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Lawsuit asks Justice Department to reveal decryption orders
Do you want to know whether or not US officials have ever forced a company to decrypt data to aid in an investigation? So does the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The civil liberties group has sued the Department of Justice to make it reveal whether or not it has ever used secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders to make companies decrypt communications. The EFF had used a standard Freedom of Information Act request beforehand, but didn't get anything. FISC says that what "potentially responsive" documents it found are exempt from disclosure, since they were created before the USA Freedom Act took effect.
EFF scores a blow against the government's domestic spying
Before we knew that the National Security Agency was getting its jollies by spying via Prism, there was Jewel vs. NSA. That case, filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation, has gotten a boost from California judge Jeffrey White who's has granted discovery to the EFF -- something the EFF says it's been barred from since 2008. Not up on your legalese? Don't worry. Discovery is the step in a court case that allows all parties involved to go into trial with as much information as possible, without either party being able to keep secrets from one another. Unless said information would result in self-incrimination, it's a fact-finding stage.
Tor's new executive director is a digital privacy legend
Tor's anonymizing internet technology is already vital to whistleblowers, human rights advocates and others who value their digital privacy. It only makes sense that the project team should hire a privacy champion to help lead its efforts, doesn't it? Sure enough, Tor is doing just that: it's appointing Electronic Frontier Foundation veteran Shari Steele as its executive director. She led the EFF's efforts to fund Tor a decade ago, and spurred online security initiatives like HTTPS Everywhere. There's no doubt that she knows what Tor can do to protect your data, then.
A chat with Black Hat's unconventional keynote speaker
The most interesting thing about Black Hat 2015 keynote speaker Jennifer Granick isn't her gender -- though she appears against a backdrop of historically male keynotes. It's that Granick is director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She previously held the same position at the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- and is known for defending some of the more notorious criminal hackers around, including Kevin Poulsen, Aaron Swartz, Jerome Heckenkamp and the hackers in the Diebold Election Systems case. Being the keynote speaker at the Black Hat conference means she's about to go front and center with the very organizations and government entities her clients have hacked. Granick is joining a colorful catalog of former keynoters who tend to represent the interests of the international cybersecurity conference's corporate-enterprise and government attendees.
Emailing your members of Congress just got much easier
It's supposed to be easier to email Congresspeople than it is to pick up the phone, but that's not always how it works in practice. Just ask anyone who has navigated convoluted web forms just to voice opposition to a bill, for starters. You won't have to put up with those technical hurdles after today, though. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Democracy.io site helps you email House and Senate representatives without having to dig around their sites. You can even email all of your politicians at once, if there's a concern that stretches across both legislative branches. There's no guarantees that officials will listen when you fire off your messages, but you'll at least get to say that you exercised your civic responsibility. [Image credit: TTarasiuk, Flickr]
Podcasts are safer after the EFF helps gut a patent troll
Personal Audio has been threatening the podcast world for a while -- the longtime patent troll claims that it invented the concept of podcasting, and has insisted that some bigger productions (such as Adam Carolla's) either cough up licensing money or face lawsuits. You may not have to worry about your favorite series going off the air in the future, though. US patent officials have nixed some of the core claims of Personal Audio's "podcasting patent" after the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out podcast-like shows that were running before the patent even existed. Some aspects of episodic online audio are just too obvious to be patentable, according to the finding.
Publishers are fighting to keep abandoned games dead
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that defends civil liberties in the digital world, is facing off against the Entertainment Software Association, the organization that represents most major video game publishers in the US. The EFF wants to allow players to put abandoned games back online and has asked the US Copyright Office for an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would allow players to legally modify the code of online games that are no longer supported by publishers, in the hope of reconnecting these titles to new, third-party servers. This includes games like Battlefield 1942, Star Wars: Battlefront, SOCOM 4, Resistance: Fall of Man and Mario Kart Wii. Many modern games rely on servers to function; if Activision pulled the plug on Destiny, for example, even its single-player campaign would disappear, since the entire game needs an online connection.
