On the heels of Apple's other two pieces of anti-competitive DMCA-bait, it now appears we have a third bit of lawyer-chum in the water: Apple has reportedly locked its latest iPods to its own iTunes software. So third-party applications (like Songbird) will no longer be able organize...

National Security Letters (NSLs) are in the news a lot lately. Earlier in the year, a Justice Department report found that abuses of this powerful investigation tool were rampant, despite repeated statements to the contrary by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Then, documents obtained by EFF under the Freedom of Information...

The recent terrorist plot uncovered in Germany was detected by traditional means. According to Newsweek, "One U.S. intelligence official described the law-enforcement operation as a case of 'good old-fashioned police work.'"
Nevertheless, when Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, testified [PDF] before Congress on Monday, he...

The entertainment industry's attempts to eliminate (think DRM) and whittle away (think PERFORM Act) your fair use rights are jeopardizing more than just free speech. It also threatens the U.S. economy, as an extensive study released today by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) demonstrates.
Based...

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act puts strict limits on when a telecommunications provider can hand over customer data to the government. Section 2702(A)(1) prohibits disclosure of the contents of a communication, and (A)(3) forbids the release of a "record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer"...

The Department of Homeland Security?s (DHS's) ADVISE has followed a familiar pattern. Just like Total Information Awareness (TIA) and CAPPS II before it, ADVISE was once touted as an essential tool in protecting national security, only to fall from grace once serious mistakes and privacy abuses were revealed. But dead...

Documents [PDF] obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that the FBI asked telecommunications companies to turn over information about people in contact with individuals the FBI was investigating, though a degree removed from any suspicious activity and presumably innocent. As Eric Lichtblau reported in the New...