November 30, 2006
Associated Press
New Senate chairman pledges more scrutiny for government's terrorist screening systems

The incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman pledged greater scrutiny Friday of computerized government anti-terrorism screening after learning that millions of Americans and foreigners who travel internationally have been assigned risk assessments over the last four years without their knowledge...

But to David Sobel, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to civil liberties in cyberspace: "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected."

November 30, 2006
Wired
Nike+ IPod = Surveillance
By Annalee Newitz

If you enhance your workout with the new Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, you may be making yourself a surveillance target...

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Lee Tien says the Nike+ iPod is a harbinger of things to come. "We're going to see more devices like this in the next few years," he said. "This isn't just a problem with the Nike+ iPod per se -- it's a cautionary tale about what happens when companies unwittingly build a surveillance capacity into their products."

November 29, 2006
Hollywood Reporter Esq.
Barney Owners Settle Parody Web Site Case
By Eriq Gardner

Proving that purple dinosaurs sometimes bite off more than they can chew, a digital rights advocacy group is claiming victory over the owners of the popular children's television character Barney...

EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry said she hopes that other copyright holders take notice of the result.

"This case is a lesson for other content owners to make sure you have a legitimate complaint before sending harassing letters," she said. "Those who misuse copyright should know that they can be sued for doing so."

November 29, 2006
Los Angeles Times
Happy ending? Suit over Barney parody is settled
By Dawn C. Chmielewski

Barney the purple dinosaur may sing about how much he loves you, but his corporate masters don't care much for Stuart Frankel...

"Aside from the fact that this is a great story about Barney the purple dinosaur who sings 'I love you, you love me' and yet his lawyers are out there spreading anything but love, there's a bigger point out there," said Fred von Lohmann, attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "For every case like this we find out about, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of situations that go unnoticed where free speech is chilled off the Internet."

November 28, 2006
Huffington Post
And Now a Word from Big Brother...
By Jayne Lyn Stahl

Yesterday, when I opened my AT & T phone bill which was, as usual, ridiculously high given that I use my cell mostly, to my surprise came the following notice: "Mandated Messages from the California Public Utilities Commission Rules for Monitoring Calls"...

Remember, last January, when the telecommunications monopoly was involved in a much-publicized class action lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in which it was alleged, in San Francisco federal court, that they have opened their facilities up to the National Security Agency, and that they "assist the government in its secret surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans."

November 28, 2006
ZDNet
Barney's legal threats end up extinct
By Declan McCullagh

Barney's days as a litigious purple Tyrannosaur that terrorized Web sites daring to poke fun at his sizable girth or singing abilities have become extinct.

"We wish we hadn't had to file a lawsuit to finally get Barney's lawyers to stop harassing a man who was just expressing his opinion about a cultural phenomenon," EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry said.

November 28, 2006
InformationWeek
Rights Groups Argue In Court For E-mail Privacy
By Thomas Claburn

Should the government have secret, warrantless access to e-mail stored online? Several cyber-liberties groups believe it shouldn't, and they've filed a brief in federal court in Ohio to extend Fourth Amendment protections that shield telephone calls and postal mail from unreasonable search and seizure to e-mail stored online.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. USA seeking to establish that users of online e-mail services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for their stored communications.

November 28, 2006
Reuters Border cops seizing laptops

Conflicting U.S. federal court decisions about when authorities can search and seize files on laptop computers of travellers crossing the US border have business travellers confused and asking questions...

Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien says laptop searches should not be considered routine border searches because computers contain much more information than could fit in a briefcase.

He says a person's whole life is exposed on a 40GB hard drive.

"The way we live our lives is not compartmentalised," he says.

"Personal and private stuff gets mixed with business stuff. You should need more suspicion than it takes to search a person's suitcase."

November 27, 2006
InformationWeek www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/11/dmca_exemptions.html DMCA Exemptions Leave Most Consumers Out In The Cold By Mitch Wagner

Late last Wednesday, while the rest of us were out shopping for last-minute Thanksgiving essentials, the U.S. Copyright Office let fly with a list of exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...

