Nearly 100 Public Interest Organizations Urge Council of Europe to Ensure High Transparency Standards for Cybercrime Negotiations
EFF along with 93 civil society organizations from across the globe today sent a letter to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland. The letter requests transparency and meaningful civil society participation in the Council of Europe’s (CoE) negotiations of the draft Second Additional...
EFF to Supreme Court: Don’t Turn US Patents Into Worldwide Patents
The general rule in patent law is that each country has its own patent system. If you want damages for sales in the United States, you need a U.S. patent. If you want damages for sales in New Zealand, you need to get a New Zealand patent, and so on....
Congress Will Finally Make Its Research Reports Public
The recent omnibus bill passed by Congress contains a nugget of good news for those interested in access to publicly funded research.Open access activists have long been asking for reports by the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, to be made publicly and easily available. CRS creates a vast array of...
California Supreme Court Upholds the State's Problematic Arrestee DNA Collection Law
In a disappointing and deeply divided opinion released today, the California Supreme Court upheld a state law law mandating DNA collection from arrestees. A lower court had held this law violated the privacy and search and seizure protections guaranteed under the California constitution. Today’s decision lets this flawed law...
Catalog of Missing Devices: Ad Free Youtube Kids
Since the invention of the remote control, rightsholders and audience have fought a war over ads. The market for tools to skip, mask or mute ads holds publishers and marketers to account: they know that if their ads get too obnoxious, their audiences will be motivated to make them disappear....
The FBI Could Have Gotten Into the San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone, But Leadership Didn’t Say That
The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) last week released a new report that supports what EFF has long suspected: that the FBI’s legal fight with Apple in 2016 to create backdoor access to a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone was more focused on creating legal precedent...
“Fake News” Offers Latin American Consolidated Powers An Opportunity to Censor Opponents
Today’s headlines are dominated by the role of misinformation campaigns or “fake news” in undermining democracy in the West. From ongoing accusations of Russian meddling in Trump’s election to Russian efforts to sway the Brexit and French Presidential election votes, these countries are confronting “fake news”...
Georgia Passes Anti-Infosec Legislation
Despite the full-throated objections of the cybersecurity community, the Georgia legislature has passed a bill that would open independent researchers who identify vulnerabilities in computer systems to prosecution and up to a year in jail.EFF calls upon Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to veto S.B. 315 as soon as it...
Beyond Implementation: Policy Considerations for Secure Messengers
One of EFF’s strengths is that we bring together technologists, lawyers, activists, and policy wonks. And we’ve been around long enough to know that while good technology is necessary for success, it is rarely sufficient. Good policy and people who will adhere to it are also crucial. People write and...








