight thousand messages were sent via EFF’s action center to the 150 peers who are on Twitter: and that’s not counting the emails, letters and phone…
Author: EFFSource
The 911 system has a problem. As people switch from landlines to mobile phones, more and more 911 calls come from wireless devices. But under current FCC E911 (Enhanced 911) regulations, carriers are only required to provide 911 dispatchers with a mobile phone’s location to within 300 meters, and aren’t required to provide any sort of vertical location information (i.e. to pinpoint what floor of a skyscraper someone is on). This lack of accurate location information can make it difficult for first responders to find callers, especially when the person calling becomes disoriented or unable to speak. Unfortunately, in an…
We have a problem when it comes to stopping mass surveillance. The entity that’s conducting the most extreme and far-reaching surveillance against most of the world’s communications—the National Security Agency—is bound by United States law. That’s good news for Americans. U.S. law and the Constitution protect American citizens and legal residents from warrantless surveillance. That means we have a very strong legal case to challenge mass surveillance conducted domestically or that sweeps in Americans’ communications. Similarly, the United States Congress is elected by American voters. That means Congressional representatives are beholden to the American people for their jobs, so public…
The next round of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations begins this Monday, January 26, and runs through the following week at the Sheraton New York Time Square Hotel in downtown Manhattan. As with many previous TPP meetings, the public will be shut out of talks as negotiators convene behind closed doors to decide binding rules that could impact how our lawmakers set digital policy in the decades to come. Big content industry interests have been given privileged access to negotiating texts and have driven the US Trade Representative’s mandate when it comes to copyright—which is why the TPP carries extreme…
U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay sentenced Barrett Brown this morning to 63 months in federal prison, minus the 31 months he has already served to date. He was also ordered to pay $890,000 in restitution. EFF is disappointed to see that Brown wasn’t released today, after having spent nearly three years in prison on charges stemming from his work as an independent journalist. Brown’s work has appeared in major outlets like Vanity Fair, the Huffington Post and the Guardian. He also founded Project PM, a project to crowdsource review of documents for investigative journalism. Brown’s legal trouble began in 2011,…
Last year, we identified European copyright reform as one of the main developments to watch for in 2015, and barely a month into the year this debate is already heating up. Coinciding with the release of a draft European Parliament report written by Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party, Copyright for Creativity (C4C) have also released their own new Copyright Manifesto this week. We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements…
The Associated Press reports that healthcare.gov–the flagship site of the Affordable Care Act, where millions of Americans have signed up to receive health care–is quietly sending personal health information to a number of third party websites. The information being sent includes one’s zip code, income level, smoking status, pregnancy status and more. An example of personal health data being sent to third parties from healthcare.gov EFF researchers have independently confirmed that healthcare.gov is sending personal health information to at least 14 third party domains, even if the user has enabled Do Not Track. The information is sent via the referrer…
Longtime Digital Rights Champion to Liberate Users from Digital Locks that Restrict Our TechSan Francisco – Leading digital rights champion and author Cory Doctorow has rejoined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to battle the pervasive use of dangerous digital rights management (DRM) technologies that threaten users’ security and privacy, distort markets, confiscate public rights, and undermine innovation. Doctorow will be a special consultant to the Apollo 1201 Project, a mission to eradicate DRM in our lifetime. Apollo 1201 will challenge the use of DRM as well as the legal structures that support it. “Apollo was a decade-long plan to do…
Advertising network Turn announced today that they will suspend their zombie tracking cookie program. Turn was recently caught using Verizon Wireless’ invasive UIDH header to undelete tracking cookies that web visitors had previously deleted. This unacceptable practice means that users who delete cookies to avoid Turn’s and others’ tracking will continue to be tracked against their will, using information associated with their previous activity through a permanent identity. This is a step toward victory for everyone who spoke out against Turn’s zombie cookies, but it is not enough. Turn’s cookies just underscore the huge privacy problems with Verizon’s header injection.…
We’re usually very happy to see the government release documents shed light on unconstitutional surveillance. We’re less happy when the release is done Christmas week, in an attempt to ensure that they will get as little attention as possible. That’s what happened this Christmas. On December 23, the National Security Agency (NSA) released over a decade’s worth of oversight reports from the NSA to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board—documents that should have been released years ago pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit brought by EFF. And on December 24, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released “A Review…