In April 2017, Terry Spears shared his story with San Diego’s local public media station KPBS on what it’s like to be listed in the CalGang database. Even though Mr. Spears says he has never been in a gang, it hasn’t stopped law enforcement from harassing him, and he once...
Because the global Internet carries data acrossinternationalborders, police often seek digital evidence stored in another country. To obtain such cross-border data, police generally must gain approval from the government whose territory hosts the data, under an international web of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs).
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Two-factor authentication (or 2FA) is one of the biggest-bang-for-your-buck ways to improve the security of your online accounts. Luckily, it's becoming much more common across the web. With often just a few clicks in a given account's settings, 2FA adds an extra layer of security to your online accounts...
American companies face a difficult tradeoff when dealing with government requests, but they should just say no to Saudi Arabia, which is using social media companies to do its dirty work in censoring Qatari media. Over the past few weeks, both Medium and Snap have caved to Saudi demands...
Law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. violated the Fourth Amendment when they used a cell site simulator to locate a suspect without a warrant, a D.C. appeals court ruled on Thursday. The court thus found that the resulting evidence should have been excluded from trial and overturned the defendant’s...
In a closely watched case, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued an order that should see many more patent cases leaving the Eastern District of Texas. The order in In re Cray, together with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft...
On October 1, a referendum will be held on whether Catalonia, an autonomous region of the northeast of Spain, should declare itself to be an independent country. The Spanish government has ruled the referendum illegal, and is taking action on a number of fronts to shut it down and...
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) limits the circumvention of software that's designed to restrict access to copyrighted works. Unfortunately, such a blanket restriction can chill competition, free speech, and fair use. In an attempt to mitigate those harms, every three years the U.S. Copyright Office holds a...
Deeplinks Blog by Andrés Arrieta, Alan Toner | September 20, 2017
With the new Safari 11 update, Apple takes an important step to protect your privacy, specifically how your browsing habits are tracked and shared with parties other than the sites you visit. In response, Apple is getting criticized by the advertising industry for "destroying the...
Some of the most worrying kinds of attacks are ones that exploit users’ trust in the systems and softwares they use every day. Yesterday, Cisco’s Talos security team uncovered just that kind of attack in the computer cleanup software CCleaner. Download servers at Avast, the company that owns CCleaner,...
10:00 a.m.: In closing the hearing, Sen. Dan Sullivan speaks passionately about the need for the Department of Justice to invest more resources in prosecuting sex traffickers. Ms. Slater of the Internet Assocation echoes Sen. Sullivan, arguing that the Justice Department should have more resources to prosecute sex...
As part of an ongoing attempt to help law enforcement obtain data across international borders, the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention— finalized in the weeks following 9/11, and ratified by the United States and over 50 countries around the world—is back on the global lawmaking agenda. This...
Deeplinks Blog by Michelle Geronimo | September 18, 2017
The First Amendment protects the right of members of the public to record first responders addressing medical emergencies, EFF argued in an amicus brief filed in the federal trial court for the Northern District of Texas. The case, Adelman v. DART, concerns the arrest of a Dallas freelance press...