But Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app may be enough to bring the company to the attention of government regulators. Although spokespeople for the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Department of Justice all declined to comment on whether Apple's actions might merit regulatory scrutiny, Fred Von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believes that Apple will have to confront questions about anti-competitive behavior.

"The Google Voice events this week underscore the fact that if you're worried about competition, you're worried about Apple," he said, noting that the incident shows why the EFF asked the Copyright Office to sanction the jailbreaking of iPhones.

Well, there wouldn't be any problems at all, really, if the devices were shipped without being locked down to a carrier or to Apple's App Store. People just want to use their devices the way they want, and they should be able to do so. This is why the Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked regulators (PDF) to basically legalize the jailbreaking practice of the iPhones.

Apple's arguments, filed June 23, seek to rebut a request to the agency by the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that modifications to the iPhone's software do not violate the DMCA and should be allowed.

What makes me feel a little better for my wrongdoing with my iPhones, however, is the fact that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked regulators for the DMCA exemption (PDF) that would allow consumers to run any app on the phone, including those not authorized by Apple. This would basically legalize the jailbreaking practice of the iPhones.

Fred von Lohmann, the EFF attorney who made the request, said Apple’s latest claims are preposterous. During a May public hearing on the issue in Palo Alto, California, he told regulators there were as many as a million unauthorized, jailbroken phones.

In an interview Tuesday, he said he suspected those phones have not been used to destroy mobile phone towers. “As far as I know, nothing like that has ever happened,” he said.

Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that she decided to go ahead with the public campaign after months of discussions with Google. She said that Google’s response was insufficient and that the company should commit to guarantees in writing before the settlement is reviewed by a court in October. And she dismissed the argument that Google could not make privacy guarantees until the product was built.

“Whether to hand data only in response to a warrant or not is not a tech decision,” she said in an interview. “Whether you are holding data for 30 days or longer is not a tech decision.”

David Sobel, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which studies and advocates on electronic privacy issues, says he has been struck by how closely Obama is hewing to Bush-era objections to increased disclosure.

For instance, the new administration used arguments identical to those marshaled by Bush’s Justice Department when it moved in April to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Sobel’s organization on behalf of those who contend that they were subjected to illegal warrantless wiretaps. “No change. Not one word,” Sobel said. “They’ve said all the right things, but they haven’t really delivered on the rhetoric.”

This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit to compel the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other members of the intelligence community to turn over documents detailing their concerns about their own misdeeds. We sued under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that allows anyone to request information about the federal government's activities. President Obama has called the FOIA "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government."

But EFF lawyer Fred von Lohmann claimed victory, saying that Apple had backed off of overreaching legal claims it made in a November takedown notice it sent to BluWiki. Apple's lawyers at O'Melveny & Myers charged that posts on the site, which included reverse engineering of Apple's iTunes software, were a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention measures.

"Apple's threats were clearly designed to censor pure speech -- there was no software there, there were no tools, there were no hacking devices -- this was just people talking," von Lohmann said. "Apple was well beyond the statute when it made these threats, and apparently they think so now, too."

The EFF posted its concerns with Google Book Search on its blog Thursday, with EFF designer/activist Hugh D'Andrade saying the search product could infringe on "privacy of thought."

"If you suspect you may have a serious disease, you can go into a bookstore and browse for books about your illness, find one that's useful, and buy it with cash," D'Andrade wrote. "And you can rest assured that your insurance premiums won't increase as a result, because there is no way your insurance company can find out about your choice of reading material."

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is raising concerns about whether Google's upcoming digital book service will adequately protect readers' privacy.

"As Google expands its Google Book Search service, adding millions of titles, it will dramatically increase the public's access to books," the civil liberties organization says. "But Google may be leaving out the privacy we have come to expect, with systems that monitor the digital books you search, the pages you read, how long you spend on various pages, and even what you write down in the margins."

Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that she decided to go ahead with the public campaign after months of discussions with Google. She said that Google’s response was insufficient and that the company should commit to guarantees in writing before the settlement is reviewed by a court in October. And she dismissed the argument that Google could not make privacy guarantees until the product was built.

“Whether to hand data only in response to a warrant or not is not a tech decision,” she said in an interview. “Whether you are holding data for 30 days or longer is not a tech decision.”

