Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog by Daniel Nazer | November 5, 2015

EFF Asks Supreme Court to Apply First Amendment to Speech About Celebrities

Imagine if public figures were given veto power over creative works that depicted or referenced them. Every biographer would need permission from his or her subject. Every documentary film producer would need to run the film by the people featured in it. Every cartoonist would need permission for every caricature....

Deeplinks Blog by Dia Kayyali | November 5, 2015

Facebook's New Name Policy Changes are Progress, Not Perfection

Facebook has responded to an October 5 open letter from a global coalition, including EFF, about its broken “authentic name policy.” Facebook’s response is a step in the right direction. It's also not the last change to the policy we’ll see, since Facebook notes “we’re making changes now...

Deeplinks Blog by Jeremy Malcolm, Maira Sutton | November 5, 2015

Release of the Full TPP Text After Five Years of Secrecy Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights

Update [11/9/2015]: President Obama formally notified Congress of his intent to sign the TPP on Thursday November 5—90 days after which he may sign the agreement and send the agreement to Congress for ratification.
Trade offices involved in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have finally released...

Deeplinks Blog by Parker Higgins | November 5, 2015

Aaron Swartz Hackathon This Weekend Is Your Chance To Hack for a Better World

This weekend marks the third annual Aaron Swartz Day hackathon, and a chance for you to meet up with other people working to use technology to make the world a better place. Once again, cities around the world will host two days of meetups.
The Internet Archive...

Deeplinks Blog by Dave Maass, Jeremy Gillula | November 4, 2015

Hurricane LTE-U: Don’t Let Wi-Fi Get Blown Away

A storm is brewing over use of the 5.8 GHz unlicensed band of the radio spectrum as telecommunications companies plan to expand their LTE networks outside their traditional, licensed ranges and into the same unlicensed bands used by Wi-Fi, cordless headsets, and plenty of other consumer technology.
You can...

Deeplinks Blog by Dave Maass | November 4, 2015

California Cops Are Using These Biometric Gadgets in the Field

This report was co-written by MuckRock Editor JPat Brown. MuckRock Co-founder Michael Morisy, MuckRock Intern Lukas Knight, and EFF Activism Intern Annelyse Gelman also contributed to this report. Another version appears at MuckRock.com.
Law enforcement agencies around the country are increasingly embracing biometric technology, which uses intrinsic...

Deeplinks Blog by Noah Swartz | November 3, 2015

A More Private Browsing Experience: Mozilla Ships Tracking Protection for Firefox

Good news for Firefox users sick of online trackers shadowing their every click: Mozilla just released Tracking Protection for use with their private browsing mode.
As we wrote previously, we think it's important for users to be able to protect themselves from non-consensual online tracking. That's...

Deeplinks Blog by Elliot Harmon, Kit Walsh | November 3, 2015

Consumer Review Freedom Act Would Protect Customers’ Right to Post Reviews

Businesses should not be able to restrict customers’ speech
Are there limits to what a company can put in a standard form contract, like a click-through agreement? Can a company take away its customers’ freedom of speech?
The Consumer Review Freedom Act, now pending in Congress (S.2044,...

Deeplinks Blog by Andrew Crocker | November 3, 2015

Second Circuit Refuses to Stop NSA's Telephone Records Program

It’s been a rough few weeks for legal challenges to NSA surveillance. First, a federal district court in Maryland dismissed a lawsuit brought by the ACLU challenging the NSA’s Upstream surveillance of the Internet backbone. Then, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant the ACLU a...

Deeplinks Blog by Jamie Williams, Seth Schoen | October 30, 2015

Crypto Is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

Over the last year, law enforcement officials around the world have been pressing hard on the notion that without a magical "backdoor" to access the content of any and all encrypted communications by ordinary people, they’ll be totally incapable of fulfilling their duties to investigate crime and...

Deeplinks Blog by Elliot Harmon, Dia Kayyali | October 30, 2015

6 Spooky Ways Local Law Enforcement Is Watching You

A day in the life of the surveillance state
Often, the discussion on government surveillance in the US is all about the NSA or the FBI. But the feds aren’t the only ones spying on you. Local law enforcement has been getting in on the action, and it’s not...

Deeplinks Blog by Daniel Nazer | October 30, 2015

Stupid Patent of the Month: Precision Trolling Says It Owns The Idea of Putting Lure Data on a Device

We’ve long been concerned about “patent trolls”—companies that don’t produce anything themselves but buy patents, then make their money by threatening and even suing companies that are producing products. But today we’re going to discuss a different kind of trolling: running fishing lures through the water. That’s because...

Deeplinks Blog by Eva Galperin, Nate Cardozo | October 29, 2015

VICTORY: State Department Decides Not to Classify “Cyber Products” as “Munitions”

This week, the U.S. Department of State’s Defense Trade Advisory Group (DTAG) met to decide whether to classify “cyber products” as munitions, placing them in the same export control regime as hand grenades and fighter planes. Thankfully, common sense won out and the DTAG recommended that “cyber products” not be...

Deeplinks Blog by Mark Rumold | October 29, 2015

Wikimedia v. NSA: Another Court Blinds Itself to Mass NSA Surveillance

We all know justice is blind. But that is supposed to mean that everyone before it is treated equally, not that the justice system must close its eyes and refuse to look at important legal issues facing Americans. Yet the government continues to convince courts that they cannot consider the...

Deeplinks Blog by Vera Ranieri | October 29, 2015

It’s Time for the Federal Circuit to Shut Down The Eastern District of Texas

One of the biggest reasons the Eastern District of Texas hears so many patent cases (at last check, almost half of all cases filed this year were filed in the Eastern District) is because of a Federal Circuit case from 1990—VE Holding—that radically expanded the places patent owners...

Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

EFF Asks Supreme Court to Apply First Amendment to Speech About Celebrities

Facebook's New Name Policy Changes are Progress, Not Perfection

Release of the Full TPP Text After Five Years of Secrecy Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights

Aaron Swartz Hackathon This Weekend Is Your Chance To Hack for a Better World

Hurricane LTE-U: Don’t Let Wi-Fi Get Blown Away

California Cops Are Using These Biometric Gadgets in the Field

A More Private Browsing Experience: Mozilla Ships Tracking Protection for Firefox

Consumer Review Freedom Act Would Protect Customers’ Right to Post Reviews

Second Circuit Refuses to Stop NSA's Telephone Records Program

Crypto Is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

6 Spooky Ways Local Law Enforcement Is Watching You

Stupid Patent of the Month: Precision Trolling Says It Owns The Idea of Putting Lure Data on a Device

VICTORY: State Department Decides Not to Classify “Cyber Products” as “Munitions”

Wikimedia v. NSA: Another Court Blinds Itself to Mass NSA Surveillance

It’s Time for the Federal Circuit to Shut Down The Eastern District of Texas

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