EFF has been steadfast in its criticism of officials like FBI Director James Comey, who have implored tech companies to provide a backdoor to their customers’ encrypted communications. Now it appears as though the White House would like a backdoor to the First Amendment’s free speech protections by requiring...

The President’s State of the Union address examined a great many pressing issues confronting our nation and the world. One of the most dire, however, somehow escaped his attention: the continuing threat to democracy presented by unaccountable, secret mass surveillance in violation of the Constitution.
The President’s promise...

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the nonprofit body that maintains the Web's core standards, made a terrible mistake in 2013: they decided to add DRM—the digital locks that train your computer to say "I can't let you do that, Dave"; rather than "Yes, boss"—to the Web's standards.
At...

“One of the minor puzzles of American life is what question to ask people at parties and suchly to get to know them,” a nineteen-year-old Aaron Swartz wrote in 2006.
“‘How ya doin’?’ is of course mere formality, only the most troubled would answer honestly for anything but...

Xinjiang, home of the China's muslim Uighur minority, has long been the world's laboratory for Internet repression. Faced with widespread local unrest, and online debate, China has done everything it can to enforce its vision of the Net in the region, from imprisoning bloggers and online publishers, to...

At Noon Today, Demand Real Answers from John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile
T-Mobile's Binge On service could have been great. Giving customers a choice about how to use their data so that they can stream more video without hitting their data cap is a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, T-Mobile botched...

Just before the holidays, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) working group released guidance for state and local agencies using drone aircraft. The document, Best Practices for Protecting Privacy, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties In Unmanned Aircraft Systems Programs, addresses concerns over the implications of high-tech tools...

In October 2015, all six editors of the linguistics journal Lingua quit at once, along with its 31-member editorial board. The walkout brought mainstream attention to a debate that has been brewing for years over the future of academic publishing.
Elsevier—Lingua’s publisher—classifies it as a hybrid journal....

The real test of whether you have rights is not what the law says: it's what happens when you try to exercise them. For too many bloggers and technologist around the world, the price of using the Net in innovative, legitimate ways, has been jail. Some of the cases...

For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft’s design.
The design patent, as detailed...