The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.
FEATURED UPDATE
In 2014’s Alice v. CLS Bank , the Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer. Since then, Alice has provided a lifeline for real businesses threatened or sued with bogus patents. This week, on the third anniversary of Alice , EFF is launching a new series called Saved by Alice where we’ll collect these stories of times when Alice came to the rescue. Over the...
FEATURED UPDATE
EFF has just launched the Summer Security Camp , a two-week membership drive that challenges people everywhere to gather ‘round the online rights movement and prepare for the privacy and free speech challenges in their paths. Through the 4th of July, anyone can join EFF or renew as a Silicon level member for just $20 and receive a set of miniature field guides with shareable security tips covering these crucially relevant issues : Border Search : know your rights and...
FEATURED UPDATE
The field of machine learning and artificial intelligence is making rapid progress. Many people are starting to ask what a world with intelligent computers will look like. But what is the ratio of hype to real progress? What kinds of problems have been well solved by current machine learning techniques, which ones are close to being solved, and which ones remain exceptionally hard? There isn’t currently a good single place to find the state of the art on well-specified machine learning metrics, let alone the many problems in artificial intelligence that are still so hard that there are no good datasets and benchmarks to keep track of them yet. So we are trying to make one. Today, we’re launching the EFF AI Progress Measurement experiment , and encouraging machine learning researchers to give us feedback and contribute to the effort .
Link: Pull the Plug on Internet Spying Programs
Description:
Every day, the U.S. government sweeps up the emails, text messages, and other online communications of millions of innocent Americans. Congress has a chance to rein in this unconstitutional spying when a key surveillance authority expires at the end of this year.
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Link: Privacy Badger
Description:
Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that...
Link: Surveillance Self-Defense
Description:
Surveillance Self-Defense is EFF's online guide to defending yourself and your friends from surveillance by using secure technology and developing careful practices...
The Latest
EFF to Supreme Court: No Real-Time Cell Phone Tracking Without a Warrant
Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a troubling ruling that allows police to obtain—without a warrant—location data from people’s cell phones to track them in real time. EFF, joined by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Constitution Project,...
How the STRONGER Patents Act Would Send Innovation Overseas
Senator Chris Coons introduced a bill this week called the STRONGER Patents Act [ PDF ]. The bill contains many terrible ideas. It would gut inter partes review (a valuable tool for challenging bad patents). It would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v....
Small Business Fights for its Life, Wins with Alice
Michael Skelps was celebrating on New Year’s Eve with family and friends when he got a strange email from a lawyer. It said that Michael’s company, Capstone Photography, had just been sued for patent infringement. Michael went from celebrating to worrying about whether his small company would survive. Capstone is...
The Patent Troll and the Scavenger Hunt
Ken Cooper runs a small business out of his home. Unfortunately Ken’s business was not so small that it avoided the notice of a patent troll. Ken has been writing code since 1973. His life in programming has ranged from small personal projects to founding a software company that was...
A Startup Runs Into A Patent on Picture Menus
If you’ve ever seen a picture menu, you’ve seen the supposed ‘invention’ claimed by U.S. Patent 6,585,516 . Although it had a complex-sounding title (“Method and system for computerized visual behavior analysis, training, and planning”), the patent simply claimed using picture menus on a computer. Patent troll DietGoal Innovations,...
Saved by Alice: How a Key Supreme Court Decision Protects Businesses from Bad Patents
In 2014’s Alice v. CLS Bank , the Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer. Since then, Alice has provided a lifeline for real businesses threatened or sued with bogus patents. This...
An Attack on Net Neutrality Is an Attack on Free Speech
Several US senators spoke out this week on the importance of net neutrality to innovation and free speech. They are right. The Internet has become our public square, our newspaper, our megaphone. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to turn it in something more akin to commercial...
EFF to the SEC: Get a Warrant
If the federal government wants to compel an online service provider, like Yahoo or Google, to turn over your email, they need a warrant. That's the industry-accepted best practice, implemented by nearly every major service provider . More importantly, it's what the Fourth Amendment requires. The Securities and Exchange...
Copyright Law Shouldn’t Pick Winners
Mandatory Filtering Proposals Curb Competition When looking at a proposed policy regulating Internet businesses, here’s a good question to ask yourself: would this bar new companies from competing with the current big players? Google will probably be fine, but what about the next Google? In the past few years,...
Help EFF Track the Progress of AI and Machine Learning
The field of machine learning and artificial intelligence is making rapid progress. Many people are starting to ask what a world with intelligent computers will look like. But what is the ratio of hype to real progress? What kinds of problems have been well solved by current machine...
