Sexual Predators, Please Check Here: Match.com’s Deeply Flawed Plan to Screen for Sex Offenders
Earlier this week, the popular online dating site Match.com announced plans to implement a system to check their users against sex offender registries. This comes in the wake of a lawsuit against the company by a woman who says she was assaulted by someone she met through the website....
"Who Has Your Back?" In Depth: Which Companies Promise To Tell Users About Government Data Requests?
EFF recently launched a campaign calling on companies to stand with their users when the government comes looking for data. (If you haven’t done so, sign our petition urging companies to provide better transparency and privacy.) This article will provide a more detailed look at one of the four...
Why Righthaven’s Copyright Assignment Is A Sham – And Why It Matters
For several weeks EFF and co-counsel Fenwick & West have been trying to persuade a federal district court to unseal a critical document Stephens Media produced in Righthaven v. Democratic Underground. The document, the Strategic Alliance Agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media (publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal),...
Do the Companies that Hold Your Data Stand with Users?
What happens when governments go to your online service providers seeking information about you? Birgitta Jonsdottir, Rop Gonggijp and Jacob Appelbaum use online social networks to communicate about social and political causes – including their support for the online whistleblower website Wikileaks. But their decision to back...
EFF to Council of Europe: Ensure Privacy, Transparency, and Freedom of Expression in Search Engines
This week the Council of Europe's expert committee on new media (MC-NM) met in Strasbourg to examine the comments received on the draft recommendation and proposal for guidelines for search engines.
In written comments, EFF urged the Council of Europe to revise its recommendation...
House Oversight Committee Investigates DHS FOIA Review Practices—EFF's Requests Were Singled Out
Today the House Oversight Committee held a hearing titled, “Why Isn't the Department of Homeland Security Meeting the President’s Standard on FOIA?” As we wrote last October, redacted DHS emails revealed the agency was targeting certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and certain FOIA requesters—such as activist...
Good and Bad in Google Book Search Settlement Decision
Yesterday’s decision rejecting the proposed settlement in the Google Books case, Authors Guild v. Google, got a number of things right. For starters, as we wrote shortly after the decision was announced, we’re glad that the court acknowledged the importance of the privacy concerns we helped to raise....
Sunshine Week: Do Open Government Laws Still Matter in the Era of WikiLeaks?
March 14-18, 2011 is “Sunshine Week”—a week to focus on the importance of open government and how we can ensure accountability for our leaders at the federal, state and local levels.In the year since Sunshine Week 2010, the world of open government has been rocked by the WikiLeaks leaks....
Riding the Fences of the “Urban Homestead”: Trademark Complaints and Misinformation Lead to Improper Takedowns
A leading candidate has emerged for the next EFF Takedown Hall of Shame induction: the Dervaes Institute, which is claiming broad ownership rights over the term “urban homesteading” — a term commonly used to describe a social movement dedicated to achieving more self-sufficient, sustainable living in cities. Last year,...
What Does the "Track" in "Do Not Track" Mean?
There is a lot of discussion about Do Not Track at the moment. The FTC has announced support for the idea; Mozilla has added a Do Not Track header option into Firefox betas, and Congresswoman Jackie Speier has introduced a Do Not Track bill. Other proposed privacy...
