On August 6, 1956, Arnold Mesches had over 200 paintings stolen. When he returned to his Los Angeles art studio that day, the building’s glass front door was shattered. Someone had broken in. The paintings were gone, including a 30-painting… Read More ›
Archive for September 2017
How a Dubious CIA Document Is Fueling Tensions in Catalonia
Tensions are running high in Barcelona. Last month saw a terrorist attack on one of the city’s main thoroughfares, Las Ramblas, which killed a dozen people and injured more than 100. Now, Barcelona and the greater region of Catalonia are a… Read More ›
Just How Unpopular, How Wrong on the Facts, How Misguided Is the FCC Proposal to Rollback Network Neutrality and Broadband Privacy?
As the U.S. Senate debates the re-nomination of the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, it is worth reflecting on just how wildly unsupported by the public and wrong the agency is on its effort to end an… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Will Patents Slow Artificial Intelligence?
We have written many times about why the patent system is a bad fit for software. Too often, the Patent Office reviews applications without ever looking at real world software and hands out broad, vague, or obvious patents on software… Read More ›
The War on General-Purpose Computing Turns on the Streaming Media Box Community
For most of the lifetime of Kodi since its release as XMBC in 2002, it was an obscure piece of free software that geeks used to manage their home media collections. But in the past few years, the sale of pre-configured Kodi… Read More ›
Phish For the Future
This report describes “Phish For The Future,” an advanced persistent spearphishing campaign targeting digital civil liberties activists at Free Press and Fight For the Future. Between July 7th and August 8th of 2017 we observed almost 70 spearphishing attempts against… Read More ›
Update: EFF Lawsuit Results in Release of More FISC Opinions
The government has released eleven secret court orders and opinions as a result of an EFF lawsuit seeking to make significant decisions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) public. The documents, which you can read here, primarily deal with… Read More ›
Will the Equifax Data Breach Finally Spur the Courts (and Lawmakers) to Recognize Data Harms?
This summer 143 million Americans had their most sensitive information breached, including their name, addresses, social security numbers (SSNs), and date of birth. The breach occurred at Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies that conducts the credit… Read More ›
Canada Pushes Back Against U.S. Copyright Demands in NAFTA
The third round of negotiations over the modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is underway right now in Ottawa, and EFF is there to represent you. It’s been a frustrating few days so far. Before explaining why,… Read More ›
California is Close to Bringing Transparency and Accountability to Gang Databases
In April 2017, Terry Spears shared his story with San Diego’s local public media station KPBS on what it’s like to be listed in the CalGang database. Even though Mr. Spears says he has never been in a gang, it… Read More ›