EFF to UN: Ola Bini's Case Highlights The Dangers of Vague Cybercrime Law
For decades, journalists, activists and lawyers who work on human rights issues around the world have been harassed, and even detained, by repressive and authoritarian regimes seeking to halt any assistance they provide to human rights defenders. Digital communication technology and privacy-protective tools like end-to-end encryption have made this work...
How LBS Innovations Keeps Trying to Monopolize Online Maps
Stupid Patent of the MonthFor years, the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) has been a magnet for lawsuits filed by patent trolls—companies who make money with patent threats, rather than selling products or services. Technology companies large and small were sued in EDTX every week. We’ve written about how that...
EFF’s Newest Advisory Board Member: Michael R. Nelson
EFF is proud to announce our newest member of our already star-studded advisory board: Michael R. Nelson. Michael has worked on Internet-related global public policy issues for more than 30 years, including working on technology policy in the U.S. Senate and the Clinton White House.Michael’s broad expertise in many...
California: No Face Recognition on Body-Worn Cameras
EFF has joined a coalition of civil rights and civil liberties organizations to support a California bill that would prohibit law enforcement from applying face recognition and other biometric surveillance technologies to footage collected by body-worn cameras.About five years ago, body cameras began to flood into police and sheriff departments...
Five California Cities Are Trying to Kill an Important Location Privacy Bill
If you rely on shared biked or scooters, your location privacy is at risk. Cities across the United States are currently pushing companies that operate shared mobility services like Jump, Lime, and Bird to share individual trip data for any and all trips taken within their boundaries, including where and...
EFF and Open Rights Group Defend the Right to Publish Open Source Software to the UK Government
EFF and Open Rights Group today submitted formal comments to the British Treasury, urging restraint in applying anti-money-laundering regulations to the publication of open-source software.The UK government sought public feedback on proposals to update its financial regulations pertaining to money laundering and terrorism in alignment with a larger European directive....
Hearing Tuesday: EFF Will Voice Support For California Bill Reining In Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition
Sacramento, California—On Tuesday, June 11, at 8:30 am, EFF Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Nathan Sheard will testify before the California Senate Public Safety Committee in support of a measure to prohibit law enforcement from using facial recognition in body cams.Following San Francisco’s historic ban on police use of the...
Adversarial Interoperability: Reviving an Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age to Slay Today's Monopolies
Today, Apple is one of the largest, most profitable companies on Earth, but in the early 2000s, the company was fighting for its life. Microsoft's Windows operating system was ascendant, and Microsoft leveraged its dominance to ensure that every Windows user relied on its Microsoft Office suite (Word,...
Same Problem, Different Day: Government Accountability Office Updates Its Review of FBI’s Use of Face Recognition—and It’s Still Terrible
This week the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued an update to its 2016 report on the FBI’s use of face recognition. The takeaway, which they also shared during a Congressional House Oversight Committee hearing: the FBI now has access to 641 million photos—including driver’s license and...
30 Years Since Tiananmen Square: The State of Chinese Censorship and Digital Surveillance
Thirty years ago today, the Chinese Communist Party used military force to suppress a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration by thousands of university students. Hundreds (some estimates go as high as thousands) of innocent protesters were killed. Every year, people around the world come together to mourn and...