So what do the revisions do? The Electronic Frontier Foundation has the rundown. The new ruling creates exemptions in the DMCA to protect educators, libraries, the visually disabled, and people using programs that rely on obsolete hardware dongles to run. They also let consumers break firmware on cell phones for the purpose of switching cell phone service providers.

November 27, 2006
CNET news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6138461.html New DMCA exemptions take effect By Anne Broache

Starting on Monday, it's officially legal to "unlock" your cell phone's firmware if you're hoping to switch carriers while continuing to use the same device. It's also lawful for security researchers to bypass copy protection on music discs in order to test for flaws or vulnerabilities--a la last November's Sony rootkit fiasco...

Advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation voiced disappointment that copyright officials didn't extend circumvention rights to consumers hoping to make back-up copies of their DVDs.

November 26, 2006
Stereophile
Copyright Office Lists New Exceptions to the DMCA
By Wes Phillips

On November 22, the Librarian of Congress issued a-take a deep breath- declaration of exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works...

Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who alerted us to the LOC exceptions, points to Representative Rick Boucher's (D-VA) DMCA Reform Bill (HR 1201), which advocates that citizens have the right to circumvent copy-protection measures as "long as what they are doing is otherwise legal"...

"Essentially," von Lohmann said, "HR 1201 would codify the Betamax defense, which is under attack by the entertainment industry."

November 15, 2006
IDG News
"EFF asks for help debunking bar-code patent"
By Grant Gross

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking for help to challenge what it calls an "overly broad" bar-code scanning patent held by NeoMedia Technologies...

EFF has found "several strong leads" for prior art, said Jason Schultz, head of the EFF's Patent Busting Project. The EFF is looking for prior art before 1995, when NeoMedia filed a related patent claim. "NeoMedia has been threatening a number of small businesses that have not been able to fight back against the patent, so they were on our radar," Schultz said.

November 15, 2006
Jurist
"ACLU asks federal appeals court to block domestic spying"

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to uphold a lower court ruling that the NSA domestic surveillance program is unconstitutional, arguing that the program is an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy and free speech and oversteps the limits of executive power...

Another lawsuit, a class action brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, alleges that AT&T violated US citizens' rights to privacy and several federal statutes when it permitted the NSA to use its infrastructure to wiretap individuals without first obtaining warrants. The Ninth Circuit agreed last week to consider an appeal in that case.

November 15, 2006
CNET News.com
"Exterminating the nuisance of spam"
By Declan McCullaghn

Suresh Ramasubramanian must be a spammer's worst nightmare...

Ramasubramanian has not shied away from debates with groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation--which has taken issue with antispam techniques like America Online's Goodmail.

November 14, 2006
DM News
"FTC studies technology, privacy issues"
By Melissa Campanelli

As the sophistication of online marketing techniques escalates, marketers must be more sensitive than ever to consumer concerns...

But Marcia Hoffmann, staff attorney for The Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it is inevitable that as more data are collected about consumers by advertisers, marketers will benefit and there will be fewer market incentives to protect the privacy of consumers.

"Consumers need to be empowered to make their own choices in terms of how their data is used," she said.

November 14, 2006
CNET News.com
"Politicians embrace 'cybersecurity' month, but why?"
By Declan McCullagh

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday took the bold step of enhancing America's cybersecurity by approving a resolution in support of "National Cyber Security Awareness Month"...

What might have been a better use of their time? How about these suggestions...

Investigate what took place under the National Security Agency's broad surveillance scheme. While an AT&T whistleblower alleges widescale illegal spying, AT&T and President Bush have acknowledged no wrongdoing. (A lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation is pending, with a hearing set for Friday in San Francisco.) Oversight hearings can answer a key question: Were any laws broken?

November 14, 2006
San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Microsoft Linux"
By Annalee Newitz

I'm living in a bizarro business deal universe. Microsoft and Novell, which distributes a version of Suse Linux, have formed a partnership...

Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Jason Schultz says the deal doesn't threaten the legal status of the GPL. But he speculates that the products Microsoft and Novell have discussed creating - such as a software package containing interoperable versions of Windows and Novell Suse Linux - could make it very difficult for consumers to modify Novell Linux without also running into problems with Windows.

