UN Experts Condemn the Human Rights Costs of Secret Trade Agreements
Yesterday, ten United Nations experts and special rapporteurs voiced their concern over the adverse impacts upon human rights posed by secret “free trade” and investment agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).
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USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here
The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by...
Open Wireless Advocates to European Court: Don't Make Us Lock Down Our Networks
The vision of a world of shared open wireless is a compelling one—it means that wherever you go in an urban or other covered area, the connected devices that you own now (and new devices that are today only on the drawing board) will enjoy immediate, seamless, private, and...
Cybersecurity and the Tylenol Murders
When a criminal started lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, Johnson & Johnson quickly sprang into action to ensure consumer safety. It increased its internal production controls, recalled the capsules, offered an exchange for tablets, and within two months started using triple-seal tamper-resistant packaging. The company focused on...
Stupid Patent of the Month: All of Patent Class 705
In choosing this month’s Stupid Patent, we realized that we couldn’t choose just one. Instead, we decided to give the award to the entirety of patent class 705.
By way of explanation: every Tuesday, the Patent Office officially publishes new patents in the “Patent Gazette.” (This week’s is...
TISA: Yet Another Leaked Treaty You've Never Heard Of Makes Secret Rules for the Internet
A February 2015 draft of the secret Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) was leaked again last week, revealing a more extensive and more recent text than that of portions from an April 2014 leak that we covered last year. Together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and...
Logjam, Part 1: Why the Internet is Broken Again (an Explainer)
The discovery last week of another major flaw in TLS was announced, nicknamed "Logjam" by the group of prominent cryptographers who discovered it. It's getting so hard to keep track of these flaws that researchers at INRIA in France created a "zoo" classifying the...
The Clock is Still Running: Neither NSA Reform Nor Reauthorization Advances in Senate
Tonight, the US Senate failed to move ahead with the USA Freedom Act, an NSA reform bill that would address phone record surveillance and FISA Court transparency and fairness. It also was unable to muster votes for a temporary reauthorization of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the section of...
Africa's Worst New Internet Censorship Law Could be Coming to South Africa
Only once in a while does an Internet censorship law or regulation come along that is so audacious in its scope, so misguided in its premises, and so poorly thought out in its execution, that you have to check your calendar to make sure April 1 hasn't come around again....
Fast Track Amendments Are Too Little Too Late to Salvage the TPP Agreement
As part of the congressional to-and-fro over the pending Fast Track bill, senators with concerns about the process and substance of trade negotiations have been putting forward some proposed amendments. None of these amendments would alter the substance of what Fast Track is—a bill to authorize...
