Electronic Frontier Foundation - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• EFF sues FBI over facial-recognition records

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit to force the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over records about a facial-recognition database it is building.

• Experts support Google in Oracle's lawsuit over Java APIs

  Nearly three-dozen computer scientists have signed off on a court brief opposing Oracle's effort to copyright its Java APIs, a move they say would hold back the computer industry and deny affordable technology to end users.

• Organizations push for Congress to curtail NSA spying

  Privacy advocates are pushing the U.S. Congress to rein in the U.S. National Security Agency's efforts to collect massive amounts of data from U.S. residents, as alleged in recent news reports.

• EFF blasts proposed DRM features in HTML5

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has issued an angry formal response to a proposed set of HTML5 standards from the World Wide Web Consortium, saying that stringent digital rights management technology will be harmful to online freedom and prevent many users from getting access to important content.

• Personal Audio defends its podcasting patent

  The company that owns a U.S. patent for podcasting is confident the patent will stand up to a challenge initiated this week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• EFF targets podcasting patent for invalidation

  A 1996 podcasting patent is in the crosshairs of two digital rights groups, which are hoping the public will help them get the patent invalidated.

• After two-year hiatus, EFF accepts bitcoin donations again

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has resumed accepting bitcoins donations, saying some of the legal ambiguity around the virtual currency has disappeared.

• Appeals court ruling could be 'death' of software patents

  A U.S. appeals court has ruled that an abstract idea is not patentable simply because it is tied to a computer system, signaling what one judge described as the "death" of software and business method patents.

• EFF: Trust Twitter -- but not Apple or Verizon -- to protect your privacy

  Verizon and MySpace scored a zero out of a possible six stars in a test of how far 18 technology service providers will go to protect user data from government data demands.

• CISPA sponsor compares opponents to 14-year-olds

  The chief sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in the U.S. Congress has ignited a Twitter storm by suggesting many opponents of the proposed cyberthreat sharing bill are 14-year-olds in basements.

• Privacy group calls for changes in CISPA cyberthreat sharing bill

  U.S. lawmakers need to make significant changes to a controversial cyberthreat information sharing bill because the legislation could be used to give federal intelligence agencies backdoor wiretapping powers, the Center for Democracy and Technology said.

• Bills would require police to get warrants for mobile phone location

  A group of U.S. lawmakers has introduced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered search warrants before obtaining a suspect's mobile phone location or GPS data, instead of using prosecution-issued subpoenas.

• Activist launches campaign to change the DMCA

  The author of a successful White House petition calling on government officials to legalize the unlocking of mobile phones has turned his attention to broader reform of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

• Return of CISPA: Cybersecurity boon or privacy threat?

  Rights groups fear widespread sharing of personal information; security managers see threat information sharing as key part of corporate cyber defenses

• Tech groups call on Congress to battle patent trolls

  So-called patent trolls force tech companies to spend money on lawyers instead of innovation, and the U.S. Congress needs to discourage infringement lawsuits from patent-collecting companies, a group of tech and business representatives said.