Massive Database Leak Gives Us a Window into China’s Digital Surveillance State
Earlier this month, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century.Xinjiang is China’s largest province, and home to China’s Uighurs, a...
Don’t Sacrifice Fair Use to the Bots
Three years ago, we warned of a string of dangerous new policy proposals on the horizon. Under these proposals, platforms would be forced to implement copyright bots that sniffed all of the media that users uploaded to them, deleting your uploads with no human review.It’s happening.The European Parliament is...
Stupid Patent of the Month: Veripath Patents Following Privacy Laws
What if we allowed some people to patent the law and then demand money from the rest of us just for following it?As anyone with a basic understanding of democratic principles can see, that is a terrible idea. In a democracy, elected representatives write laws that apply to everyone, ideally,...
EFF to the inter-American System: If You Want to Tackle “Fake News,” Consider Free Expression First
Recent elections across the Americas from the United States to Brazil have stirred fears about the impact of “fake news”. Earlier this month, EFF made a submission to the Organization of American States (OAS), the pan-American institution currently investigating the extent and impact of false information across the region....
EFF Implores Nine Companies to Fix It Already!
San Francisco - Technology is supposed to make our lives better, yet many big companies have products with big security and privacy holes that disrespect user control and put us all at risk. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching a new project called “Fix It Already!” demanding repair...
Fix It Already: Nine Steps That Companies Should Take To Protect You
Today we are announcing Fix It Already, a new way to show companies we're serious about the big security and privacy issues they need to fix. We are demanding fixes for different issues from nine tech companies and platforms, targeting social media companies, operating systems, and enterprise platforms on...
Antitrust Enforcement Needs to Evolve for the 21st Century
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the creation of a new task force to monitor competition in technology markets. Given the inadequacies of federal antitrust enforcement over the past generation, we welcome the new task force and reiterate our suggestions for how regulators can better protect technology markets and...
It’s Time for California to Guarantee “Privacy for All”
Update, 2:35 p.m.: The coalition of groups behind Privacy for All has grown since time of publishing. This update reflects the latest count.Privacy is a right. It is past time for California to ensure that the companies using secretive practices to make money off of our personal information treat it...
EFF Supporting California’s Privacy For All Bill, Which Puts People, Not Tech Companies, in Control of Personal Data
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is standing with Californians demanding more control over their personal data by supporting the Privacy For All bill, which requires tech companies to get their permission to share and use private information.“All eyes are on California, which has taken the lead nationwide in passing...
Watching the Black Body
[This is a guest post authored by Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice. It was originally published in The End of Trust (McSweeney's 54)]In December 2017, FBI agents forced Rakem Balogun and his fifteen-year-old son out of their Dallas home. They arrested Balogun on...
