Texas Supreme Court Subtly Provides Stronger Protections for Anonymous Speakers
The Texas Supreme Court upheld protections for anonymous online speakers in a January ruling, albeit in a way that sidestepped thorny legal questions but will likely have the effect of vindicating First Amendment rights going forward.The case, Glassdoor, Inc. v. Andra Group, concerned an effort by clothing company...
Bird Rides Inc. Demands Takedown of News Report on Lawful Re-use of Scooters
Every now and then we have to remind someone that it's not illegal for people to report facts that they dislike. This time, the offender is electric scooter rental company Bird Rides, Inc.Electric scooters have swamped a number of cities across the US, many of the scooters carelessly discarded in...
The Expanded DMCA Exemption for Video Game Preservation Grants a Small Victory Amidst the Seventh Triennial Rulemaking
Correction 12/4/18: This post has been edited to correct the description of the new exemption, and to acknowledge the contributions of SPN, LCA, and Harvard.Online games have finally found their way into the video game preservation exemption to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is...
The Unresolved Issue of Verizon Throttling Santa Clara’s Fire Department Shows Why ISPs Need Rules
In August, it was revealed that Verizon throttled the wireless broadband services of fire fighters in the middle of a state emergency and spent four weeks debating with the local fire department while trying to upsell them a more expensive plan. This week, the Santa Clara Board of County...
Snowden Files Declaration in NSA Spying Case Confirming Authenticity of Draft Inspector General Report Discussing Unprecedented Surveillance of Americans, Which He Helped Expose
EFF filed papers with the court in its long-running Jewel v. NSA mass spying case today that included a surprising witness: Edward Snowden. Mr. Snowden’s short declaration confirms that a document relied upon in the case, a draft NSA Inspector General Report from 2009 discussing the...
EFF Asks California Supreme Court to Hear Case on Anonymization and the Ability to Access Data Under the California Public Records Act
EFF is filing an amicus letter in support of a petition for review, asking the California Supreme Court to overturn a harmful appellate court decision in Sander v. State Bar of California that could prevent people from requesting public records from databases that contain private information, even if...
California’s Net Neutrality Law: What’s Happened, What’s Next
Over the weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown signed S.B. 822, which guarantees strong net neutrality protections for citizens of California. Within hours, however, the federal government announced its intention to sue California for stepping in where the feds have abdicated responsibility. What happens next is going to be full of procedural...
Trust Us, We’re Secretly Working for a Foreign Government: How Australia’s Proposed Surveillance Laws Will Break The Trust Tech Depends On
In the last few years, we’ve discovered just how much trust — whether we like it or not — we have all been obliged to place in modern technology. Third-party software, of unknown composition and security, runs on everything around us: from the phones we carry around, to the smart...
EFF Amicus Brief: The Privacy Act Requires the FBI to Delete Files of Its Internet Speech Surveillance
U.S. law makes clear that the government cannot keep surveillance records on a person or group because of their political views or the way that they express their First Amendment rights. Unfortunately, the FBI has flouted these laws by maintaining records of its probe of two people whose website criticized...
California Supreme Court Strengthens Section 230 Protections for Online Speech
Special thanks to legal intern Miranda Rutherford who was the lead author of this post.If someone sues you for a review you wrote on Yelp, can a court force Yelp to take down the review? This month, the California Supreme Court said “no” in the case Hassell v. Bird.This...
