Anonymous Companies Fighting National Security Letters Back Twitter’s NSL Battle
San Francisco - Two companies who must remain anonymous about their fight against secret government demands for information known as national security letters (NSLs) are backing Twitter's lawsuit over its rights to publish information about NSLs it may have received. The companies—a telecom and an Internet company—are represented by the...
Photo Hobbyist Attacked by Patent Bully
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), together with Durie Tangri LLP, is defending a photo hobbyist against an outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner.
“It’s part of our job...
EFF Calls on Syrian Government to Release Human Rights Defenders
EFF has joined seventy human rights and free speech organizations in calling on the Syrian government to release Mazen Darwish, Hani Al-Zitani and Hussein Ghrer, three free speech activists who were arrested on February 16, 2012 in a raid on the offices of the Syrian Center for Media...
Facebook's Name Policy Strikes Again, This Time at Native Americans
What do drag queens, burlesque performers, human rights activists in Vietnam and Syria, and Native Americans have in common? They have all been the targets of "real names" enforcement on Facebook. And despite reports from the media last year that seemed to indicate that Facebook has "fixed" the issue,...
Celebrating #ilovefs: Why EFF Loves Free Software
Here at EFF we rely heavily on freely licensed software to run our websites, organization, and activism campaigns. Unlike proprietary software that restricts users from tinkering with the programs they run, free software carries with it the ability to modify, study, share, and improve a program's source code. From a...
The FCC’s Latest Net Neutrality Proposal: Pros, Cons, and Question Marks
Last week, we received some welcome news: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) publicly confirmed that it is finally going to put its open internet rules on the right legal footing by reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers. That said, the goal was never just reclassification; that’s just an...
EFF to OFAC: Issue a General License for Crimea
Western economic sanctions aimed at Russia have had a disproportionately negative effect on Crimea's IT industry, writes Sergey Kozlovsky. The sanctions, imposed after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, have forced Visa and MasterCard to remove support for bank cards in the region, Apple to block apps from Crimean...
Transparency Is No Substitute For Free Speech
Twitter has released a new transparency report. The company—which scored five stars in our latest “Who Has Your Back?” report—blogged about the release, wrote that “[p]roviding this insight is simply the right thing to do, especially in an age of increasing concerns about government surveillance.” More...
Techno Activism Third Mondays (on a Tuesday!) -- February
Note: this month's San Francisco Techno-Activism Third Monday will take place on TUESDAY 17th FEBRUARY, because we didn't want to stomp all over your long weekend.
"TPMs, Management Engines, Secure Boot, Trusted Boot and things in-between."
Introduced by Matthew "mjg59" Garrett, free software kernel coder.
Hardwired...
Go to Prison for File Sharing? That's What Hollywood Wants in the Secret TPP Deal
The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) poses massive threats to users in a dizzying number of ways. It will force other TPP signatories to accept the United States' excessive copyright terms of a minimum of life of the author plus 70 years, while locking the US to the...
