If you bought it, you own it and you can do what you want with it. That should be the end of the story—whether we’re talking about a car, a tractor, a smartphone, a computer, or really anything you buy.
Podcast Episode 108Your friends, your medical concerns, your political ideology— financial transactions tell the story of your life in intimate details. But U.S. law has failed to protect this sensitive data from prying eyes. Join EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they talk to Marta Belcher, one of the...
In 2019, for the first time in 20 years, U.S. copyright law allowed formerly copyrighted works to join the public domain. Works in the public domain are no longer under copyright, and anyone can republish or use those works in whatever way they want. The public domain is the default...
Ten years ago, a diverse coalition of internet users, non-profit groups, and internet companies defeated the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), bills that would have forced internet companies to blacklist and block websites accused of hosting copyright-infringing content. These were bills that would have...
Update: This post has been updated to reflect that the hearing date in this case has been moved to January 21.By Hope Williams, Nathan Sheard, and Nestor ReyesThe authors are community activists who helped organize and participated in protests against police violence in San Francisco after the murder of George...
(UPDATE: Due to the ongoing situation concerning the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Ad Hoc Committee won't hold its first session from 17 to 28 January 2022 in New York, as planned. Further information will be provided in due course).EFF and Human Rights Watch, along with nearly 130 organizations and academics...
Update: This feature is only available on certain phones running Android 12. So far we have only confirmed it is available on the Pixel 6. Last year Google quietly pushed a new feature to its Android operating system allowing users to optionally disable 2G at the modem level in their...
The public should get to see whether a court that authorized the FBI to track someone’s air travels in real time for six months also analyzed whether the surveillance implicated the Fourth Amendment, EFF argued in a brief filed this week.In Forbes Media LLC v. United States, the news...
New York’s legislature is open for business in the new year, and we’re jumping in to renew our support for two crucial bills that protect New Yorkers’ privacy rights. While very different, both pieces of legislation would uphold a principle we hold dear: people should not worry that their everyday...
Episode 107 of EFF’s How to Fix the InternetModern life means leaving digital traces wherever we go. But those digital footprints can translate to real-world harms: the websites you visit can impact the mortgage offers, car loans and job options you see advertised. This surveillance-based, algorithmic decision-making can be difficult...
Across the country, police departments are using myriad means and resources at their disposal to stock up on drones. According to the most recent tally on the Atlas of Surveillance (a project of EFF and the University of Nevada), at least 1,172 police departments nationwide are using drones. And...
EFF is deeply saddened and angered by the news that our friend, Egyptian blogger, coder, and free speech activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, long a target of oppression by Egypt's successive authoritarian regimes, was sentenced to five years in prison by an emergency state security court just before the...
Law enforcement around the world is apparently getting its holiday wish list, thanks to the Council of Europe’s adoption of a flawed new protocol to the Budapest Convention, a treaty governing procedures for accessing digital evidence across borders in criminal investigations. The Second Additional Protocol (“the Protocol”) to the...
At EFF, we’ve always stood up for the freedom to tinker and innovate. Unfortunately, our patent system doesn’t promote those freedoms. In some areas, like software, it’s causing much more harm than good. And the system is rife with patent trolls: companies that are focused on licensing and litigating patents,...
