From a cell in a South Carolina prison, seven inmates filmed a rap video on a cell phone and uploaded it to a popular hip-hop website. The track, “On Fire,” caught fire online—but the viral clip also caught the attention of prison administrators. As Buzzfeed...

Access to data stored in the United States presents an especially important question for other countries because of the prominence of U.S. Internet companies. Currently, law enforcement officials in other countries must pursue access to data in the U.S. through the Department of Justice (DOJ)-run Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (...

Under the glare of the modern surveillance state, EFF's long-held goal of encrypting the web has only grown more pressing. And crypto remains on the march, with promising developments ranging from the public beta launch of the Let's Encrypt project, to the expansion of CloudFlare's Universal SSL program,...

Sometimes news events make your point better than you ever could. That was the case this year as we completed the triennial rulemaking cycle of requesting exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA)'s restrictions on circumventing DRM.
The process of requesting an exemption is unnecessarily...

For an increasing number of Internet users in parts of the Middle East, posting to social media is a liability, a risk not worth taking. Since the 2011 uprisings, the region has seen an increase in laws governing online speech, as well as an increase in...

One of the most frustrating things about law is how slowly it changes, leaving courts to apply old laws to facts that Congress never anticipated. That’s certainly the case with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—the federal “anti-hacking” statute, which was passed back in 1986 and is...

2015 has been quite an interesting year for copyright law around the world—at least in the sense of that apocryphal Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.” That is to say that most of this year's copyright developments have been bad for users, but with one notable exception.
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Secret mass surveillance continued to spark global controversy this year, yet the National Security Agency’s dragnet programs unconstitutionally monitoring Americans are stretching into their second decade. Ignited by news reports in 2005, eight years before Edward Snowden’s revelations blew the lid off illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying in...

Our campaign to fight the anti-user Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement was a rollercoaster this year. Our mobilization against the Fast Track trade bill resulted in some major twists and turns before the sudden conclusion of the negotiations in the Fall, then finally after more than five...

2015 has been a momentous year for Privacy Badger and EFF’s Do Not Track policy. This year saw the launch of Privacy Badger 1.0, which now has more than 600,000 daily users. It also saw the launch of EFF's Do Not Track policy, supported by a...