As Coronavirus Sweeps Through Jails and Prisons, Officials Crack Down on Inmate Speech
Jails and prisons now account for many of the largest clusters of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States. Two prisons in Ohio now have more than 1,500 cases each; nearly a thousand cases are connected to the Cook County jail in Chicago; and a prison in Arkansas has...
The Constitution Does Not Allow Courts to Silence Criticism of Local Police Departments
EFF has filed an amicus brief urging the Tennessee Supreme Court to overturn a court order that would otherwise ban a victim from disclosing that she was subject to domestic violence or from speaking out about the police department’s handling of the investigation. The court order was issued under...
The Dangers of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals to the Future of Protest
Many of the new surveillance powers now sought by the government to address the COVID-19 crisis would harm our First Amendment rights for years to come. People will be chilled and deterred from speaking out, protesting in public places, and associating with like-minded advocates if they fear scrutiny from cameras,...
The “Inventor Rights Act” is an Attack on True Invention
Certain patent owners just can’t get enough of the monopoly power patents bestow. That’s why they keep trying to make it easier to get and sue over patents, despite Supreme Court rulings that point in the opposite direction.Their latest effort, the misleadingly-named “Inventors Rights Act,” also known as H.R....
Who’s A Patent Troll, and Who’s An Inventor?
Two Congressmen recently introduced a bill that would create a special type of patent called an “Inventor-Owned Patent.” Having classified a group of “inventors,” the Inventor Rights Act (H.R. 5478) goes on to give them a long list of special privileges that will help them sue other people for...
Teleconference About .ORG Sale: Thursday, April 30, 9 am PT/12 pm ET: EFF and Partners Discuss Future of .ORG as ICANN Decision Nears
San Francisco—The sale of the .ORG domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital threatens to bring censorship and higher operating costs to nonprofit organizations and international NGOs working in the public interest around the globe. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may decide as early as...
Apple and Google’s COVID-19 Exposure Notification API: Questions and Answers
Apple and Google are undertaking an unprecedented team effort to build a system for Androids and iPhones to interoperate in the name of technology-assisted COVID-19 contact tracing.The companies’ plan is part of a torrent of proposals to use Bluetooth signal strength to enhance manual contact tracing with proximity-based...
Supreme Court Affirms That No One Owns the Law
In a major victory for open government and fundamental due process, the Supreme Court ruled today that the annotations in a state’s official legal code—summaries of court decisions and other sources that explain the state’s laws—cannot be copyrighted. That is, that there cannot be a better-explained version of the law...
Not a Hoax: The Very Real Threat of Political 'Deepfakes' Laws
“The coronavirus, this is their new hoax.” That’s what Donald Trump says—or at least appears to say—in a new political ad airing in states across the country.The ad, created by a Democratic super PAC, strings together audio from various Trump speeches discussing the coronavirus. The spliced-together audio plays while...
Hearing Tuesday: EFF, ACLU, and Cybersecurity Expert Ask Court to Unseal Ruling Denying DOJ Effort to Break Encryption
Seattle, Washington—On Tuesday, April 28, at 9 am, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Stanford cybersecurity scholar Riana Pfefferkorn will ask a federal appeals court to embrace the public’s First Amendment right to access judicial records and unseal a lower court’s ruling denying a...
