We're the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and we're thrilled to be celebrating a quarter-century of fighting for digital rights.

We're kicking off this milestone in two ways: a membership drive and a party and minicon in San Francisco on July 16. We're asking people to donate and become members because we fight passionately for the rights of individuals—and in turn, rely deeply on individuals to strengthen our work as we confront threats from powerful institutions and as technology transforms our lives. We're throwing the party to celebrate 25 years of work in the digital world and imagine what the next 25 years ought to look like. More information on our anniversary activities is below.

Visa and MasterCard confirmed that they have cut off payment services for Backpage.com, an online platform for people to advertise goods and services. This was in response to public pressure from Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who wrote to executives at both of the payment processors urging them to cut off transactions to Backpage’s adult services. The two companies responded by quickly shutting down payments for the entire site. 

A draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's "Intellectual Property" chapter from May 11, 2015 has recently been leaked to journalists. This is the fourth leak of the chapter following earlier drafts of October 2014, August 2013, and February 2011. The latest leak is not available online and we don't have a copy of it—but we have been briefed on its contents.

EFF has joined 46 organizations and 105 individuals to oppose a new domain registration proposal in front of the Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN). From Academy Award-winning documentary film director Laura Poitras to the National Council of Women's Organizations to Chayn, an organization that works to combat domestic violence in Pakistan, the vast array of organizations and individuals signed on to this letter reflects just how misguided this proposal is. We hope ICANN will reject the flawed proposal, which comes from a smaller ICANN Working Group, especially in light of this unified opposition.

Last week negotiators from around the world came together as the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) standing committee on copyright (SCCR) resumed consideration of its two current work items: the on-again, off-again broadcasters' rights treaty, and the harmonization of minimum copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, and education.

The digital security community has been reacting this week to leaked documents from italian surveillance company Hacking Team. The documents, which include lists of contracts and sales pitches to some of the worst authoritarian regimes and countries with weak democracies, show a global industry of sales to states of software that can invade and spy on personal computers and mobile devices almost without limit. Buried in that data was information that reveals a disturbing trade in such technology across Latin America. EFF, Derechos Digitales, Fundacion Karisma, R3D and our colleagues in the region have issued a statement to Latin American governments, demanding more transparency on how Latin American states are using -- or misusing -- spyware like that sold by Hacking Team.

We're just days away from celebrating EFF's 25th anniversary in San Francisco on Thursday, July 16. The day will start with a minicon examining the past, present, and future of digital rights and end with a great party. We hope you can join us!

Too often, media and policymakers take seriously the claim of government officials that secret trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) promote and protect “Internet freedom,” even though the traditional guardians of Internet freedom—users and innovators who rely on it—have said precisely the opposite. Unfortunately, that’s likely because some large tech companies have joined the negotiations and have implicitly given these deals their blessing. Now that they're at the table, companies that once stood with users have gone silent, while others now emphatically support TPP and President Obama’s effort to push the agreement through without appropriate public review. We’re disappointed to lose their support, but that’s not the biggest problem. Our policymakers need to get one thing straight: Big tech companies do not speak for the Internet.

Last Wednesday, The Intercept published an expose on the NSA's XKeyscore program. Along with information on the breadth and scale of the NSA's metadata collection, The Intercept revealed how the NSA relies on unencrypted cookie data to identify users. As The Intercept says:

"The NSA’s ability to piggyback off of private companies’ tracking of their own users is a vital instrument that allows the agency to trace the data it collects to individual users. It makes no difference if visitors switch to public Wi-Fi networks or connect to VPNs to change their IP addresses: the tracking cookie will follow them around as long as they are using the same web browser and fail to clear their cookies."

Last week, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Harmful Digital Communications (HDC) Act. The act was conceived over three years ago as an initiative to address online bullying among young New Zealanders. Since then, prompted by subsequent highly visible online scandals in the country, its scope widened dramatically. The final act takes on nothing less than all content on the Internet that might be deemed harmful.

Today the European Parliament adopted an important resolution on Harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights [PDF]. The final document is the end product of the fearless work of Julia Reda MEP, rapporteur to the Parliament's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee, who wrote the original draft on which the resolution was based in a consultative process with users. Some annoying compromises had already crept in when the report made its way through the JURI committee, and these lessened the force of the report although without completely destroying it.

If you operate your own website, be glad that you don't host it in South Korea (or if you do, you might want to rethink that). Whereas in the United States, an important law called CDA 230 protects you from liability for comments contributed by users to your website, South Korea has some of the toughest liability rules in the world that can leave intermediaries such as website owners carrying the can for content they didn't even know about.

First, they are required to remove content for a minimum of 30 days on receipt of a complaint, without it being assessed by a court or judge—under the U.S. DMCA a similar obligation applies only to complaints of copyright infringement, but in South Korea it applies to other speech such as alleged defamation, and the takedown obligation is imposed independently, rather than merely as a method of gaining safe harbor from potential liability.

