The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Matal v. Tam striking down the trademark non-disparagement requirement as unconstitutional is a big victory for the First Amendment. First, the Court strongly pushed back against the expansion of the government-speech doctrine, perhaps the biggest current threat to free speech jurisprudence. Second, the...
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Packingham v. South Carolina, unanimously struck down a state law that banned registered sex offenders (RSOs) from using all Internet social media, holding that the law violated the First Amendment.
EFF and our allies Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy &...
Californians now have a chance to reclaim crucial online privacy protections.
Earlier this year, Congress narrowly voted to repeal federal privacy rules that kept your ISP from selling information about who you are and what you do online without your permission. Today, California legislators are introducing new state legislation—the...
The U.S. government’s foreign surveillance law is so secretive that not even a service provider challenging an order issued by a secret court got to access it.
That Kafkaesque episode—denying a party access to the law being used against it—was made public this week in a...
Join EFF at Black Hat Briefings! Be sure to stop by our information booth in the Business Hall to find out about the latest developments in protecting digital freedom. You can even sign up as an EFF member and pick up some great swag! As in past years, EFF staff...
On June 1, people from across the San Francisco Bay Area gathered for EFF's inaugural Tech Trivia Night under the watchful eye of quizmaster and Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin a.k.a. The Cybertiger. Following in the footsteps of EFF's popular Cyberlaw Trivia Night, now in its tenth year...
June 15, 2017 is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Espionage Act. Earlier this year, as if to commemorate the centennial, President Trump suggested to then-FBI Director James Comey that he extend the Act into new territory—that he use it to prosecute journalists.
While ...
One hundred years ago, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act into law, and since then it has been used to criminalize the disclosure of national defense and classified information.
Dissent-Stifling Roots At the turn of the 20th century, anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiments dominated national rhetoric and...
The federal law that is commonly used to prosecute leakers marks its 100th birthday on June 15,2017.
Signed into law on June 15, 1917, the Espionage Act 18 U.S.C. § 792 et seq., was Congress’s response to a fear that public criticism of U.S. participation in World...
Sharing Is Not a Crime A few weeks ago, we joined the global open access community in celebrating that Diego Gomez had finally been cleared of criminal charges for sharing scientific research over the Internet without permission. Unfortunately, the fight is not over yet. The ruling has been...
Last night, the Department of Justice produced eighteen previously secret opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The opinions all relate to Section 702, the warrantless surveillance authority scheduled to sunset at the end of the year. The opinions were disclosed as a result of a FOIA lawsuit EFF...
Does the First Amendment guarantee the right of individuals to record police officers exercising their official duties in public? That is the question being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in two consolidated cases: Fields v. City of Philadelphia and Geraci v. City of Philadelphia....
The New York State Legislature is considering a bill that would radically reshape its right of publicity law. Assembly Bill A08155 [PDF] would dramatically expand New York’s right of publicity, making it a property right that can be passed on to your heirs – even if you aren’t a...
Tomorrow, the government is scheduled to release a group of significant opinions of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The documents are being released as a result of a FOIA lawsuit filed by EFF last year, seeking disclosure of all of the FISC’s still-secret, yet significant, opinions.
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