Every day cafes, airports, libraries, laundromats, schools and individuals operate “open” Wi-Fi routers, sharing their connection with neighbors and passers-by at no charge. The City of San Francisco recently deployed a free, public Wi-Fi network along a three-mile stretch of Market Street. Sometimes people use those connections for unauthorized activities....

Finally, some good news from Congress this week. Patent and surveillance reform may be suffering setbacks, but open access may be recovering thanks to a new provision passed yesterday that mandates a solid public access policy for NASA, NSF, NIST, the National Weather Service, and the Office of Science of...

Update (January 2016): There’s a new, expanded edition of Hacking the Patent System for 2016.
EFF is proud to participate in the launch of a new guide to alternative patent licensing. The guide was prepared by the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property & Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has put police on notice: an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) alert, without human verification, is not enough to pull someone over.
Last week, the appellate court issued an important opinion in Green v. City & County of San Francisco, a civil...

Today, Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil is celebrating his 33rd birthday in prison. This day is the 799th since the young software developer was detained in Damascus, Syria. That’s nearly 800 days that Bassel has not been able to write code, or tweet, or hug his family, or do any of...