Verizon finally offers a way to avoid its 'supercookie' tracker
Hey there Verizon subscribers, remember that whole "supercookie" ordeal from not too long ago? Well, it looks like it's time to put that mess behind us because the ability to wholly opt out of said tracking system is finally available, according to The New York Times. That's right, the undeletable, unique identifier header is basically a thing of the past once you either opt out on Big Red's website or call 1-866-211-0874. Seems pretty good, right? It is, but it's a half-measure -- this sort of thing should be opt-in, not the other way around. Privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are pushing Verizon to reverse that, or, hopefully, discontinue the supercookie program altogether. Given how big our digital footprints can get, having an automatic way to shrink them even just a little would probably come as welcome news for practically anyone. [Image credit: Getty Images]
Tech companies want you to have free web encryption
Ideally, you'd encrypt everything you do on the web to keep it away from spies and thieves. However, getting a security certificate to enable that encryption on your own site can be both costly and difficult -- many people don't even bother. That's not good enough for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, so it's partnering with Mozilla, Cisco and other tech firms to launch Let's Encrypt, an authority that will hand out and manage free certificates for anyone that wants them. Besides eliminating the cost barrier, the effort will also scrap a lot of the bureaucracy and hard work that's normally involved -- all you'll have to do is run a program, which should take seconds.
Digital liberty advocates want the right to resurrect old online games
It's great that many games have strong online components, but there's a dark side to that connectedness: if the developers (or their partners) shut down necessary servers, those titles are likely to break. You won't have to worry about your favorite game going dark if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has its way, however. The liberty-minded advocacy group has filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemption request with the Library of Congress that would give Americans the right to keep online play alive in old, abandoned games by modifying the code to point to unofficial services. While the request wouldn't cover games where most of the content is stored online, it would address single-player releases that demand internet-based activation just to run.
Just how secure are your messaging apps? The EFF knows.
Like it or not, your messages -- those funny, tragic, productive, intensely personal missives you fire off without a second thought -- aren't nearly as safe as we all thought. That's why the Electronic Frontier Foundation decided to do a bit of digging into how secure all those messaging apps we use actually are, and it threw its results into this handsome little scorecard. Unsurprisingly, few entrants (like the security-minded calling and texting apps from outfits like Whisper Systems and Silent Circle) scored full marks on the EFF's rubric. What's even less of a surprise is how many well-known services - services we probably all use everyday - don't fare particularly well by the EFF's standards.
Anti-surveillance advocates want you to run an open, secure WiFi router
Plenty of WiFi routers have guest modes for visitors; some companies base their entire business models around them. Many of these devices are full of security holes, however, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation doesn't see that as acceptable in an era where widespread government surveillance is a fact of life. To fix this, it has posted a very early version of custom-built open router firmware that promises both easy access and security. While there is a guest mode, the new firmware (based on the existing CenoWRT) should patch common exploits that leave your home network vulnerable. It will even fetch signatures for updates through the anonymizing Tor network to prevent rogue code from posing as a necessary upgrade.
How to Disappear (almost) Completely: the illusion of privacy
Can anyone ever really leave the internet? And if you had the choice, is that something that you'd want to do? After all, abandoning the connected world might help you reclaim some privacy, but even if you smashed your PC, burned your tablet and tossed your smartphone, you might still not be able to escape constant surveillance. In our three-part series How To Disappear, we're going to look at why you'd think about going offline, what you can do to tidy up your digital footprint and what happens to those who have made the leap into the darkness.
