The Ethics Board of One of the Largest Vendors of Police Tech Makes the Case Against ALPRs
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs)—a mass surveillance technology that allows law enforcement to record the location and travel patterns of nearly every driver on the road—are poorly regulated, threaten privacy, and worsen the racial and economic inequalities already ingrained in our justice system. That’s what EFF and...
DNS over HTTPS Will Give You Back Privacy that Big ISPs Fought to Take Away
An absurd thing is happening in the halls of Congress. Major ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are banging on the doors of legislators to stop the deployment of DNS over HTTPS (DoH), a technology that will give users one of the biggest upgrades to their Internet privacy...
Private Companies, Government Surveillance Software and Human Rights
It's old news that governments around the world are misusing private company-sold digital surveillance software track and target people for human rights abuses. Recently, Amnesty International reported finding that two prominent Moroccan human rights defenders had been targeted using Israeli-based NSO Group’s software. Just this week WhatsApp sued...
Price Setter LLC Falsely Claims Online Ad Invention, Demands Money from Android Devs
Unfortunately, app developers are facing another onslaught of letters demanding money they shouldn’t have to pay. This time, the sender is Jorge Maass, a patent owner who also runs a real-estate business in Texas. In recent months, Maass has been sending out threatening letters under the name of his...
What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access?
The news of iconic children’s television show “Sesame Street”’s new arrangement with the HBO MAX streaming service has sent ripples around the Internet. Starting this year, episodes of “Sesame Street” will debut on HBO and on the HBO MAX service, with new episodes being made available to PBS “at...
Don’t Let Science Publisher Elsevier Hold Knowledge for Ransom
It’s Open Access Week and we’re joining SPARC and dozens of other organizations this week to discuss the importance of open access to scientific research publications. An academic publisher should widely disseminate the knowledge produced by scholars, not hold it for ransom. But ransoming scientific research back to...
In the Debate Over Online Speech and Security, Let’s Get to the Science
A debate is raging, in Congress and the media, over whether or not we need new regulations to try to shape how Internet platforms operate. Too often, however, the discussion is based on rhetoric and anecdote, rather than empirical research. The recently introduced National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland...
Patents Are About Sharing Information with the Public. Don’t Shroud Them in Secrecy.
Patents give their owners the power to stop people (and companies) from doing whatever the patent claims as an “invention” for twenty years. But that power doesn’t come for free: it’s a trade. In exchange for the right to sue others to stop using the invention, patent applicants have to...
Weakening Our System of Patent Challenges Will Hurt Consumers, Unions, and Health Care Providers
The Stronger Patents Act, S. 2082, won’t give us a stronger patent system—just the opposite, in fact. It is a deliberate attempt to dismantle one of the few effective forums for challenging wrongly-issued patents. The bill would put dramatic and unwarranted changes into effect that would make the U.S....
How We’re Making Certbot More Usable
The movement to encrypt the web has reached milestone after milestone in recent years as major platforms and small websites alike have made the shift from insecure HTTP to more secure HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt and EFF’s Certbot have changed the game here, making what...
