EFF Urges Federal Appeals Court to Rehear Case Involving Unconstitutional Baltimore Aerial Surveillance Program
Last week, EFF urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reconsider a split three-judge panel’s ruling that the Baltimore Police Department’s aerial surveillance of the city’s more than half a million residents is constitutional. In a friend-of-the-court brief—which was joined by the Brennan...
Visa Wants to Buy Plaid, and With It, Transaction Data for Millions of People
Visa, the credit card network, is trying to buy financial technology company Plaid for $5.3 billion. The merger is bad for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it would allow a giant company with a controlling market share and a history of anticompetitive practices to snap...
Let’s Stand Up for Home Hacking and Repair
Let’s tell the Copyright Office that it’s not a crime to modify or repair your own devices.Every three years, the Copyright Office holds a rulemaking process where it grants the public permission to bypass digital locks for lawful purposes. In 2018, the Office expanded existing protections for jailbreaking...
Victory! Court Protects Anonymity of Security Researchers Who Reported Apparent Communications Between Russian Bank and Trump Organization
Update: On May 19, 2021, an Indiana appellate court dismissed Alfa Bank's appeal of the trial court order denying its effort to unmask the anonymous researchers on grounds that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal. EFF filed an amicus brief with the appellate court in support of...
Podcast Episode: Control Over Users, Competitors, and Critics
Episode 004 of EFF’s How to Fix the InternetCory Doctorow joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss how large, established tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook can block interoperability in order to squelch competition and control their users, and how we can fix this by...
The FCC’s Independence and Mission Are at Stake with Trump Nominee
When there are only five people in charge of a major federal agency, the personal agenda of even one of them can have a profound impact. That’s why EFF is closely watching the nomination of Nathan Simington to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).Simington’s nomination appears to be the culmination of...
ICANN Can Stand Against Censorship (And Avoid Another .ORG Debacle) by Keeping Content Regulation and Other Dangerous Policies Out of Its Registry Contracts
The Internet’s domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN, the organization that regulates that system, is legally bound not to act as the Internet’s speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used those exceptions in harmful ways. This...
Once Again, Facebook Is Using Privacy As A Sword To Kill Independent Innovation
Facebook claims that their role as guardian of users’ privacy gives them the power to shut down apps that give users more control over their own social media experience. Facebook is wrong. The latest example is their legal bullying of Friendly Social Browser.Friendly is a web browser with plugins geared...
Video Analytics User Manuals Are a Guide to Dystopia
A few years ago, when you saw a security camera, you may have thought that the video feed went to a VCR somewhere in a back office that could only be accessed when a crime occurs. Or maybe you imagined a sleepy guard who only paid half-attention, and only when...
Introducing Cover Your Tracks!
Today, we’re pleased to announce Cover Your Tracks, the newest edition and rebranding of our historic browser fingerprinting and tracker awareness tool Panopticlick. Cover Your Tracks picks up where Panopticlick left off. Panopticlick was about letting users know that browser fingerprinting was possible; Cover Your Tracks is about giving...
