It’s no secret that EFF is strongly opposed to the United States’ piecemeal approach to updating sanction provisions for the five U.S.-embargoed countries of Sudan, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. We’ve noted that the fundamental problem with the United States’ reform method is that it’s “largely reactionary and...

The murky copyright situation surrounding phone unlocking could get a little bit clearer, thanks to the new and somewhat improved Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, a bipartisan bill in the Senate.
As a refresher: the notion that phone unlocking might violate copyright law comes from an...

The FBI plans to roll out the face recognition component of its massive Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database this summer—but the Bureau has six years of catching up to do in explaining to Americans exactly how it plans to collect, use and protect this data. Today we ...

Thailand's censorship regime has grown ever more pervasive since the military took over last month, with punishments aimed at both speakers and consumers of prohibited media. On the streets, Thais have been arrested for wearing the wrong message on a T-shirt, or reading George Orwell's "1984" in public....

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1979 decision of Smith v. Maryland turned 35 years old last week. Since it was decided, Smith has stood for the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information they expose to others. Labeled the third party “doctrine” (even by EFF ...

Big law should not be a big bully. Last week, the nation’s largest law firm, Jones Day, tried to use trademark law to censor a website critical of Detroit’s emergency manager (a former Jones Day partner). As is typical, since the website criticized the firm, it included a...

Nominations are now open for EFF’s 23rd Annual Pioneer Awards, to be presented this fall in San Francisco. EFF established the Pioneer Awards in 1992 to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. Nominations are open until midnight...

Some of the world’s most recognized companies began on college campuses. Think of Facebook, invented by Mark Zuckerberg while an undergraduate at Harvard, or Microsoft, started by Bill Gates when he was a college sophomore.
Yet universities are not necessarily the most welcoming places for student innovation. Harvard...

Last month, we harshly criticized Twitter for responding to questionable legal orders from Russia and Pakistan to take down content. We argued that the company that once called itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” had caved in the midst of corporate expansion.
We are...