Collaborate Disseminate
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued an Australian company that it previously dubbed as a ‘classic patent troll’ in a June 2016 blog post entitled: Stupid Patent of the Month: Storage Cabinets on a Computer.” An anonymous reader quotes Ars Tech… Continue reading Troll With ‘Stupid Patent’ Sues EFF. EFF Sues Them Back
AmiMoJo writes: The EFF is warning about unregulated activity against websites by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) of the City of London Police. A program called RogueBlock accepts notifications from IP holders, which the PIPCU then … Continue reading London Police Ink Shadowy Deal With Industry On Website Takedowns
An anonymous reader writes:
There were some surprises in today’s edition of the EFF’s “EFFector” newsletter. Noting that it’s their sqrt(-1)th issue, they report that the EU will protect the privacy of its data by building a 30-foot wall around the Un… Continue reading EFF Issues April Fool’s Day Newsletter
The Electronic Frontier Foundation retracted a blog post today highly critical of Verizon and the upcoming rollout of an app called AppFlash made by Evie Labs. Continue reading Verizon Rebuts Critics of Data-Collecting App
Many readers are understandably concerned about recent moves by the U.S. Congress that would roll back privacy rules barring broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) from sharing or selling customer browsing history, among other personal data. Some are concerned enough by this development that they’re looking at obfuscating all of their online browsing by paying for a subscription to a virtual private networking (VPN) service. This piece is intended to serve as a guidepost for those contemplating such a move. Continue reading Post-FCC Privacy Rules, Should You VPN?
Activists mull challenge to court’s ruling that remote hacking can’t be litigated in the US Continue reading Court blocks American from suing Ethiopia over alleged hacking
In 2015 the FBI took over a Tor-accessible child pornography site to infect its users with malware so they could be identified and prosecuted. But now one suspect is challenging that evidence in court, with three different privacy groups filing briefs in his support.
An anonymous reader writes.
One EFF attorney argues it’s a classic case of an unreasonable search, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. “If the FBI tried to get a single warrant to search 8,000 houses, such a request would unquestionably be denied.” But there’s another problem, since the FBI infected users in 120 different countries. “According to Privacy International, the case also raises important questions: What if a foreign country had carried out a similar hacking operation that affected U.S. citizens?” writes Computerworld. “Would the U.S. welcome this…? The U.S. was overstepping its bounds by conducting an investigation outside its borders without the consent of affected countries, the group said.”
The FBI’s evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise “the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come… Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched wonâ(TM)t be upheld.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Continue reading Three Privacy Groups Challenge The FBI’s Malware-Obtained Evidence
XKCD 936, the comic that introduced the phrase, ‘correct horse battery staple’ into both the lexicon and password dictionaries, is the best way to generate a password. Your passwords should be random phrases of random words, hopefully with a few random numbers or symbols sprinkled about. It’s the most entropy you can get that’s also easy to remember.
However, generating your own ‘correct horse’ password is generally a bad idea. Humans are terrible at coming up with random bits of information. Thankfully, the EFF has come up with a wordlist containing 7,776 random words (65, or five rolls …read more
The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday approved a bill that would update the nation’s email surveillance laws so that federal investigators are required to obtain a court-ordered warrant for access to older stored emails. Under the current law, U.S. authorities can legally obtain stored emails older than 180 days using only a subpoena issued by a prosecutor or FBI agent without the approval of a judge. Continue reading House Passes Long-Sought Email Privacy Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday approved a bill that would update the nation’s email surveillance laws so that federal investigators are required to obtain a court-ordered warrant for access to older stored emails. Under the current law, U.S. authorities can legally obtain stored emails older than 180 days using only a subpoena issued by a prosecutor or FBI agent without the approval of a judge. Continue reading House Passes Long-Sought Email Privacy Bill