Political protests overseas demonstrate the enormous power of the most mundane Internet technologies. Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being used to organize protests after Iran's contested election and have allowed Iranians to speak anonymously to one another and the world. In China, access to reports and photos on the Internet fueled protests in Urumqi after a violent confrontation ended with more than 150 dead.

Members of the Open Source For America coalition, which launched Wednesday, include Google, The Linux Foundation, the Mozilla and Debian projects, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"We have long been concerned that digital rights management is essentially tricking people," says Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the campaign group based in San Francisco. "It's creating a situation where people think they've purchased something – in the way you might purchase a pair of shoes, for example. But from the perspective of the seller, and often from the perspective of the law, it's quite a lot less."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Nate Cardozo said the lawsuit is especially important now because some members of Congress have complained this year that the intelligence community hasn't kept them informed about spy activities.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Apple are standing down over a legal dispute involving the Web site Bluwiki. Apple is no longer going after Bluwiki's operators for what it says was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and in return EFF has dropped its own lawsuit against Apple, reports The Loop.

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the EFF, said he was a little disappointed that he didn’t have a chance to argue the case, adding that the hobbyists’ discussions on BluWiki were protected by the first amendment.

OdioWorks and the EFF insisted that hosting information on how to enable third-party software to work with Apple's devices did not make one a hacker or pirate, and they apparently still do. Apple decided to call off the dogs only because the code is now obsolete; what will happen when users inevitably start talking about Apple's new code and trying to get the Palm Pre to work with iTunes again?

EFF hopes to tap into CIA, NSA, and other agencies’ records of self-reporting on potential wrongdoing to learn more about how US collects intelligence on US citizens, for example, or homicides or other crimes that may have occurred during detainee interrogations or detentions. EFF’s earlier FOIA requests to US intelligence agencies for information on these topics have yielded little, Threat Level reports.

Today the EFF released a guide called "Surveillance Self-Defense International." The guide is exactly what it sounds like: a six-step manual that helps online dissenters living in authoritarian regimes cover their digital tracks and try to remain anonymous.

The CIA is among the agencies that failed to respond to the EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for copies of the reports. Given the unfolding controversy over the CIA’s apparent failure to notify Congress of a secret agency assassination program, the withholding of these documents takes on even greater importance, according to EFF lawyer Nate Cardozo.

“If the CIA hasn’t been reporting these types of activity to Congress, which apparently they haven’t, then who are they reporting it to?” Cardozo asked. “If this is only body for the intelligence oversight, whether they are actually filing these reports is a good question.”

Last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge sued to force the trade representative to disclose documents relating to the treaty. But the digital rights groups withdrew their lawsuit last month, after the Obama Administration told the court the documents should remain classified.

The gallery threatened legal action against Mr. Coetzee, saying that while the painted portraits may be old and thus beyond copyright protection, the photographs are new and therefore copyrighted work. The gallery is demanding a response by Monday from Mr. Coetzee, who is being represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In an e-mail message on Friday a gallery spokeswoman, Eleanor Macnair, wrote that “contact has now been made” with the Wikimedia Foundation and “we remain hopeful that a dialogue will be possible.”

This is precisely what the EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, and the American Library Association fear. In most respects, they don't oppose the idea of ACTA. "Rather, we believe the [US Trade Representative] also should be pursuing this objective in a manner that benefits, rather than harms, US technology companies and consumers," they wrote in a letter (PDF) this week to the US Trade Rep., Ron Kirk.

California's revised Pay-As-You-Drive auto insurance proposal has drawn fire from the EFF, which hailed the amended bill as an improvement over the original, but voiced substantially the same privacy complaints.

"The irony that the two books involved were 'Animal Farm' and '1984' is just too much," said Fred Von Lohmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006, meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for.

Wikimedia Foundation did not respond to the NPG's original takedown request in April 2009, so the NPG is pursuing Coetzee directly. Coetzee is now being represented pro bono by attorney Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Although both the Bush and Obama administrations have refused to discuss the extent of phone company participation, several members of Congress have confirmed that the government obtained records from phone companies, the plaintiffs' lawyer, Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Walker.

“With both lawsuits, it’s the same underlying factual theory: The secret room on Folsom,” Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director, said in a telephone interview. “If it was illegal for AT&T to hand this information over to the government, it was illegal for the government to get this information from AT&T,” Cohn added.

“What the government is arguing is that the president decides what is legal or not,” EFF legal director Cindy Cohn told Judge Walker at the end of the hearing.

