A federal appeals court just gave software developers, and users, an early holiday present, holding that software updates aren’t necessarily “derivative,” for purposes of copyright law, just because they are designed to interoperate the software they update. This sounds kind of obscure, so let’s cut through the legalese. Lots of developers build software designed to interoperate…
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has failed to address six out of six main privacy protections for three of its border surveillance programs—surveillance towers, aerostats, and unattended ground sensors—according to a new assessment by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the report, GAO compared the policies for these technologies against six of the key…
Every year, countless emails hit our inboxes telling us that our personal information was accessed, shared, or stolen in a data breach. In many cases, there is little we can do. Most of us can assume that at least our phone numbers, emails, addresses, credit card numbers, and social security numbers are all available somewhere…
This post is part two in a series of posts about EFF’s work in Europe. Read about how and why we work in Europe here. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. While our work has taken us to far corners of the globe, in…
In the early years of the internet, website administrators had to face off with a burdensome and expensive process to deploy SSL certificates. But today, hundreds of thousands of people have used EFF’s free Certbot tool to spread that sweet HTTPS across the web. Now almost all internet traffic is encrypted, and everyone gets a basic…
Some people just can’t take a hint. Today’s perfect example is a group of independent movie distributors that have repeatedly tried, and failed, to force Reddit to give up the IP addresses of several users who posted about downloading movies. The distributors claim they need this information to support their copyright claims against internet service…
As the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have failed to secure the release of British-Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, UK politicians call for tougher measures to secure Alaa’s immediate return to the UK. During a debate on detained British nationals abroad in early December, chairwoman of the…
Bluesky promises to rethink social media by focusing on openness and user control. But what does this actually mean for the millions of people joining the site? November was a good month for alternatives to X. Many users hit their balking point after two years of controversial changes turned Twitter into X, a restrictive hub…
Age verification systems are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s privacy and anonymity. But Australia’s government recently decided to ignore these dangers, passing a vague, sweeping piece of age verification legislation after giving only a day for comments. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which bans children under the age of 16…
Late last week, the Senate released yet another version of the Kids Online Safety Act, written, reportedly, with the assistance of X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a flawed attempt to address the critical free speech issues inherent in the bill. This last minute draft remains, at its core, an unconstitutional… This post was originally published…