Last week, the group behind the copyright monitoring and enforcement system commonly known as "Six Strikes" released some data about its operations for the first time. The Center for Copyright Information (CCI), a group created and funded by major movie studios, music labels, and Internet service providers revealed that their Copyright Alert System (CAS) sent more than 1.3 million accusations of copyright infringement to about 722,000 Internet subscribers. The report also said that over 60,000 of those subscribers received some kind of penalty from their ISP.

Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many others, the arguments are often eerily similar.

But as we approach the one year anniversary, it’s time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them. 

So if you hear any one of these in the future, you can tell yourself straight up: “this person isn’t credible,” and look elsewhere for current information about the NSA spying. And if these are still in your talking points (you know who you are) it’s time to retire them if you want to remain credible. And next time, the talking points should stand the test of time.

1.  The NSA has Stopped 54 Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying

For the past few years, EFF has been working on promoting the universal use of encryption for Internet protocols. We started by pushing major sites to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, and gave individual users ways to pull things along.

California, you did it.

As of this morning, with 22,353 of 22,353 precincts reporting, voters approved Proposition 42, a ballot measure that ensures that local agencies must comply with the California Public Records Act (CPRA). The final tally for the Public's Right to Know Act was 61.5 percent for, 38.5 percent against—a landslide for transparency.

Today, a group of over 400 organizations and experts, along with 350,000 individuals, continue to rally in support of the 13 International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the Necessary and Proportionate Principles) a year to the day after Edward Snowden first revealed how governments are monitoring individuals on a massive scale.  The international experts who supported the Necessary and Proportionate Principles has issued a press release containing quotes from professionals weighing in on the need to end the mass surveillance.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, June 05, 2014

Este texto ha sido editado por Carlos Wertheman

Hoy un conjunto de más de 400 organizaciones y expertos, junto con 350.000 particulares, continúan una carrera en apoyo de los 13 Principios Internacionales sobre la Aplicación de los Derechos Humanos a la Vigilancia de las Comunicaciones (Principios Necesario y Proporcional) un año desde el día en que Edward Snowden revelará por primera vez cómo los gobiernos están monitoreando a los individuos en una escala masiva. Los expertos internacionales que han apoyado los Principios han emitido un comunicado de prensa con testimonios de expertos haciendo hincapié en la necesidad de poner fin a la vigilancia masiva.

Para publicación inmediata: Jueves, 05 de junio 2014

Last month the FCC released its proposal for America’s new network neutrality rules. Unfortunately, the agency’s proposal included rules that would permit Internet providers to prioritize certain websites, e.g., make deals with some services for a faster and better path to subscribers. While the FCC claims it is not endorsing such deals, the proposed rules will inevitably be read as exactly that.

The parties most threatened by this kind of network discrimination are those who are trying to make novel and unanticipated uses of the network and who cannot afford payola. 

Students are rising up and fighting to protect our Internet. In response to our call to action, seventeen university groups from across the United States have published open letters about the real chilling effects mass surveillance is having right now on academic freedom and life on campus.

Fair use enjoyed a major victory in court today. In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that strongly underscores a fair use justification for a major book scanning program. For those counting along at home, today's decision marks another in a serious streak of judicial findings of fair use for mass book digitization, including Authors Guild v. Google, Cambridge University Press v. Becker, and the district court opinion in the HathiTrust case itself.

One of the most unnerving things about modern communications technology is the way devices constantly leak information about their physical whereabouts—to mobile carriers, network operators, e-mail providers, web sites, governments, even shopping mall owners. Many of these information leakages are simple historical accidents. The designers of technologies never considered that technical standards would let everyone around you notice your device's presence. They never considered that technical choices would let web sites infer when two people are (or aren't) spending the night in the same residence, or let your phone company follow you around virtually from moment to moment.

It has been one year since the first Snowden disclosure and in lieu of this first anniversary, world privacy expert and publisher of The Privacy Surgeon, Simon Davies, conceived and published a report titled “A Crisis of Accountability: A global analysis of the impact of the Snowden revelations.”  The report includes contributions from individual countries, summarizing the extent to which the Snowden revelations have produced tangible changes.  Additionally, the analysis discusses what needs to happen, moving forward, to enact substantial change in light of these disclosures.

Earlier this month, the Senate took patent reform off the table for this legislative session. The Senate leadership did this despite the fact that a strong bill passed in the House with overwhelming support. And thousands of constituents have called for meaningful reform to finally put an end to patent trolling.

The last few years have seen many examples of patents hindering, rather than helping innovation. Patent trolls run rampage while some big companies spend more money on patent wars than research and development. This is why it is so encouraging when companies commit to openness, ensuring their patents do not obstruct future innovation.

EFF recently kicked off our second Tor Challenge, an initiative to strengthen the Tor network for online anonymity and improve one of the best free privacy tools in existence. The campaign—which we've launched with partners at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Tor Project, and the Free Software Foundation—is already off to a great start. In just the first few days, we've seen over 600 new or expanded Tor nodes—more than during the entire first Tor Challenge.

This is great news, but how does it affect you? To understand that, we have to dig into what Tor actually is, and what people can do to support it. Support can come in many forms, too. Even just using Tor is one of the best and easiest things a person can do to preserve privacy and anonymity on the Internet. 