After the nearly two hours of arguments ended in court Wednesday, EFF lawyers said Obama had reneged on campaign promises by continuing to support the program. "It's not surprising; it is disappointing," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF attorney.

The fact that AHN agreed to acknowledge the hot news principle won't necessarily affect other cases, said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in intellectual property.

The case "does send a message that the AP is serious about this hot news theory," he said. "Most intellectual property experts view hot news as a very narrow doctrine and the AP is going to have a very hard time protecting all its assets with hot news."

That thinking is flawed, says Lee Tien, a senior attorney and surveillance expert with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes RFID in identity documents.

It won't take a massive government project to build reader networks around the country, he says: They will grow organically, for commercial purposes, from convention centers to shopping malls, sports stadiums to college campuses. Federal agencies and law enforcement wouldn't have to control those networks; they already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers.

"And remember," Tien adds, "technology always gets better ... "

CINDY COHN, Electronic Frontier Foundation: There's plain-old hackers, security breaches. Sometimes we call those "Data Valdez" at EFF, where there's a spillage of data.

SPENCER MICHELS: Like the Exxon Valdez?

CINDY COHN: Like the Exxon Valdez, only it's your data spilling out, not the oil.

"As a consumer, it's hard to complain when you're being given incredible new things for free," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But who knows where this ends up."

"I would say that it looks like saner heads prevailed -- I don't think this lawsuit should've been brought in the first place," said Corynne McSherry, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has followed the case. "I think their legal claims were weak at best."

"The same folks are being potentially entrusted with cybersecurity who have already shown that they have no regard for the law," says Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that sued AT&T for its involvement in those wiretapping programs. "It's troubling that the Obama administration would consider this sort of thing."

In an amicus brief, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology joined the plaintiffs, aiming to emphasize the core First Amendment protections that library users have and to remind the court that libraries play a key role in providing Internet access, particularly in rural areas.

As a practical matter, NCRL’s processing of unblocking requests can severely hinder job-seekers, the brief states. Even under NCRL’s new “automated’ unblocking system, fewer than one third of the 90 requests were responded to on the same day, and some were delayed by more than three days.

If ASCAP proves its case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation of San Francisco says it could cost consumers and technically turn millions of ring tone users into copyright violators.

"Clearly they are pointing a finger at every consumer that is holding a cell phone that goes off in the park or at the beach," said Fred von Lohmann, the digital rights group's senior intellectual property attorney. "We may be annoying people, but we're not infringing copyright law."

"The implication was that anyone on the Internet would be a criminal if they filled out a website registration using a fake name or using the wrong age," said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"And I think that was a path the judge was not terribly interested in going down."

Some consumer advocates said they were unimpressed with the new principles. Lee Tien, an attorney at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that self-regulatory programs will not adequately protect privacy because consumers currently have no way of knowing their privacy has been compromised, much less complaining about it to an enforcement body.

"There's no good reason to expect self-regulation to work," Tien says, adding that companies currently compile dossiers used to target people based on behind-the-scenes data-crunching without explaining how specific information is being used.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge joined in an amicus brief that argues against ASCAP in its lawsuit brought against mobile carriers for additional royalties for the public performance of ringtones.

Unsurprisingly, free speech advocates are applauding the decision. "The idea is, you hold the speaker responsible, not the soapbox," Electronic Frontier Foundation spokesperson Rebecca Jeschke told Reuters. "If you want any kind of social interaction on the Internet this is very important."

Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation told a federal court Wednesday that a publicly ringing phone is no different from a person humming a tune in an elevator, listening to music in a convertible, or singing Happy Birthday at a party in the park — all activities that are not considered copyright infringements.

It isn't often that you find AT&T and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in agreement, but consensus has been reached on one matter: ASCAP's demand that wireless companies pay it license fees for ringtones is, well, ridiculous.

"These wrongheaded legal claims cast a shadow over innovators who are building gadgets that help consumers get the most from their copyright privileges," the EFF said in a blog post.

Privacy experts lauded the move. Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the new options solve a long-standing issue. Some Facebook users often shared provocative photos and off-color comments with workers and casual friends, creating awkward situations.

"The new settings allow greater flexibility and control," he says. But he is concerned that even if users share intimate information only with close friends, it could leave them exposed if hackers break into accounts or the government requested access to the sensitive data.