San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation today launched a campaign to inform California voters of their right to vote on a paper ballot in the upcoming election. The website and animation for Paper or Plastic 2004 are available at: http://PaperOrPlastic2004.org Ten California counties – including Orange, Alameda, and Riverside...

Motion Demands Information About the Seizure of Indymedia's Servers Texas - Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorneys have filed a motion to unseal a secret US federal court order that led to the seizure of two servers hosting several websites and radio feeds belonging to Indymedia, a global collective of...

Santa Clara County, CA - Pollworkers in Santa Clara County are being trained not to offer voters a chance to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has learned. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley mandated in May that all polling places offer a...

San Francisco, CA - Rackspace Managed Hosting, the San Antonio-based company that manages two Indymedia servers seized by the US government last Thursday, said yesterday that the servers have been returned and are now available to go back online. Immediate access to the servers, which host Indymedia's Internet radio station...

Washington, DC - Today, the Supreme Court denied a request by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to hear its appeal of a lower court decision that Internet service providers (ISPs) do not have to hand over the names of people suspected of copyright infringement. The case grows...

United Kingdom - Acting under a court order, Texas-based web hosting company Rackspace Managed Hosting handed over two UK-based servers containing Indymedia websites to government agents yesterday morning. Indymedia is a collective of online journalists who maintain a network of independent news websites. The order was apparently issued by a...

Boston, MA - The First Circuit Court of Appeals decided today to rehear argument in a case that could have a profound effect on email privacy. Last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, US v. Councilman, urging such a rehearing. In...

Riverside, California - A superior court in a Riverside County, California ruled last week that the local registrar of voters does not have to hand over backup data from e-voting machines to verify the results of a recount. Linda Soubirous, a Republican board of supervisors candidate, requested the data...

Contract and Copyright Trump Fair Use and Competition in BnetD Case St. Louis - Fair use was dealt a harsh blow today in a Federal Court decision that held that programmers are not allowed to create free software designed to work with commercial products. At issue in the case...

San Francisco, CA - Last week, House Republicans circulated draft legislation that contains provisions from the never-introduced "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as "PATRIOT II." The draft legislation is meant to implement intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission Final Report. But its reach goes far...

San Francisco, CA - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation released the results of research conducted jointly with the Verified Voting Foundation and American Families United into the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular models of e-voting machines. Organized into one-page quick reference guides, this research gives users...

Consumer and Public Interest Groups Seek to Narrow and Invalidate Ambiguous Patents that Harm Society Washington, DC - Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and two public interest organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge, filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the US Court of...

Electronic Frontier Foundation Supports BBC's "Creative Archive" London, UK -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provided written testimony on Saturday to the UK government committee evaluating the charter renewal for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The testimony supports the BBC's request to build the "Creative Archive," a groundbreaking project that...

Law "Blacked Out" More than a Million Legitimate Websites The Federal District Court in Philadelphia ruled today that a state law requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that allegedly host child pornography violates the First Amendment. In order to comply with the law, ISPs had...

The Washington Post reports that the House Judiciary Committee has marked up and reported H.R. 4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA). The measure is now ready for a vote by the entire House of Representatives. The Senate has taken no action on any companion bill. The PDEA...

Court Rules Copyright Law Cannot Be Used to Stifle Competition for Garage Door Openers Washington, DC - A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that allows the marketing of "universal" remote controls for garage door openers, an important decision that helps pave the...

EFF Protests Anti-Privacy Ruling in Appeal to the Ninth Circuit California - US citizens may no longer have the right to travel without being searched. So says the District Court for the Northern District of California, which recently dismissed a case that questioned whether it is constitutional for airport security...

Agrees to Postpone Closed Voting Examiner Meetings in Face of ACLU Lawsuit Austin, TX - The Texas Secretary of State today agreed to indefinitely postpone a meeting of the state's voting examiners following the filing of a lawsuit by the ACLU of Texas and a Texas voter. The Electronic Frontier...

California - In a ruling the Electronic Frontier Foundation hailed as a step forward, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled today that Visa and several other credit card companies would not be held liable for the copyright infringements of its business customers...

EFF and National Voter Rights Organizations Support Appeal to State's Highest Court Maryland - Lawyers representing eight Maryland citizens today filed a petition with the state supreme court seeking to decertify or fix Diebold voting machines that computer security experts have deemed insecure. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), working with...

Red Hat Sponsors the Fourth Annual EFF Freedom Fest at LinuxWorld August 4 San Francisco, CA - For the past four years, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been thanking its members for their support with a free outdoor concert called Freedom Fest. This year's event will be bigger and better...

Dept. of Homeland Security Puts Stake in the Heart of Passenger Profiling System Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday that development of CAPPS II - the government's controversial airline passenger surveillance program – will not continue. As reported by USA Today: Asked Wednesday whether the program could be considered...

One Year Before the Broadcast Flag Locks Up DTV Signals, EFF Announces Plans for a "Build Your Own DTV" Cookbook San Francisco - One year from today, on July 1, 2005, an FCC regulation known as the Broadcast Flag will lock up your digital television signals. But EFF's "DTV...

EFF applauds today's Supreme Court decision to uphold a preliminary injunction that restricts the government from enacting the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The law, which was passed in 1998, criminalizes sexual expression on the Internet that could be deemed "harmful to minors" by a reasonable person using...