Across the Arab world, LGBTQ communities still struggle to gain social recognition, and individuals still face legal penalties for consensual activities. In Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iraq, homosexuality is punishable by death. In 2001, 52 men were arrested for being gay in Cairo. And in Syria, Algeria,...

In Armenia, online anonymity could be a luxury of the past if a bill that is currently before the Armenian parliament is passed. The bill would make it illegal for media outlets to publish defamatory content by anonymous or fake sources. Additionally, under this bill, sites that host libelous comments...

[Accessing] any part of a computer system without right. Cyber-squatting. Cybersex. Computer-related forgery. What do these things have in common? They are all punishable acts under Philippines’ Cybercrime Prevention Act.
EFF has closely followed the Philippines Republic Act No. 10175, also known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act, since...

Rumors of the extent of Ethiopia’s digital surveillance and censorship state have echoed around the information security community for years. Journalists such as Eskinder Nega have spoken of being shown text messages, printouts of emails, and recordings of their own telephone conversations by the Ethiopian security services. From within...

Following his pledge to “wipe out” Twitter last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered ISPs to block the site, which they did by tweaking DNS settings and redirecting traffic from the page to a government blockpage.
The move was futile; Turkish Internet users have been...

There was a moralistic, unnecessary, and wholly unscientific new restriction enacted on funding for the National Institute of Health as part of the appropriations bill passed in January. The new legislative mandate forces researchers who rely on government funding to place anti-pornography filters on their computer networks. There are...

Today, President Obama is meeting with prominent American tech companies to discuss the ongoing NSA spying controversy.
This comes just two days after Rajesh De, the general counsel of the NSA, stated before a government oversight board that tech companies were legally mandated to assist...

UPDATE: As of March 22, the Turkish government has blocked Google DNS and other DNS servers, which were being used by thousands to circumvent the ban on Twitter. We recommend that Turkish users download the Tor Browser Bundle, which will continue to allow them to bypass censorship (here...

California State Sen. Monning (D-Carmel) has introduced legislation intended to protect Californians' privacy rights behind the wheel. We have not yet completed our analysis of the bill, sponsored by the Automobile Association of America, but apparently a thorough analysis wasn't required for the automotive industry to come out slinging...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released its annual “Enemies of the Internet” index this week—a ranking first launched in 2006 intended to track countries that repress online speech, intimidate and arrest bloggers, and conduct surveillance of their citizens. Some countries have been mainstays on the annual index, while others...