In the Ethiopian community, bloggers, journalists, and activists are all targets of increasing levels of surveillance and intimidation. The Ethiopian government has used its monopoly on telecommunications to restrict its citizens rights to privacy and freedom of expression. The websites of opposition parties, independent media sites, blogs, and several international media outlets are routinely blocked by government censors and radio and television stations are routinely jammed. Bloggers, including six members of the Zone Nine Blogging collective, are harassed, threatened, and jailed if they don't "tone down" their writings.

When courts issue new decisions about how law enforcement can obtain records and data from companies, it's not just the police who have to follow the new rules. The companies that turn over the data have a big role to play in ensuring that the law is followed. A new court decision requiring police to use a search warrant in order to obtain cell tracking records underscores the importance phone companies can play in extending important privacy protections throughout the country.

Update: The US House voted overwhelmingly to approve the amendment during a late night session on Thursday, June 19. For EFF's statement on the passage of the amendment click here. 

The NSA may seem like an intimidating giant, but it has a serious Achilles' heel— the enormous budget it claims from taxpayer dollars every year. While change to the actual words of the laws that govern NSA surveillance seems to be a difficult task, a group of representatives have decided to take the battle to the bank.

EFF sent a letter this week opposing SB 962, a bill by California Senator Mark Leno that mandates every phone that will be sold in the state to have a "kill switch"—a technological solution that would remotely disable a smartphone if, say, it were stolen or lost. Despite our concerns, the bill passed out of committee in the Assembly.

There's a simple reason why we opposed this particular bill—and why we almost always oppose bills with technological mandates. Technology is fast; the law is slow. While there is an important place for policy in a world where the Internet and devices are readily available to both consumers and government actors, institutionalizing specific technical solutions—such as making every cell phone manufacturer feature a "kill switch" program—is risky.

Exactly one year ago, Amy Ngai of the Sunlight Foundation visited EFF's offices in San Francisco to introduce our staff to the rather large and versatile collection of transparency tools they've developed. Midway through her presentation, there was a moment when you could clearly perceive several pieces click into place in our activism team's collective mind. Sunlight is developing new technologies for engaging with Congress and the legislative process, while EFF has been at the forefront of mobilizing the online community to defend Internet freedom. With a shared hacker and tinkerer mentality and a love of exposing government secrets, a natural partnership was formed.

በኢትዮጵያ የሚገኙ ጦማሪያን፡ ጋዜጠኞች እና የሰበአዊ መብት አራማጆች ከግዜ ወደ ግዜ እየተጠናከረ በሄደው የመንግስት የስለላላ መረብ እና የማስፈራሪያ ዘመቻ ኢላማ ሆነዋል:: መንግስት በባለቤትነት በያዘው የቴሌኮም አገልግሎት በመጠቀም የዜጎችን የመናገር እና የግላዊነት ነጻነትን ይተላለፍል:: በሀገር ውስጥ እና በውጪ የሚገኙ የተቃዋሚ ፓርቲ ድረ ገጾችን :የነጻ ሚዲያ አውታሮችን፡ጦማሮችን እና የማህበራዊ ሚዲያ ገጾችን በሀገር ውስጥ እንዳይነበቡ ማገድ የለት ተለት እውነታ ሆኗል::  በተጨማሪም ጋዜጠኞች፡ጦማሪያን እና የሰብአዊ መብት አራማጆች አስተየቶቻቸውን ከመንግስት አላማ ጋር እንዲያጣጥሙ እና ጽሁፎቻቸውን “ቀዝቀዝ” እንዲያደርጉ ማስፈራራት፡ ማጎሳቆል  ወይም ማሰር 

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ordered Google to remove entire domains from its search results—a decision that could have enormous global implications on free expression. This is the latest of several instances of courts exercising dangerous jurisdictional overreach, where they have applied local laws to remove content on the Internet. Not only did the Court order Google to delete the site from its search results on the Canadian “Google.ca” domain, it went even further by demanding it censor the domain worldwide by deleting every instance of the site from its global index.

This weekend at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas, some mayors will take a strong stand in support of net neutrality. According to an op-ed by Mayors Ed Lee of San Francisco and Ed Murray of Seattle, the city leaders are unveiling a resolution calling on the FCC to preserve an open Internet.

This is good and welcome news. The mayors get it: a free and open Internet is critically important for the health of U.S. cities. “The Internet has thrived because of its openness and equality of access,” reads the mayors’ op-ed. “It has spurred great innovation, while providing a level playing field for its users. It allows everyone the same chance to interact, to participate, to compete.”

Some of the world’s most recognized companies began on college campuses. Think of Facebook, invented by Mark Zuckerberg while an undergraduate at Harvard, or Microsoft, started by Bill Gates when he was a college sophomore.

Yet universities are not necessarily the most welcoming places for student innovation. Harvard reprimanded Zuckerberg for “breaching security” and hacking into dorm websites to obtain photos of students for an early version of Facebook. Luckily, the university did not involve law enforcement, but they certainly could have.

Big law should not be a big bully. Last week, the nation’s largest law firm, Jones Day, tried to use trademark law to censor a website critical of Detroit’s emergency manager (a former Jones Day partner). As is typical, since the website criticized the firm, it included a Jones Day trademark. The law firm responded with an ominous cease and desist letter demanding that its trademarks be removed from the site.