UN Experts Condemn the Human Rights Costs of Secret Trade Agreements
Yesterday, ten United Nations experts and special rapporteurs voiced their concern over the adverse impacts upon human rights posed by secret “free trade” and investment agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).
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Canarywatch.org Reaches 50 Canaries With the Addition of First Look Media
We’re excited to announce that Canarywatch has added its 50th canary: First Look Media, the parent company for The Intercept—the news site created by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill."Warrant canary" is a colloquial term for a regularly published statement that an internet service provider (ISP) has...
EFF and NYU Tech Clinic Protect Freedom to Criticize the Media
Two years ago, Fox News sued a company called TVEyes, which creates a text-searchable database of broadcast content from thousands of television and radio stations in the United States and worldwide. EFF and the Technology Law & Policy Clinic at New York University School of Law last week filed a...
Ex-Mozilla Engineer Calls for Firefox to Protect Users Against Tracking (Meanwhile, You Can Install Privacy Badger)
Last week Monica Chew, formerly of Mozilla, and Georgios Kontaxis, of Columbia University, published a paper detailing the proposed new Firefox Tracking Protection technology. With Tracking Protection enabled they found that they received 67.5% fewer cookies and reduced page load time by an astonishing 44% while browsing the Alexa...
USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here
The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by...
EFF Sued for Defamation by Patent Lawyer Behind April's Stupid Patent of the Month, Scott Horstemeyer
On May 26, 2015, Atlanta-based attorney Scott A. Horstemeyer sued the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleging that he was defamed by the April Stupid Patent of the Month blog post. Horstemeyer has demanded that EFF remove the post and publish an editorial repudiating it. EFF has declined this request and...
Open Wireless Advocates to European Court: Don't Make Us Lock Down Our Networks
The vision of a world of shared open wireless is a compelling one—it means that wherever you go in an urban or other covered area, the connected devices that you own now (and new devices that are today only on the drawing board) will enjoy immediate, seamless, private, and...
EFF Opposes Amendments Weakening the USA Freedom Act
On Sunday, the Senate let Section 215 of the Patriot Act expire, and voted 77-17 to move the USA Freedom Act of 2015 forward for consideration. Unfortunately on the next day, Senators Richard Burr and Bill Nelson took to the Senate floor to rail against NSA reform and make...
You Have 48 Hours to Stop Paraguay’s Data Retention Bill
This Thursday, the Paraguayan Senate will vote on a data retention mandate—one of the worst anti-privacy bills we've yet seen in Paraguay. The bill, dubbed Pyrawebs, is a big deal: its data retention mandate is a disproportionate measure that should be roundly rejected. You have 48 hours...