"This hybrid product could intermingle its Linux and Microsoft parts so that it could be hard to copy the open portions," he says.

November 14, 2006
The Boston Phoenix
"What will a Democratic Congress mean for digital freedom?"
By Mike Miliard

Sure, you're relieved. The Democrats' sudden ascension to power in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994 is undeniably good news for a host of progressive causes. But while the future might look a little brighter for issues like the environment and economic fairness, threats to our digital and online freedoms remain, even with the good guys in charge. "On some issues the Democrats are very good for online freedom, on some issues they're not," says Derek Slater, a former student fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

November 14, 2006
The New Standard
"GPS Surveillance Creeps into Daily Life"
By Catherine Komp

For $5.99 per month, you can turn a cell phone into a surveillance device and track when your target leaves home, where he or she travels and at what speed...

Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the privacy-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes the "structural problem" of court proceedings that are decided through a closed, "ex-parte" process, in which only the government appears before a judge to make its case without a public interest representative.

"It's a very stealthy situation," Tien told TNS. "Protection of privacy often can be very, very hard because those who are threatening it can operate very, very much in the background, and we don't necessarily have any way of knowing what they're doing. And that not only applies to a stalker or to someone in a company, but also to law enforcement."

November 13, 2006
IT Week
"Jack of all trades, master of the ORG"
By Jane Dudman

The subtitle of Suw Charman's blog (http:// chocnvodka.blogware.com/) is "bubbling enthusiasm for $arbitrary_topic" and it is an almost perfect summary of Charman herself... One of the biggest influences in setting up the ORG was the US Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has been around since 1990.

November 13, 2006
Reuters
"Google's video service faces suit"

Google Inc.'s video service faces at least one copyright infringement lawsuit, the company confirmed, and the Web search leader faces a separate subpoena tied to the service...

Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology rights advocacy group, said subpoenas had been sent to Google Video, YouTube and a third video site, seeking to identify who posted a controversial documentary to the Web.

November 13, 2006
Charlotte Sun-Herald
"Views differ on paper ballots"
By Greg Martin

To "paper trail" advocates, the fact that Sarasota County's electronic voting system delivered an enigmatic result Tuesday explains why voters there called for a switch to a paper-ballot system.

A hotline for election problems set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation received 15 calls from Charlotte County voters and 30 calls from Sarasota voters, said Matt Zimmerman, an attorney for the foundation...

However, Zimmerman said the report that Sarasota County recorded 18,000 undervotes indicates "a potential disaster."

"You have a huge number of votes for a seat in Congress that may not have been recorded," he said. "It could have been a problem with the ballot layout. It might have been hard to see or select. Or it could have been a calibration problem, where touching one part of the machine didn't accurately register the votes."

November 12, 2006
UPI
"Barney owner didn't think parody was funny"

Don't mess with Barney, the favorite purple dinosaur of U.S. children -- you might get sued...

But in the new dispute, Frankel asked for help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights group, which struck first and filed suit in New York against Lyons for alleged harassment.

November 10, 2006
Vnunet.com
"Microsoft to share Zune profits with record labels"
By Tom Sanders

Microsoft has signed an agreement with Universal Music to contribute a portion of the profits from its Zune media players to the record label...

Derek Slater, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stressed that it is important to ensure that consumers have a choice. He pointed out that digital media players are not just used to violate copyright. They also expand the market for digital media because consumers will access content in new places.

November 9, 2006
PC World
"YouTube, You Be Careful"

In the Future of the Web feature I wrote for the November issue of PC World, I suggested four trends that could cripple the Internet...

Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have done an admirable job of fighting for consumers' rights, but even its efforts haven't put the issue down. That indicates to me that copyright issues will be remain a threat to the Internet.

November 9, 2006
InformationWeek
"Government Still Trying To Dismiss NSA Spy Program Lawsuits"
By K.C. Jones

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting attempts to dismiss its lawsuit over the National Security Agency's spy program...

"It remains the province and the duty of the courts to determine whether the spying program broke the law, and the courts are quite capable of proceeding while respecting both liberty and security," Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for E.F.F., said in a statement.

