Google's Wi-Fi Snooping Settlement is Really, Really Awful
The recent settlement [PDF] between 38 states and Google over the company's Wi-Fi snooping fiasco sure is puzzling. While the settlement, called an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance, does little to punish Google for accidentally slurping up massive amounts of content from wireless networks using its roaming Street View...
Victory for Transparency: Microsoft Releases Report on Law Enforcement Requests for User Data
EFF has long called on companies to publish the number and type of government demands they receive for user data. We think it's important enough to be one of the stars we award in our Who Has Your Back? campaign started in 2010. Users make decisions every day about...
AP v. Meltwater: Disappointing Ruling for News Search
A federal district judge in New York City issued a troubling ruling today holding that an electronic news clipping service infringed copyright when it republished excerpts of news stories in search results for its clients seeking news coverage based on particular keywords.
The case is Associated Press...
Visualizing Google's Transparency Report, Part 3: What Countries Ask For The Biggest Share of Netizen Data?
This article has been written by Katitza Rodriguez (EFF) and Olivia Solis (SHARE Defense)
Google's Transparency Report gives country-by-country statistics on the state requests it receives for personal private records. Below, EFF and SHARE Defense ranked the top countries requesting data—not by the total numbers of requests,...
Visualizing Google's Transparency Report, Part 2: When the State Comes Knocking, How Does Google Reply?
This post was co-written by Katitza Rodriguez (EFF) and Olivia Solis (SHARE Defense)
Since Google first began releasing its transparency reports three years ago, international user-data requests have snowballed for Google -- a trend that shows no sign of abating. How Google has responded to these requests has varied...
Visualizing Google's Transparency Report, Part 1: What Countries Are Asking Google For User Data?
This post was written by Katitza Rodriguez, EFF and Olivia Solis, SHARE Defense
EFF is excited to announce this, a visual collaboration with SHARE Defense, a new international advocacy group created by the Balkan Share Foundation this year with the goal of engaging in public policy...
Secret Service Reopens Aaron Swartz Freedom of Information Act Requests
The U.S. Secret Service is reopening all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests it had previously denied regarding the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz. The news was first broken via twitter by Truthout journalist Jason Leopold, who was one of the first reporters to request...
Under CISPA, Who Can Get Your Data?
Under CISPA, companies can collect your information in order to "protect the rights and property" of the company, and then share that information with third parties, including the government, so long as it is for "cybersecurity purposes." Companies aren't required to strip out personally identifiable information from the data...
EFF Backs New California Bill to Protect Email Privacy
Sacramento - Senator Mark Leno today announced the introduction of groundbreaking new legislation that protects email privacy. Senate Bill 467, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), requires state law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before asking service providers to hand over a private citizen's emails.
"No...
EFF Joins Coalition Urging White House to Veto CISPA
Thirty-seven digital rights groups and businesses have come together this week to urge the White House to defend privacy and promise to veto the dangerous cybersecurity bill CISPA. Such legislation poses a number of privacy risks to individuals, allowing levels of information sharing between companies and the government that supersede...
