Last week, as Senators and Congresspersons met in conference to negotiate the final PATRIOT reauthorization bill, we had high hopes that they would add meaningful new checks and balances to the USA PATRIOT Act. But EFF has obtained a draft of the final conference report (in three parts: ...

This Wednesday, at 10AM EST, the href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/subcommittees/Commerce_Trade_and_Consumer_Protection.htm">House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection will hear from witnesses discussing href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/11162005hearing1716/hearing.htm">"Fair Use: Its Effect on Consumers and Industry." It should make for a fine contrast to the arguments made so forcefully by the MPAA and RIAA earlier this month...

This morning, security researcher Dan Kaminsky announced an ingenious method for gauging the extent of the Sony XCP CD rootkit infection. His findings suggest that at least hundreds of thousands of computers are likely already infected, and that Sony probably has data that would show exactly how many computers...

Xerox has responded to our href="http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/">research on how printers made by Xerox and other companies track the origin of documents you print. Its new "Xerox Statement on Counterfeit Detection" contains some bizarre suggestions. The most prominent of these is that Xerox's invasions of privacy are OK because other...

EFF is collecting stories from EFF members and supporters who have purchased Sony-BMG CDs that contained the "rootkit" copy protection software. We've previously posted at least a partial list of CDs infected here We're considering whether the effect on the public, or on EFF members, is sufficiently serious...

One more magistrate judge has refused to allow the government's practice of secretly using cell phones to track people without probable cause--this time in the Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The magistrate judge declined to grant the government's request "without further briefing from the Government concerning the propriety of...

As we've mentioned before, Sony-BMG has been using copy-protection technology called XCP in its recent CDs. You insert your CD into your Windows PC, click "agree" in the pop up window, and the CD automatically installs software that uses rootkit techniques to cloak itself from you. Sony-BMG has...