Collaborate Disseminate
A bipartisan group of lawmakers have reintroduced the Email Privacy Act, a bill that would curb law enforcement’s warrantless searches of email stored on third-party servers for over 180 days. Continue reading Lawmakers Reintroduce Popular Email Privacy Act
The privacy rights organization’s got you covered, from a facial recognition algorithm grid to a privacy badger. We had a few ideas too! Continue reading Scary security: Halloween costume ideas from the EFF and us
I’d just finished parking my car in the covered garage at Reagan National Airport just across the river from Washington, D.C. when I noticed a dark green minivan slowly creeping through the row behind me. The vehicle caught my attention because its driver didn’t appear to be looking for an open spot. What’s more, the van had what looked like two cameras perched atop its roof — one of each side, both pointed down and slightly off to the side.
I had a few hours before my flight boarded, so I delayed my walk to the terminal and cut through several rows of cars to snag a video of the guy moving haltingly through another line of cars. I approached the driver and asked what he was doing. He smiled and tilted the lid on his bolted-down laptop so that I could see the pictures he was taking with the mounted cameras: He was photographing every license plate in the garage (for the record, his plate was a Virginia tag number 36-646L).
I had a few hours before my flight boarded, so I delayed my walk to the terminal and cut through several rows of cars to snag a video of the guy moving haltingly through another line of cars. I approached the driver and asked what he was doing. He smiled and tilted the lid on his bolted-down laptop so I could see the pictures he was taking with the mounted cameras: He was photographing every license plate in the garage (for the record, his plate was a Virginia tag number 36-646L). Continue reading Location Privacy: The Purview of the Rich and Indigent
I was skeptical about a two hour block allotted for Cory Doctrow’s keynote address at HOPE XI. I’ve been to Operas that are shorter than that and it’s hard to imagine he could keep a huge audience engaged for that long. I was incredibly wrong — this was a barnburner of a talk. Here is where some would make a joke about breaking out the rainbows and puppies. But this isn’t a joke. I think Cory’s talk helped me understand why I’ve been feeling down about our not-so-bright digital future and unearthed a foundation upon which hope can grow.
You …read more
Continue reading Cory Doctorow Rails Against Technological Nihilism; Wants You to Have Hope
This morning Bunnie Huang wrote about his reasons for suing the US Government over Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The DMCA was enacted in 1996 and put in place far-reaching protections for copyright owners. Many, myself included, think these protections became far-overreaching. The DMCA, specifically section 1201 of the act which is known as the anti-circumvention provision, prohibits any action that goes around mechanisms designed to protect copyrighted material. So much has changed since ’96 — software is now in every device and that means section 1201 extends to almost all electronics sold today.
So protecting …read more
Continue reading Bunnie and EFF Sue US Goverment over DMCA 1201
Digital rights advocates are again pleading with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reconsider standardizing DRM in Encrypted Media Extensions, a draft specification that would ultimately feed into HTML 5.
Continue reading Digital Rights Advocates Call for Investigation Around W3C’s DRM Extension
The EFF has raised concerns about how it impacts First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion. Continue reading Tattoo recognition technology “raises significant First Amendment questions”
Attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a strongly-worded amicus brief in a case related to the FBI’s takeover of child pornography site Playpen. Continue reading FBI Warrant Used to Hack Child Porn Visitors Was Unconstitutional, EFF Argues