Is Obama Stalling Until Republicans Can Bury the CIA Torture Report?

Favorite Continued White House foot-dragging on the declassification of a much-anticipated Senate torture report is raising concerns that the administration is holding out until Republicans take over the chamber and kill the report themselves. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s intelligence committee sent a 480-page executive summary of its extensive report on the CIA’s abuse of detainees to…

The Troubling Arguments from the Government in Smith v. Obama

Favorite We’ve filed our reply brief in the appeal of Smith v. Obama, our case challenging the NSA’s mass telephone records collection on behalf of Idaho nurse Anna Smith. The case will be argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal on December 8, 2014 in Seattle, and the public is welcome to attend. Another…

Open Letter from Diego Gomez: “Access to Knowledge Is a Global Right”

Favorite The progress of knowledge is fueled by people who dedicate their lives to a field—to read, examine, and absorb everything they can out of passionate intellectual curiosity. Diego Gomez is one of these individuals, and is dedicated to the conservation of reptiles and amphibians. Unfortunately, like so many scholars around the world, Diego’s work…

EFF, Internet Archive, and reddit Oppose New York’s BitLicense Proposal

Favorite Privacy, Economic and Free Speech Flaws in Proposed Bitcoin Regulatory Scheme San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with reddit and the Internet Archive, today filed formal comments with the New York State Department of Financial Services opposing the state’s proposed regulations for digital currencies such as Bitcoin. In the letter, EFF…

International Copyright Policy Laundering and the Ongoing War on Access to Knowledge

Favorite How is it possible that someone could face years in prison for sharing an academic paper online? How did we arrive at such extreme criminal punishments for accessing knowledge and information? Well, this has been long in the making. We got here because Big Content interests have dominated secretive, back-room copyright negotiations over several…

Students Re-Launch Open Access Button App to Find Free Access to Scientific and Scholarly Research

Favorite Millions of people use research everyday. From students, medical professionals, to curious hobbyists, we all benefit from being able to access, read, and cite reliable, tested information. But getting the research we need can be hard and costly when it’s locked up behind expensive paywalls. Two university students, David Carroll and Joseph McArthur, were…

Protect Yourself from Electronic Spying with ‘Surveillance Self-Defense’

Favorite EFF Releases Updated Guide to Privacy and Security for Internet Users Worldwide San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched its updated “Surveillance Self-Defense” report today, a comprehensive how-to guide to protecting yourself from electronic spying for Internet users all over the world. “Everyone has something to protect, whether its from the government…

EFF Relaunches Surveillance Self-Defense

Favorite We’re thrilled to announce the relaunch of Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD), our guide to defending yourself and your friends from digital surveillance by using encryption tools and developing appropriate privacy and security practices. The site launches today in English, Arabic, and Spanish, with more languages coming soon. SSD was first launched in 2009, to “educate…

Research Is Just the Beginning: A Free People Must Have Open Access to the Law

Favorite The open access movement has historically focused on access to scholarly research, and understandably so. The knowledge commons should be shared with and used by the public, especially when the public helped create it. But that commons includes more than academic research. Our cultural commons is broader than what is produced by academia. Rather…

Where Copyright Fails, Open Licenses Help Creators Build Towards a Future of Free Culture

Favorite One of the convictions that drew law professor and former EFF board member, Lawrence Lessig, to co-found Creative Commons was that a narrow and rigid application of copyright law made no sense in the digital age. Copying digital information over long distances and at virtually no cost is what the Internet does best; indeed,…