In a welcome and commendable move, LinkedIn, the business social networking giant, has filed an amicus brief in EFF’s landmark case challenging the statute governing National Security Letters (NSLs) as an unconstitutional prohibition of free speech (read the full brief here). LinkedIn has also filed a motion with...

The surveillance scandal has now reached the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, which opened its 24th session last week to a volley of questions about privacy and spying, many of them targeted at the United States and United Kingdom. (That's perhaps not surprising, since U.N. representatives were among...

One by one, courts are recognizing and shutting down copyright trolls' most unscrupulous legal tactics. Last week, a federal court in Wisconsin sanctioned a lawyer for adult film producer Malibu Media (also known as X-Art) for filing lists of "disturbing lewd, unusual and unredacted titles of pornographic films allegedly...

Is a Wi-Fi signal the equivalent of an FM radio station, blasting classic rock ballads through your car speakers?
Not to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its long awaited decision in Joffe v. Google this week, the case where Google was sued for allegedly violating...

Acxiom, a data broker that collects 1,500 data points per person on over 700 million consumers total and sells analysis of such information, is trying to ward off federal privacy regulations by flaunting transparency—a diluted term, in this case—around user data. The company just launched AboutTheData.com,...

When a statute is clear, judges are supposed to follow it or explain, in some detail, why they shouldn’t. That’s why we were disappointed by this week's ruling in Tuteur v. Crosley Corcoran. In the ruling, the judge suggests that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) does not require...

The veil of secrecy around the government's illegal and unconstitutional use of both Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is being lifted. As a result, Congress has seen a flurry of legislation to try and fix the problems;...

Should we fear open source software? Of course not. But that hasn’t stopped federal courts from issuing bizarre warnings like this:
The court would like to make CM/ECF filers aware of certain security concerns relating to a software application or .plug-in. called RECAP … Please be aware that...