All posts in Electronic Frontier Foundation

Favorite EFF has criticized Vietnam’s crackdown on independent media and bloggers for years, including the imprisonment of Le Quoc Quan and attempts to spy on bloggers and journalists using malware. We are heartened to learn of last week’s release of Vietnamese blogger Dieu Cay, but today we join with organizations including Viet Tan, Access, and…

Favorite Lumen View is a typical patent troll. Armed with a vague patent on “facilitating bilateral and multilateral decision-making,” it sent out aggressive letters demanding payment. It refused to explain how its targets actually infringed its patent. Instead, it made shakedown offers it knew would be less than the cost of defending a lawsuit. When…

Favorite What needs to be in your tool belt if you plan to report on a massively funded and ultra-secret organization like the NSA? In the credits of her newly released CITIZENFOUR, director Laura Poitras gives thanks to a list of important security resources that are all free software. We’ve previously written about CITIZENFOUR and…

Favorite Update (Oct. 29, 2014): Yesterday, the Court granted [PDF] Capstone’s Motion for Judgment on the pleadings, finding that all claims were invalid for claiming unpatentable subject matter, applying Alice v. CLS Bank. We’re glad Capstone fought against these patents and achieved a total victory, despite the significant costs associated with doing so. We’re also happy that the court…

Favorite School districts across the country are grappling with how to deal with their students’ use of technology and social media. All too often, in an attempt to protect students, they end up implementing technology polices that give administrators too much power and go too far in restricting what students can do online. Williamson County…

Favorite The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was…

Favorite This Open Access Week, we are celebrating and advocating for unfettered access to the results of research, a movement that has shown considerable progress over the last few decades.  Let’s all take a step back, though. Much of the open access movement is forward thinking, offering solutions and policy changes that will help improve access…

Favorite Even the reports that are supposed to provide transparency about the FBI’s use of national security lettters (NSLs) are secret—or at least a couple dozen pages of them are. NSLs are nonjudicial orders that allow the FBI to obtain information from companies, without a warrant, about their customers’ use of services. They almost always…

Favorite Facebook scolded the Drug Enforcement Administration this week after learning that a narcotics agent had impersonated a user named Sondra Arquiett on the social network in order to communicate and gather intelligence on suspects. In a strongly worded letter to DEA head Michele Leonhart, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan reiterated that not only…