Shortly after Microsoft Bing launched in 2009, researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society found that the search engine was enforcing “safe search” in a number of countries, including across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa (or as Microsoft erroneously called the region at the time, the “Arabian countries”). In a paper entitled Sex, Social Mores and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in “Arabian Countries” [PDF], the researchers claimed that Microsoft was filtering “Arabic and English keywords that could yield sex- or LGBT-related images and content.”1 As a result of the paper, Microsoft pulled back the censorship in certain places and corrected their laughable mislabeling of the region.

The powerful interests who shape the development of rules for the Internet have far more resources at their disposal than those who fight for users' rights and freedoms online. As such, they are exceptionally well organized, and you can guarantee for every one of their initiatives that reaches the public spotlight, they have several parallel backup plans that may slip past the radar.

Striking a blow against the continuing effort to force service providers to serve as IP police, CloudFlare and EFF have pushed back against a court order that would have required CloudFlare to monitor its service to enforce a trademark held by a group of music labels. Last week, Judge Alison J. Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that CloudFlare does not have to search out and block customers who use variations on the name “grooveshark.” Instead, CloudFlare must take action only if it has “knowledge of an infringement” (for example, when the labels send a takedown notice). Given that this is essentially what US law already requires, Judge Nathan’s order puts paid to the latest strategy to institute trademark- and copyright-related filtering – at least in this case.

La ciudad de Buenos Aires está en proceso de elegir a su próximo Jefe de Gobierno y a los miembros de la Legislatura. Las elecciones fueron el pasado 5 de julio, cuyos resultados derivaron a una segunda vuelta programada para el 19 del corriente, al mismo tiempo, debutó en la capital Argentina un sistema de votación electrónica denominado Vot.ar, desarrollado por la compañía Magic Software Argentina (MSA).

We’ve seen an all-out assault on the side of the opposition to kill the House’s Innovation Act and the Senate’s PATENT Act. As a result, patent reform stands on shaky ground in Congress.

A common trend has emerged in the anti-reform camp’s rhetoric, though: lies, fabrications, and untruths. We’re frustrated in seeing these myths arise time and again, and we’re going to make an effort to dispel them.

For example, an email sent earlier this week to small businesses in the high-tech space in Connecticut urged owners to oppose the Innovation Act. Much of the email matches the general opposition’s rhetoric, and, well, it’s just plain wrong:

Back in the fall of 2011, some undergraduates at Yale created a cool class project. As part of their law and technology class, Bay Gross and Charlie Croom built a website and game that allowed Facebook users to discover how many of their “friends” they really know. The site, still available at whatsherface-book.com, asked people to reflect upon how much personal information they share with strangers or distant acquaintances. This June, Facebook sent Gross a message claiming that the site infringed its trademark and demanding it be taken down. EFF has responded on behalf of Gross.

Thank you to those who celebrated with us at EFF's 25th anniversary party and minicon! It was a lovely day full of remembering the important fights of the past 25 years and planning how to face the threats of the next 25. Both the minicon and the party were well-attended, informative, and so much fun. We at EFF are so grateful to those who attended, those who followed along at home, those who gave to the EFF25 member drive, and the many of you who have made our 25 years possible.

A toast from EFF's fearless leader Cindy Cohn to 25 years of EFF and to all of you.

Lots of our TV-watching comes over the Internet today. Series programming, reality shows, movies, and even sports are available through Internet-based subscription services—nearly everything except for broadcast TV. That’s because many broadcast stations, whose signals go out over the public airwaves for all to receive, have fought tooth and nail in the courts to keep their signals off of the Internet. Internet subscription services like ivi, FilmOn, and Aereo that agreed to follow the same rules, and pay the same copyright royalties, as traditional cable systems have up to now been denied.

In 2011, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak promised that Malaysia would never censor the Internet. Speaking at the first Malaysian—ASEAN Regional Bloggers Conference, Najib said: “I have no doubts whatsoever that Malaysia has one of the liveliest blogospheres in the world. And definitely one of the freest if not the most free…[former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad] made the promise to the world that Malaysia would never censor the Internet. My government is fully committed to that wisdom. We intend to keep his word.”

Four years later, beleaguered by allegations that $700 million in funds were suspiciously transferred from a Malaysian state investment fund into his personal bank account, Najib went back on that promise.

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have once again exposed automobile security flaws that allow attackers to take over a vehicle’s crucial systems. In their latest work, they learned how an attacker could remotely control a car over the Internet.

Vehicle manufacturers dismissed prior warnings about flawed security by claiming [PDF] that the exploits relied on physical access to the car. But it has long been known that vehicles’ wireless systems (such as Bluetooth) contain vulnerabilities that would allow a malicious hacker to gain access to critical vehicle functions.

[Update 7/30/2015: The German authorities have now confirmed that Netzpolitik is being investigated under suspicion of treason. See our follow-up post for more details.]

It's been an exciting summer for the Library of Congress. Last month, the Librarian Dr. James Billington announced he would soon be stepping down, vacating a seat he's held for some 28 years. That announcement came hot on the heels of a new legislative proposal—the nigh-ungooglable CODE Act, which stands for “Copyright Office for the Digital Economy”—to spin the Copyright Office out of the Library and into its own independent agency.