The Internet is Facing a Catastrophe For Free Expression and Competition: You Could Tip The Balance
Update: Monday 14th 2019: We've added contact details and an action for Belgium.Update: Tuesday 15th 2019: We've added contact details and an action for Czechia.Sweden: Take Action Here.Germany: Take Action Here. Luxembourg: Take Action Here.Poland: Take Action Here.Belgium: Take Action Here.Czechia: TAKE...
Bird Rides Inc. Demands Takedown of News Report on Lawful Re-use of Scooters
Every now and then we have to remind someone that it's not illegal for people to report facts that they dislike. This time, the offender is electric scooter rental company Bird Rides, Inc.Electric scooters have swamped a number of cities across the US, many of the scooters carelessly discarded in...
The Federal Government Offers a Case Study in Bad Email Tracking
The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely. Granicus is a third-party contractor that builds communication tools to help...
(Don't) Return to Sender: How to Protect Yourself From Email Tracking
Tracking is everywhere on the Internet. Over the past year, a drumbeat of tech-industry scandals has acclimated users to the sheer number of ways that personal information can be collected and leaked. As a result, it might not come as a surprise to learn that emails, too,...
Apple Says Patent Troll Case Should Be Dismissed Because [REDACTED] but the Public Should Know Why
At EFF, we review court dockets to monitor the conduct of the most active patent trolls. But when court records are redacted or sealed, it can be impossible for EFF and other members of the public to know what is going on. Today we filed a motion to intervene...
An Update on Facebook’s Smear Campaign Against Critics
Back in late November, the New York Times revealed that Facebook had paid a corporate PR firm called Definers Public Affairs to develop and peddle a smear campaign aimed at some of its Open Society Foundations-funded critics, including members of the Freedom From Facebook coalition. In response,...
You Should Have a Private Right of Action to Sue Companies That Violate Your Privacy
It is not enough for government to pass laws that protect consumers from corporations that harvest and monetize their personal data. It is also necessary for these laws to have bite, to ensure companies do not ignore them. The best way to do so is to empower ordinary consumers to...
Give Up the Ghost: A Backdoor by Another Name
This article was first published on Just Security.Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s counterpart to the National Security Agency (NSA), has fired the latest shot in the crypto wars. In a post to Lawfare titled Principles for a More Informed Exceptional...
From Encrypting the Web to Encrypting the Net: A Technical Deep Dive on Using Certbot to Secure your Mailserver
We’ve come a long way since we launched Encrypt the Web, our initiative to onboard the World Wide Web to HTTPS. Not only has Let’s Encrypt issued over 380 million certificates, but also nearly 85% of page loads in the United States are over HTTPS, and both...
Fair Use Continued to Bear the Weight of Protecting Speech and Innovation: 2018 in Review
Fair use provides breathing space in copyright law, making sure that control of the right to copy and distribute doesn’t become control of the right to create and innovate. New technologies and services depend on the creation of multiple copies as a matter of course. At the same time, copyright...