November 9, 2006
Ars Technica "FTC looks at privacy in the next 'Tech-ade'" By Nate Anderson

The Federal Trade Commission has just wrapped up an important conference that was organized to give the agency a better sense of the challenges that technology will pose to consumers in the next 10 years. Unfortunately titled "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade," the conference brought together industry leaders and consumer advocates to talk about advertising, RFID, social networking, and user-generated content...

Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that "there are few market incentives to protect consumer privacy," but the advertisers who spoke did not (surprise) see it that way.

November 8, 2006
Computerworld "Paperless DRE could bite back in Virginia" By Grant Gross

Virginia, home to a close race likely to determine which party controls the Senate, has no mechanism for independent audits of electronic-voting machines used in the majority of its counties. E-voting watchdog groups reported other problems with e-voting as well...

There were significant reports of "vote-flipping," in which a DRE's summary page shows voters that they cast their ballots for candidates they didn't intend to vote for, Common Cause and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said.

November 7, 2006
Forbes
"No Chads, But Electronic Voting Glitches"
By Lisa Lerer

A lawyer stood with a cellphone in one ear, a landline connected to the other, all while typing on his BlackBerry. Twenty phones weren't enough to handle the calls streaming into the election protection center monitoring Ohio... "I'm certainly not surprised by the across-the-country, across-the-board ordinary but still serious problems that we are seeing with the touch-screen and optical scan machines," says Matt Zimmerman, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney monitoring the election.

November 7, 2006
Reuters
"US Court grants AT&T, govt. appeal in spy case"

The U.S. government and AT&T Inc, fighting against a lawsuit accusing the telephone operator of illegally allowing the government to monitor telephones and e-mails, won the right to argue for dismissal of the case before a U.S. Appeals Court on Tuesday... Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was "not surprised" by the decision. "I think eventually this case may very well appear before the Supreme Court," Opsahl said.

November 7, 2006
Central Utah Daily Herald
"Utah County polls will close at 8 p.m. despite early morning equipment problems"

Though an equipment snag held up many Utah County voters trying to cast a ballot Tuesday morning, a judge ruled late in the day that polling places did not have to stay open past 8 p.m...

The problems was rectified, but the delay prompted a challenge by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which works on consumer rights and technology issues.

November 7, 2006
Internetnews.com "Appeals Court Will Hear EFF/AT&T Spying Case" By Andy Patrizio

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the next stop on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) case against AT&T over alleged collaboration with the National Security Agency's (NSA's) domestic surveillance program.

The court decided on Tuesday decided it would hear an appeal of a district court's decision allowing the EFF's case to go forward against the government and AT&T. The ruling is only an agreement to hear the case, not on the merits of the appeal.

November 7, 2006
InternetNews.com
"New Online Ad Techniques, Old Challenges"
By Roy Mark

For Internet advertising and marketing, new technology and techniques are spawning old challenges: privacy and security...

Marcia Hoffman, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said consumers have not forgotten the previous privacy battles fought with Internet advertisers. Consumers, for instance, unsuccessfully campaigned to make opt-out the standard for e-mail advertising.

"Everything we have out there today is very sophisticated," she said. "They [advertisers and marketers] are learning more and more about users. Anonymous data can be connected to databases."

November 6, 2006
Computerworld "Election 2006: Watchdog groups urge voters to report e-vote problems" By Todd Weiss

With many races in today's midterm elections in the U.S. relying on electronic voting machines, elections officials and a plethora of watchdogs groups are keeping an eye on balloting to see how the various e-voting systems work...

Matt Zimmerman, a staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit privacy and digital rights group, said that the states being closely watched today for potential problems include Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

"There's certain places [being watched] like Ohio and Florida -- just because they're Ohio and Florida and they're going through procedural problems that we've seen" in the past, Zimmerman said. "Over the last few election cycles, these states have had issues."

November 6, 2006
InformationWeek "E-Voting Security Scrutinized During Midterm Elections" By K.C. Jones

Security of electronic voting machines is coming under scrutiny as the midterm elections approach...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, warns that lack of training among poll workers, technicians' unsupervised access to machines and faulty voting equipment could compromise election results.

