Encrypted DNS Could Help Close the Biggest Privacy Gap on the Internet. Why Are Some Groups Fighting Against It?
Thanks to the success of projects like Let’s Encrypt and recent UX changes in the browsers, most page-loads are now encrypted with TLS. But DNS, the system that looks up a site’s IP address when you type the site’s name into your browser, remains unprotected by encryption.Because of...
EFF to Third Circuit: Off-Campus Student Social Media Posts Entitled to Full First Amendment Protection
Special thanks to legal intern Maria Bacha who was the lead author of this post.EFF, Student Press Law Center (SPLC), Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment (PaCFA), and Brechner Center for Freedom of Information filed an amicus brief in B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District urging the U.S. Court...
Victory! California Senate Votes Against Face Surveillance on Police Body Cams
The California Senate listened to the many voices expressing concern about the use of face surveillance on cameras worn or carried by police officers, and has passed an important bill that will, for three years, prohibit police from turning a tool intended to foster police accountability into one that furthers...
With the Intimidation of Tech Expert, Ola Bini Case Hits A New Low
In the early hours of last Thursday in Ecuador, members of the Judicial Police, assisted by the Prosecutor’s Office, broke down the door of Fabián Hurtado at his apartment in Quito. Hurtado is a cybersecurity expert at the International University (UISEK) in Ecuador and a digital forensics expert...
That Time EFF Got a Copyright Takedown Demand
Congress Continues to Ignore the Dangerous Flaws of the CASE Act
The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act) is one of those (mostly) bad ideas that just won’t go away. It feels like a simple and easy solution to a thorny problem in copyright law: streamlining the dispute process. But as often happens, this solution is neither simple nor...
New Report Finds Border Communities Inundated with Surveillance Technologies
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today published “The Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities,” the first report from a new research partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno’s Reynolds School of Journalism.EFF and a team of students compiled profiles of six counties along the U.S.-Mexico border,...
Victory! California's Legislature Pulls AT&T and Comcast Bill That Protected Their Monopolies
AT&T and Comcast lobbyists fought hard this year to pass A.B. 1366, a bill that would have protected their broadband monopolies. Thanks to your support, that bill will not move forward this year.The California legislature in 2012 decided to eliminate the authority of its own telecom regulator, the California Public...
Victory! Ruling in hiQ v. Linkedin Protects Scraping of Public Data
In a long-awaited decision in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that automated scraping of publicly accessible data likely does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). This is an important clarification of the CFAA’s scope, which should provide some...
Watering Holes and Million Dollar Dissidents: the Changing Economics of Digital Surveillance
Recently, Google’s Project Zero published a report describing a newly-discovered campaign of surveillance using chains of zero day iOS exploits to spy on iPhones. This campaign employed multiple compromised websites in what is known as a “watering hole” attack. The compromised websites would automatically run the chain of exploits...