Engadget Daily: Samsung's VR headset, the new Leica T and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours – all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The EFF wants your help testing a browser add-on that blocks spying ads
Like many privacy advocates, the Electronic Frontier Foundation isn't a big fan of advertisers and sites following you around the web. So, it's doing something about this nosy behavior -- it's launching a browser add-on, Privacy Badger, that lets Chrome and Firefox users limit site tracking. The tool automatically stops sites' attempts to shadow your surfing activity and lets you selectively grant permission when you're not worried. To get on the Badger's good side, a web host has to honor Do Not Track requests -- a not-so-subtle dig at Facebook, Google, Yahoo and others that so far insist on tracking visitors.
Privacy group blocks NSA from destroying phone records, calls them evidence
A US judge has temporarily stopped the National Security Agency (NSA) from destroying phone metadata it collected, thanks to an intervention by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The privacy watchdog argued that the documents were key to upcoming lawsuits against the spy agency stemming from Edward Snowden's revelations. Ironically, the NSA itself wants to preserve the records for intelligence purposes, but a foreign surveillance court ordered them destroyed. The reason? It judged the records would actually violate the rights of those in the phone lists. However, the EFF claimed that court wasn't aware of an existing order issued in July to keep the documents and another filed back in 2008. A hearing is now scheduled for March 19th to determine if the metadata will be permanently destroyed or not -- with your privacy as the main argument either way.
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: the EFF's Julie Samuels
Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Julie Samuels has quite possibly the greatest job title in the history of job titles: The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents at EFF. She'll join us to speak about how said stupid patents are hampering innovation. January 8, 2014 5:30:00 PM EST
Live from Expand: Know Your Digital Rights
Patents, digital rights, the NSA -- it's a lot to wrap one's head around. Thankfully, we've got some of the most knowledgeable folks in the biz, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Julie Samuels, Techdirt's Mike Masnick and American University Washington College of Law professor Michael Carroll. November 10, 2013 1:15:00 PM EST Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from New York City right here!
The Engadget Show 45: Security with Cory Doctorow, John McAfee, Microsoft, the EFF and more!
Welcome to the wild world of security and surveillance. From CCTV to massive government spying initiatives, there's no escaping it. Recent high-profile leaks have served as a sobering reminder of just how present it is in all of our lives, so we figured what better time to take a deep dive? We kick things off with one of the strangest (and raciest) segments in Engadget Show history: a visit to the set of John McAfee's latest web video. The one-time security software guru and fugitive discusses the state of antivirus, bath salts and offers some unsolicited advice to Edward Snowden, one exile to another. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation sits down for an animated discussion of recent NSA surveillance revelations, including a breakdown of which major tech companies are doing right by their user base. Boing Boing editor, sci-fi author and privacy activist Cory Doctorow climbs a tree in San Diego to discuss Wikileaks, the NSA, the "surveillance state" and more. "Edward Snowden is a hero," he begins, not speaking on behalf of the EFF, mind you -- and things get really good from there. Cryptographer and computer security specialist Bruce Schneier also chimes in on wiretapping, whistleblowing and "security theater." Next up, we pay a visit to The New Yorker's midtown office to talk Strong Box, the magazine's secure deposit box for anonymous whistleblowers. The team behind Ubisoft's Watch Dogs joins us to discuss partnering with computer security company Kaspersky to bring a realistic portrait of the world of hacking to its much anticipated title. And one-time hacker turned head of security community outreach at Microsoft, Katie Moussouris, discusses Redmond's Bluehat bounty program and working with the hacking community to build safer software. All that, plus the usual prognosticating from resident philosopher John Roderick in this month's Engadget Show, just after the break.
Electronic Frontier Foundation sues NSA, calls surveillance programs unconstitutional
Earlier today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Obama administration over concerns surrounding the NSA's extensive surveillance programs, just weeks after the ACLU did the same. Filed on behalf of human rights, religious and environmental activist groups, the suit argues that the federal government's so-called Associational Tracking Program is inherently unconstitutional because it threatens stipulations found in the Bill of Rights, like freedom of speech and the right to assembly. The list of plaintiffs is extensive, and the suit has united groups with varying mission statements, like Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. To read the complaint in full, head on over to the source link below.
