All posts in Electronic Frontier Foundation

Favorite In Jewish religious law, there is an offence called lifnei iver (literally, “before the blind”), that prohibits placing stumbling blocks before blind people, deriving from a verse of scripture also accepted by Christians and Muslims. This offense seems so obvious that it hardly requires a scripture verse to call it out. But the authors…

Favorite When was the last time you can remember your city government asking for feedback on privacy? What about the last time you could comment on privacy online, rather than attending a meeting? If you are a resident of Oakland, CA, you can comment right now on how you’d like to see the city handle…

Favorite Welcome once again to Sunshine Week! It’s that time of year when journalists, citizen watchdogs, community activists, data wizards, political gadflies, public-records litigators, and open-gov fanatics come together to champion the cause of transparency and commiserate over the obstacles we face everyday while chasing sunlight. A few weeks ago, EFF put out a call…

Favorite EFF is encouraging Canadians to join together tomorrow for a day of action against a dangerous bill that’s navigating through the Canadian legislature and threatening to strip its citizens of their rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, introduces a wide range of sweeping changes to how the Canadian government handles its…

Favorite Today, the FCC published its new order [PDF] on net neutrality.  As promised, the rules start by putting net neutrality on the right legal footing, which means they have a much stronger chance of surviving the inevitable legal challenge.  This is the culmination of years of work by public interest advocates and a massive…

Favorite Yesterday, a jury found that the 2013 song “Blurred Lines” was an infringement of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” composition from 1977. Following the 7-million-dollar verdict, professional musicians are waking up to a fact that ordinary Internet users have long known: our overbearing copyright laws are a threat to creativity. Numerous musicians…

Favorite The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of net neutrality rules last month, and we expect the final version of rules to be released shortly. From all reports, it sounds like the rules generally track what we (and four million Americans!) have been urging over the past year. But the incumbent ISPs are…

Favorite EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Professor Eric Goldman from Santa Clara University School of Law filed an amicus brief in a Massachusetts federal trial court highlighting the importance of interpreting Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) broadly to shield websites and other Internet intermediaries from liability for illegal content posted by…

Favorite Apple, that’s who. Or Microsoft, or any of the other vendors whose products US government contractors have successfully exploited according to a recent report in the Intercept. While we’re not surprised that the Intelligence Community is actively attempting to develop new spycraft tools and capabilities—that’s their job—we expect them to follow the administration’s rules…

Favorite Cyber, Cyber, Cyber. The word makes most technical people cringe but it’s all the rage right now in DC and other policy circles. The rallying calls are now familiar and the central pitch is that private entities and networks—the buzzword is “critical infrastructure”—should be strongly incentivized to “share” information with the government. In other…