Last fall, we filed a brief asking the Federal Circuit to rehear Ultramerical v. Hulu, a case that found an abstract idea patentable when the invention took place on the Internet. The Federal Circuit declined, so now we've raised the stakes. In a brief filed today, EFF,...

Yesterday, EFF and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed an amicus brief (PDF) in support of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to enforce the plain text of the Wiretap Act and its absolute prohibition against the use of illegally intercepted communications.
The case arises out of...

The world’s attention has recently turned to the question of how to hold companies accountable for knowingly marketing, selling and adapting the tools of surveillance to repressive regimes. U.S. and E.U. companies’ equipment has been linked to torture and other human rights violations in many Middle East and North...

In a potentially troublesome decision, a federal district court has found that a start-up violated anti-spam and computer crime laws by creating and marketing a browser to let users view their social networking accounts in one place. The case demonstrates the difficulties facing those who seek to empower users...

On October 1, 2011, over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the protesters, including Malcolm Harris, were charged with the mundane crime of disorderly conduct, a "violation" under New York law that has a maximum punishment of 15 days...

A federal district court in Colorado has handed down an unfortunate early ruling (pdf) in a case in which the government is attempting to force a criminal defendant to decrypt the contents of a laptop.
In United States v. Fricosu, the government seized several computers from the...

Over the weekend, the Obama administration issued a potentially game-changing statement on the blacklist bills, saying it would oppose PIPA and SOPA as written, and drew an important line in the sand by emphasizing that it “will not support” any bill “that reduces freedom of expression,...

Today, EFF filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration seeking information on drone flights in the United States. The FAA is the sole entity within the federal government capable of authorizing domestic drone flights, and for too long now, it has failed to release specific and detailed information...

2011 was an important year for court decisions interpreting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Supreme Court issued two decisions that promoted government transparency and limited the scope of FOIA exemptions, while two district courts addressed how the government administers FOIA. All of those decisions will help shape FOIA...

Last week, two leading Constitutional scholars offered detailed analyses of the Internet blacklist bills now pending in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP, or PIPA. Both scholars concluded that the proposed law could not pass muster under the U.S. Constitution. So you’d think that the ...