Today the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) finally published its exhaustive report on the FBI’s face recognition capabilities. The takeaway: FBI has access to hundreds of millions more photos than we ever thought. And the Bureau has been hiding this fact from the public—in flagrant violation of federal...

Last week, Santa Clara County—which encompasses much of Silicon Valley—set a new standard in local surveillance transparency after months of activism by residents and allies from across the Bay Area. Their efforts, and the policy it enabled, suggest an overlooked strategy in the national battle to curtail unaccountable secret...

A bipartisan group of House members are preparing to introduce measures widely supported by their colleagues that would rein in NSA domestic surveillance and protect encryption. But a change in procedure adopted by the House leadership may deny the House a chance to even consider their proposal.
Based...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has never been on a shakier footing, given widespread (and well justified) public mistrust of the process and the outcome, opposition from all of the Presidential candidates, and to top it all off a decidedly lackluster forecast even from the administration's own International Trade...

A European Commission proposal to give new copyright-like veto powers to publishers could prevent quotation and linking from news articles without permission and payment. The Copyright for Creativity coalition (of which EFF is a member) has put together an easy survey and answering guide to guide you through...

People who don't like what's said about them on the Internet can't bypass important protections for online speech by demanding the copyright to objectionable comments, EFF argues in a new amicus brief filed together with Public Citizen and Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic. The underlying case, now before the...

Congress has no business approving government programs that neither it nor the public understands. Yet policymakers have repeatedly authorized surveillance activities without doing their homework. Over the eight years since enacting reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Congress has failed to gain a functional understanding of NSA Internet...

In an attack on ad-blocking software, the Newspaper Association of America filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission last week, asking the agency to ban a variety of functions, including “evading metered subscription systems and paywalls,” and ad substitution. NAA also called into question new business models that...

This month features not only a stupid patent, but also a stupid trademark to go along with it.
My Health, Inc. is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 6,612,985, which is entitled “Method and system for monitoring and treating a patient.” My Health also holds a trademark...