Favorite After successfully defending MuckRock’s First Amendment right to host public records on its website earlier this summer, EFF filed documents in court on Monday seeking to end the last lawsuit brought against it in Seattle. The lawsuit was one of three filed by companies against MuckRock, one of its users, and the city of…
All posts tagged Free Speech
4 Things to Consider When Running Social Media Campaigns About Texas Inmates
Favorite The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) sent shockwaves through the prisoner rights community in April when it announced a new policy forbidding inmates from participating in social media. The memo, distributed in English and Spanish within prisons, read: [O]ffenders are prohibited from maintaining active social media accounts for the purposes of soliciting, updating,…
CBP Fails to Meaningfully Address Risks of Gathering Social Media Handles
Favorite Last month we submitted comments to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, opposing its proposal to gather social media handles from foreign visitors from Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries. CBP recently provided its preliminary responses (“Supporting Statement”) to several of our arguments (CBP also extended the…
Justice Department Pressed to Intervene When Police Arrest Grassroots Journalists
Favorite Across the country, civilian journalists have documented government violence using cell phones to record police activities, forcing a much-needed national discourse. But in case after case after case after case, the people who face penalties in the wake of police violence are the courageous and quick-witted residents who use technology to enable transparency. Earlier…
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Wants to Know Who You Are on Twitter—But It’s a Flawed Plan
Favorite U.S. border control agents want to gather Facebook and Twitter identities from visitors from around the world. But this flawed plan would violate travelers’ privacy, and would have a wide-ranging impact on freedom of expression—all while doing little or nothing to protect Americans from terrorism. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department…
Protecting the Fourth Amendment in the Information Age: A Response to Robert Litt
Favorite The Yale Law Journal has published a short essay that I wrote in response to an article by Robert Litt, General Counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age. Mr. Litt uses EFF’s NSA Spying case Jewel v. NSA and the Klayman v. Obama…
New Censorship and Copyright Restrictions in UK Digital Economy Bill
Favorite This week a new Digital Economy Bill [PDF] has been tabled before the United Kingdom Parliament, tackling a diverse range of topics related to electronic communications infrastructure and services. Two of these give us serious concern, the first being a new regime restricting access to online pornography, and the other an expansion of criminal…
Alaa Abd El Fattah Must Be Released, Says UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Favorite Nearly two years ago, along with the Media Legal Defence Initiative and with consent and input from his family, we submitted a petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) for the release of Egyptian coder, blogger, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. Abd El Fattah was arrested on November 28, 2013,…
Are You a SLAPP Victim? Tell Your Story to Congress
Favorite Next week, the House Judiciary Committee will finally hold a hearing on the SPEAK FREE Act (H.R. 2304), over a year after the bill was introduced in the Congress. We support the SPEAK FREE Act, which would help protect victims of strategic lawsuits against public participation, commonly known as SLAPPs. A SLAPP is a…
Ethiopia’s New Cybercrime Law Allows for More Efficient and Systematic Prosecution of Online Speech
Favorite The Ethiopian government has passed a dangerous cybercrime law that criminalizes an array of substantive computer activities including the distribution of defamatory speech, spam, and pornography online among others offenses. The law, dubbed the “Computer Crime Proclamation,” was passed, the government says, in an effort to more accurately attune the country’s laws to technological…