November 6, 2006
CNET "TVU chief grapples with copyright questions"

Paul Shen, the CEO of controversial TVU Networks, said he doesn't understand why anyone in television would consider his company a threat. In fact, he said he comes to the TV industry bearing gifts...

Arguing that a technology company isn't responsible for the actions of its users is not a new idea and has met with mixed results, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which often defends tech entrepreneurs in copyright infringement cases.

November 4, 2006
The Register "How to gag your enemies using the DMCA" By Drew Cullen

The Register received our first DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down notice in September...

"The internet is home to passionate debate on countless important issues. It is too bad that some people find the robust exercise of free speech so frightening that they use intimidation to try to silence it," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry.

November 3, 2006
WebProNews "Does RSS Imply Permission To Reuse Content?" By Jason Lee Miller

With the advent of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, copyright law got a lot trickier...

Fred von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation told WebProNews, "Frankly, until there is some case law on this or related issues, we simply can't be sure of the answers to these questions. "As with so many things on the Internet, copyright law has yet to catch up with the realities of RSS syndication."

November 3, 2006
Red Herring
"Landmark Fires Back at EFF"

An attorney for Landmark Education, a 15-year-old personal development organization, called charges made by a digital rights group that it is using copyright law as a tool to suppress the free speech rights of Google Video and YouTube uploaders inaccurate and unfounded...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging the subpoenas on the grounds that the usage of the material constitutes fair use since it is used for the purpose of criticism, commentary, and news reporting.

November 3, 2006
Washington Post
"U.S. plans to screen travelers at borders"

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism-risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.... "They are assigning a suspicion level to millions of law-abiding citizens," said David Sobel, the senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is about as Kafkaesque as you can get."

November 2, 2006
Red Herring
"YouTube Purge Continues"

YouTube is apparently not finished taking down content from Comedy Central and other Viacom-owned cable channels from the video-sharing site.

"You're basically inviting a lawsuit," said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "You don't want to do a counter notice unless you think you have a good case in court, that's the bottom line."

November 2, 2006
Wired News
"Sued Sex Shamer Defends Takedown Notices"
By Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen

Michael Crook, the copycat sex shamer sued yesterday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for allegedly abusing copyright takedown notices to punish one of his critics, says he only filed the notices to protect his rights and that his critic's use of copyrighted images is different than his own posting of copyrighted photos from men he lured into sending him images through fake Craigslist personal ads.

November 2, 2006
WebProNews
"EFF Fighting Crook Over DMCA"
By David A. Utter

The potential for misuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act reared its head again as a controversial figure has used it to force the takedown of a Fox News screen capture of his image from a pair of websites.

"This is yet another case of someone intentionally misusing copyright law to try to shut down legitimate debate on an issue of public interest," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "Crook certainly doesn't own the copyright to the news footage -- Fox News does. Furthermore, a still shot of that footage, used as part of a commentary on the controversy surrounding him, is clearly a fair use. It's hypocritical for such an outspoken figure like Crook to attack other speakers just because they disagree with him."

November 2, 2006
The National Law Journal
"Video Web Sites Download a Defense"
By Amanda Bronstad

Universal Music Group's recent copyright infringement suits against two video-sharing Web sites have fueled speculation that Hollywood could be facing a repeat of the costly and lengthy litigation war against the once-popular music Web sites Napster and Grokster.

"These companies have learned from Napster and Grokster and designed their company systems both technologically and legally in light of those mistakes previously made," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights group, in San Francisco. Still, he admitted, "it's not black and white for sure."

November 1, 2006
CNBC Video: "Big Brother, Big Business"

EFF's Kevin Bankston and Seth Schoen featured in the documentary.

November 1, 2006
SecurityProNews
"Google, YouTube Motivated By Landmark"
By David Utter

Motivational and self-help workshop group Landmark Education has hit Google, YouTube, and the Internet Archive with subpoenas to find out who uploaded a video that presented a critical look at Landmark's methods.

"Sharing videos on the web is the latest example of free speech flowering on the Internet," said Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Unfortunately, it is being met by a simultaneous rise in the use of baseless legal claims as an excuse to pierce anonymity and chill speech. This kind of intimidation has to stop."