Offline: Saeed Malekpour
Update: Saeed Malekpour escaped Iran while on furlough from prison and has returned safely to Canada.
In 2008 Saeed Malekpour, a permanent resident of Canada, was preparing to join a master's program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. For the last three years, he had been working as a freelance website designer and programmer. He had recently written a utility to ease the uploading of photographs to websites.
The SEC’s Power Grab: Civil Agencies Try to Weaken ECPA Reform Legislation
As we anticipated, the Senate Judiciary Committee's recent hearing on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act focused on creating a loophole for civil law enforcement agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to access personal content stored by third-party service providers without a warrant, rather than on...
FBI Plans to Populate its Massive Face Recognition Database with Photographs Taken in the Field
In the last few years, the FBI has been dramatically expanding its biometrics programs, whether by adding face recognition to its vast Next Generation Identification (NGI) database or pushing out mobile biometrics capabilities for “time-critical situations” through its Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC). But two new...
FBI Combines Civil and Criminal Fingerprints into One Fully Searchable Database
In the last few years, FBI has been dramatically expanding its biometrics programs, whether by adding face recognition to its vast Next Generation Identification (NGI) database or pushing out mobile biometrics capabilities for “time-critical situations” through its Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC). But two new developments—both...
Update on First Unitarian Church v. NSA: EFF's First Amendment Challenge to NSA Spying
EFF has long believed that the First Amendment is as important to thinking about the NSA's spying as the Fourth Amendment. When the government can track to whom you talk, when and for how long, like it did with the telephone records collection under section 215 of the Patriot Act,...
Podcasting Update: Personal Audio Files Appeal
Yesterday, Personal Audio, LLC filed a notice of appeal of the final decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that invalidated all of the claims of the infamous “Podcasting Patent” that EFF challenged.
Personal Audio has an uphill battle: the Patent Office accepted virtually...
Want to Sue Over a Patent? Don't Dawdle, Says Court of Appeals
Today, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in SCA Hygiene v. First Quality Baby Products, a case about adult diapers that had the potential to harm myriad small business owners and innovators.
At issue in the case was the legal doctrine of “laches.”...
EFF Welcomes New Web Developer Rob Manhatton
Ruby developer Rob Manhatton joined us this month as a web developer. Rob will maintain the open-source democracy tools used to effect change on EFF’s issues, and build new Ruby applications to protect privacy and freedom of speech. His favorite part of web development is making use...
Court of Appeals Rejects Attempt to Use Copyright To Censor Online Speech
Today, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion blocking the use of copyright to censor unwanted online criticism. The decision, Katz v. Chevaldina, is important because although copyright law is frequently misused as a tool to censor speech, it rarely makes it into court...
