As we noted last week, the new WhiteHouse.gov site uses embedded YouTube movies, raising concerns of privacy and open government advocates. Embedded video clips can place or add to a cookie on the user’s computer – thus enabling tracking of users as they use the web. In response, the...

Late last week, Microsoft launched a mobile phone music downloading service in the UK, but the public has quickly focused its attention on Microsoft UK's mystifying choice to include digital rights management (DRM) on its music files. PC Pro reports that the restrictions prevent buyers from playing the music...

The incoming Obama administration has impressed advocates of open government, first by making a clear commitment to answer FOIA requests with a presumption of openness, and now by responding quickly -- within 24 hours! -- to criticism from CNET blogger Chris Soghoian and others that the retooled ...

On December 11, 2008, Boston.com launched a "hyper-local" site for the town Newton, Massachusetts. The site heavily features links to news stories aggregated from around the web. Much like many blogs and news aggregation sites do, the site includes the headline and a snippet from these stories, attributed and...

Last night, less than 48 hours after George Bush left office, whistleblower and former NSA analyst Russell Tice revealed new information about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program:

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Countdown begins the segment with an appropriate clip of Ex-President Bush's December 2005 talk on wiretapping, in which he claimed that...

In a victory for online free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to hear the government's appeal of a July 2008 ruling holding the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA) unconstitutional and enjoining COPA's enforcement. The case was brought by the ACLU, EFF, and a coalition...

More good news for EFF's Patent Busting Project! Last week, the United States Patent Office (PTO) rejected all twenty claims of the Internet subdomain patent [PDF] on the Project's Ten Most Wanted list. Based on a combination of prior art that EFF had supplied and similar Internet newsgroup postings,...