Federal Judge Upholds State Department Rule Requiring Visa Applicants to Disclose Social Media Information

Since 2019, people applying for a visa to the United States have had to register their social media accounts with the U.S. government as part of the application process. Two U.S.-based documentary film organizations that regularly collaborate with...

Tornado Cash Civil Decision Limits the Reach of the Treasury Department’s Actions while Skirting a Full First Amendment Analysis

A District Court recently considered a civil claim that the Treasury Department overstepped when it listed Tornado Cash on the U.S. sanctions list. This claim took some steps, if not enough, to address EFF’s concerns about coders rights. In the...

Federal Judge Upholds Arizonans’ Right to Record the Police

The Arizona legislature last year passed a law (H.B. 2319 codified at A.R.S. § 13-3732) banning the video recording of police activity within eight feet of officers, making doing so a class 3 misdemeanor (which would allow for up to 30 days in...

EFF to 9th Circuit: App Stores Shouldn’t Be Liable for Processing Payments for User Content

EFF filed a brief this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit arguing that app stores should not be liable for user speech just because they recommend that speech or process payments for those users. Those stores should be...

DC Circuit FOSTA Ruling Lets a Bad Law Stay on the Books, But Offers Meaningful Protection for Some Sex Work Forums and Sex Workers Using Online Services

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on July 7 affirmed the dismissal of Woodhull Freedom Foundation v. US, the constitutional challenge to FOSTA. That’s certainly disappointing: this bad law will now stay on the books.But the good news is...

Court Rejects Efforts to Identify Anoymous Webhost

Note: The post was co-authored by EFF legal intern Janelle RobinsIn a victory for online expression, a U.S. District Court judge has quashed a subpoena aimed at revealing the identity of an anonymous person who simply hosted a website.The...

Victory! Ninth Circuit Allows Human Rights Case to Move Forward Against Cisco Systems

People around the world have been searching for ways to hold accountable companies that build tools for government repression. From massive surveillance systems to state-sponsored malware, governments around the world are increasingly using...

The United States vs. Hansen Decision Is Not “Encouraging” for Speech Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in United States v. Hansen upholds a law that makes it a crime to “encourage” a person to remain in the country without authorization. The Court had two choices in this case: instruct Congress and all...

Supreme Court Sends Bad Spaniels Back to Obedience School, Leaves Rogers Test Mostly Intact

The question of when you can use a trademark is one we see all the time—and one that is often misunderstood. Many of the world’s largest and most powerful companies are fanatical about their trademarks. But that means the public is often in the...

Federal Judge Makes History in Holding That Border Searches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant

With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other...

States Should Not Skirt Federal Rules on Fiber Infrastructure

Across the country, states are designing broadband plans to begin spending billions of federal dollars made available by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and past COVID-19 rescue dollar investment programs. The Biden...

In SAS v. WPL, the Federal Circuit Finally Gets Something Right on Computer Copyright

Figuring out the correct boundaries of software copyright protection is a difficult task. As several judges have put it, “applying copyright law to computer programs is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not quite fit.” Last week, the...

Beware the Gifts of Dragons: How D&D’s Open Gaming License May Have Become a Trap for Creators

According to leaks reported last week, the company that owns Dungeons and Dragons (D...

EFF’s Flagship Jewel v. NSA Dragnet Spying Case Rejected by the Supreme Court

We all deserve the right to have a private conversation online. That's why EFF has taken on government surveillance for the past 30-plus years. One of our longest-running efforts has been to stop the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance...

Massachusetts' Highest Court Upholds Cell Tower Dump Warrant

This blog post was drafted with help from former EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann.Massachusetts’ highest court has upheld the collection of mass cell tower data, despite recognizing that this data not only provides investigators with “highly...

EFF to Council of Europe: Cross Border Police Surveillance Treaty Must Have Ironclad Safeguards to Protect Individual Rights and Users’ Data

This is the third post in a series about recommendations EFF, EDRi, CIPPIC, Derechos Digitales, TEDIC, Karisma Foundation, and other civil society organizations have submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is...

New Texas Abortion Law Likely to Unleash a Torrent of Lawsuits Against Online Education, Advocacy and Other Speech

In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman’s reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech. The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts...

Texas AG Paxton's Retaliatory Investigation of Twitter Goes to Ninth Circuit

In an amicus brief filed July 23, EFF, along with the Center for Democracy and Technology and other partner organizations, urged the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to apply longstanding First Amendment law and protect Twitter from a retaliatory...

EFF to Ninth Circuit: Recent Supreme Court Decision in Van Buren Does Not Criminalize Web Scraping

EFF and the Internet Archive argued to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Van Buren v. United States shows that the federal computer crime law does not criminalize the common and useful practice of...

Supreme Court Narrows Ability to Hold U.S. Corporations Accountable for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses Abroad

People around the world have been horrified at the role that technology companies like Cisco, Yahoo!, and Sandvine have played in helping governments commit gross human rights abuses. That’s why EFF has consistently called out technology...