When Google announced its new Allo messaging app, we were initially pleased to see the company responding to long-standing consumer demand for user-friendly, secure messaging. Unfortunately, it now seems that Google's response may cause more harm than good. While Allo does expose more users to end-to-end encrypted messaging, this potential...

At midnight last Saturday morning, Washington DC time, oversight over the performance of ICANN's IANA functions—notably its maintenance of the root zone database of the Internet's domain name system (DNS)—passed from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ICANN's global multi-stakeholder community.
Despite several weeks of heated...

On October 11, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the long-running Apple-Samsung litigation. The issue is whether Apple, by virtue of having its design patents infringed by Samsung, is entitled to all of Samsung’s profits made from the infringing phones (regardless of how...

This week, EFF has been at the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s annual Public Forum. Best known to the general public as the locus of anti-globalization protests at its 1999 Ministerial Conference, it's ironic that the WTO is today the most open and transparent of trade negotiation bodies—an honor...

Over the last few weeks, a broad coalition of civil liberties and social justice organizations rained down letters, tweets, and op-eds on Gov. Jerry Brown, urging him to sign A.B. 2298, a bill to begin the process of overhauling the state's CalGang gang affiliation database.
On Wednesday,...

For more than a year, EFF has been investigating how police in California misuse the state’s law enforcement database with little oversight from officials. An investigation published by the Associated Press today shows that abuse of law enforcement systems is a nationwide problem. The AP’s investigation analyzed records from...

Do you get creeped out when an ad eerily related to your recent Internet activity seems to follow you around the web? Do you ever wonder why you sometimes see a green lock with “https” in your address bar, and other times just plain “http”? EFF’s team of technologists and...