Tag archive: electronic frontier foundation

As of Monday, it seemed all but guaranteed that the files stored on the servers used by Megaupload, which was seized by the US government on January 19, were gone for good. This includes the data of people who used Megaupload for legitimate purposes, like distributing work documents, or their own photo and video creations. But thanks to a collaborative effort between the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Carpathia Hosting, which owns and… Read More

The Electronic Frontier Foundation scored a big victory last year when it successfully petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to protect smartphone jailbreakers and video remixers with exemptions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now the EFF is looking to expand the scope of those exemptions with some new requests that protect (or further protect) the “jailbreaking” of smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles, allowing them… Read More

In a massive 10GB data cache titled ‘Shooting Sherrifs Saturday’, the AntiSec organization released the contents of over 300 email accounts across 56 law enforcement agencies, police training videos and identities of persons submitting tips though an anonymous tip system. Email correspondence contains private information including social security numbers for police officers as well as credit card numbers, email addresses, home addresses and… Read More

In a study released by a UC Berkeley research group, a group of Internet service providers in the United States are watching the keywords that a user types into a search engine and redirecting those users to the brand page to rack up affiliate revenue. While Charter claims to have stopped this behavior, companies involved include Frontier, Hughes, Insight Broadband, XO Communication, Cincinnati Bell, Megapath, Cavalier, DirecPC, Paetec, Cogent,… Read More

The United States, along with 40 other nations, has signed a statement made by Sweden to the United Nations Human Rights Counsel condemning the “three strikes” laws against online copyright infringers as a violation of human rights, reports Ars Technica. Neither the UK nor France, two nations who have such laws on the books, signed the statement. “All users…should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content,… Read More

Now here's some legislation privacy advocates can get behind: A new bill made public Tuesday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) would provide a much-needed overhaul of a 25-year-old digital privacy law, and require the government to obtain search warrants to access citizens' email accounts, cell phones, instant messages, cloud storage services and social networks. The bill is an update of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA),… Read More

If you downloaded a copy of Sylvester Stallone action flick the Expendables through BitTorrent, you may soon find yourself in the hot seat of the biggest illegal-downloading case in US history, reports Wired. A federal judge has agreed to a request from the US Copyright Group, which is representing the producers of the Expendables, to subpoena Internet service providers to cough up the identities of everyone who downloaded the 2010 Hollywood… Read More

Big Brother really is watching you — constantly. According to a new report by The New York Times, cell phone companies often “track your every move” — and they do so while keeping their customers entirely in the dark about the intrusive practice. This disconcerting revelation came to light after German politician Malte Spitz sued his mobile provider, Deutsche Telekom, to find out exactly what information about him they had acquired.… Read More

A US federal magistrate judge has ruled that Sony may learn the identities of anyone who visited the website of PlayStation 3 jailbreak hacker George Hotz since January 2009, Wired reports. Hotz — a renowned 21-year-old hacker, famous for his iPhone jailbreaks, who goes by the handle GeoHot — has been accused of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for hacking the Sony PS3 in a way that allows users to install whatever software they… Read More

Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Calpers (D-DE) introduce a revised version of their cybersecurity bill this week, entitled the “Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act,” which they say prohibits any possibility of an Internet 'kill switch” — they swear. Like the original bill, which was introduced last month, this version is intended to establish an office within the Executive branch that… Read More

It's smart to watch what you say, and smarter to watch what you say online, because you never know who might read it. In response to a Freedom of Information request (FOIA), the government released documents revealing that social networking sites are being heavily monitored. According to the report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, social sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr were targeted, as well as Wikipedia,… Read More

You already knew an ill-conceived tweet, status message or photo album could cost you your job when your boss found out what you really thought of him, but as it turns out, it can also land you in jail. Although it may not come as a surprise to the tinfoil hat crowd, the U.S. federal government actively uses the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to gather evidence on criminals. The Electronic Frontier Foundation scraped up hard proof of the… Read More

Internet giant Google launched a new version of its Google Desktop for Windows XP and Windows 2000, and already privacy advocates and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are warning users away from a new feature which enables users to search for files across all their computers

They say they've discovered a way to give their fellow students at MIT and elsewhere dorm-room access to a huge music library without having to worry about getting slapped with a lawsuit from therecording industry. On Monday, the pair planned to debut a system they've built that lets MIT students listen for free to 3,500 CDs over the school's cable television network. They say it's completely kosher under copyright… Read More