Hill-Climbing Our Way to Defeating DRM
Computer science has long grappled with the problem of unknowable terrain: how do you route a packet from A to E when B, C, and D are nodes that keep coming up and going down as they get flooded by traffic from other sources? How do you shard a database...
Microsoft Clears the Air About Fighting CLOUD Act Abuses
Five of the largest U.S. technology companies pledged support this year for a dangerous law that makes our emails, chat logs, online videos and photos vulnerable to warrantless collection by foreign governments.Now, one of those companies has voiced a meaningful pivot, instead pledging support for its users and their...
Offline: Activists and Technologists Still Face Grave Threats for Expression
A decade ago, before social media was a widespread phenomenon and blogging was still a nascent activity, it was nearly unthinkable outside of a handful of countries—namely China, Tunisia, Syria, and Iran—to detain citizens for their online activity. Ten years later, the practice has become all too common, and remains...
Senate Fails to Address Vital Questions During Examination of Supreme Court Nominee
The Senate Judiciary Committee is charged with scrutinizing whether U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Trump should be confirmed. Three days of lengthy hearings, however, failed to meaningfully address crucial questions about how old law designed for analog situations might apply to our...
The NSA Continues to Blame Technology for Breaking the Law
UPDATE September 14, 2018: This blog has been updated at the bottom to include information about two Senators’ reactions to the NSA’s call detail record deletion.In late June, the NSA announced a magic trick—hundreds of millions of collected call records would disappear. Its lovely assistant? Straight from the agency’s statement:...
Appeals Court Asks the Right Questions in NSA Surveillance Case
On Monday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York held argument in United States v. Hasbajrami, an important case involving surveillance under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. It is only the second time a federal appeals court has been asked to rule on whether...
Captive Audience: How Florida's Prisons and DRM Made $11.3M Worth of Prisoners' Music Disappear
The Florida Department of Corrections is one of the many state prison systems that rely on private contractors to supply electronic messaging and access to electronic music files and books for prisoners.For seven years, Florida’s prisoners have bought music through Access Corrections, a company that took in $11.3 million selling...
EFF to the FCC: Don’t Let AT&T and Verizon Get a Chokehold on Internet Access Competition
The majority of Americans do not have a choice when it comes to high-speed Internet. People living in rural areas have poor quality and coverage when it comes to even mid-range broadband, and America is lagging behind other countries in fiber optics. There are very few things in place...
Internet Publication of 3D Printing Files About Guns: Facts and What’s at Stake
When it comes to guns, nearly everyone has strong views. When it comes to Internet publication of 3D printed guns, those strong views can push courts and regulators into making hasty, dangerous legal precedents that will hurt the public's ability to discuss legal, important, and even urgent topics ranging from...
Eight AT&T Buildings and Ten Years of Litigation: Shining a Light on NSA Surveillance
Two reporters recently identified eight AT&T locations in the United States—towering, multi-story buildings—where NSA surveillance occurs on the backbone of the Internet. Their article showed how the agency taps into cables, routers, and switches that handle vast quantities of Internet traffic around the world. Published by The Intercept, the...
