All too often, software patents stop more innovation than they promote. Patents are legal instruments that can be used to sue people and companies for creating, selling, or using software. Very often, the entities wielding software patents are “patent trolls”—companies that make money off suing and threatening to sue others...

EFF’s Threat Lab Team has only just launched and already has reached some fantastic milestones. This team was created to look deeply into how surveillance technologies are used to target vulnerable communities, activists, and individuals. Here are some of the highlights: Fighting StalkerwareIn the world of misuse of technologies...

Thanks to your support, this year EFF was able to take a stand in state legislatures across the country to fight well-funded industry efforts to encroach on your data privacy rights, to push back against government use of face surveillance, and to support bills that improve your digital rights. Here...

Saeed Malekpour crossed the border from Iran to Turkey at night, terrified of capture. He was fleeing from the country that had held him prisoner for a decade, escaping with just a backpack into one of the most chaotic regions of the world. Malekpour was a Canadian web developer...

There is certainly more than enough room in this world for new copyright laws that would improve the lives of artists and their audiences. And then there’s the Copyright Alternatives in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act), a proposal which doesn’t help the artists it claims to be for and would...

If 2019 confirmed anything, it is that we should not trust the microphones and cameras that large corporations sell us to put inside and near our homes. Thanks to the due diligence of reporters, public records requesters, and privacy researchers and activists, consumers have been learning more and more about...

Ever since the FCC repealed net neutrality protections in 2017, we’ve been fighting to return as many protections to as many Americans as possible. In 2019, the battles in the courts and Congress both kept those committed to a free and open Internet very busy.Mozilla v. FCC Takes Center StageThe...

In November’s landmark opinion in Alasaad v. McAleenan, a federal judge ruled that suspicionless electronic device searches at U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The Alasaad opinion was the perfect way to end 2019—the culmination of two years of hard work by EFF, ACLU, and our 11 clients....

Uh oh, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have teamed up again to introduce legislation that would promote the interests of patent owners at the public’s expense. This is the same duo that earlier this year sought to dismantle the protections against patents on human genes...

With the passage of Article 25 on December 11, the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, became the fifth municipality in the nation to ban its government agencies from using face surveillance. Brookline joins nearby Somerville as the two Massachusetts municipalities to have banned face surveillance. The two Metro-Boston area...