US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that age verification for explicit sites is constitutional. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned it burdens adults and ignores First Amendment precedent...

How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack

" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -U.S. Constitution,...

TikTok ban in US: Company seeks emergency injunction to prevent it

TikTok has requested an emergency injunction to stop or postpone the planned ban on the platform in the US. Back in March, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would effectively ban TikTok from the US unless Chinese owner ByteDance agreed to give up its share of the immensely popular...

Film companies lose battle to unmask Reddit users

An interesting case marking the limits of what data big business can expect to dig up has concluded its day or to be more accurate, many days in court. Ars Technica reports that film companies have lost their battle to make social site Reddit identify anonymous users discussing piracy. No fewer...

Regulating DAOs

In August, the US Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC sanctioned the cryptocurrency platform Tornado Cash, a virtual currency "mixer" designed to make it harder to trace cryptocurrency transactions--and a worldwide favorite money-laundering platform. Americans are now forbidden from...

Clarifying the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

A federal court has ruled that violating a website's terms of service is not "hacking" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The plaintiffs wanted to investigate possible racial discrimination in online job markets by creating accounts for fake employers and job seekers. Leading job sites have...

Privacy Activists Suffer Legal Setback In National Security Letter Case

Privacy activists suffered a legal blow when a panel of California appeals court judges ruled Monday the Federal Bureau of Investigation could continue its practice of secretly issuing National Security Letter NSL requests for customer data from communications firms. The case involved a challenge...

EFF Files Lawsuit Challenging DMCA's Restrictions Security Researchers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Government over a provision within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that it says impinges on free speech and hobbles security researchers ability to do their job. The lawsuit asks the court to strike down the highly...

Microsoft Wins Widespread Support in Privacy Clash With Govt.

Microsoft’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails is getting widespread support by privacy advocates. For many, Microsoft’s stance lends an important and powerful voice to ongoing efforts to reform the Electronic...

Apple Counters FBI's Backdoor Demand as Unconstitutional

Apple has matched the Department of Justice’s recent vitriol, by this week calling the FBI’s request for code to help it unlock Syed Farook’s iPhone unconstitutional. Furthermore, Apple in a court filing this week again challenged the validity of the government’s use of the All Writs Act of 1789 ...

Apple Files Motion to Vacate Court Order to Unlock iPhone

It took Apple nine words to make its point: “This is not a case about one isolated iPhone.” Apple on Thursday filed a motion to vacate a court order mandating it assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter. Apple said the order violates its First Amendment...

Black Hat 2015 Going Dark Cryptography Presentation

LAS VEGAS – Try as they might, technologists are struggling to find a feasible way to solve the government’s and law enforcement’s “Going Dark” crypto issue. Cryptographer Matthew Green and D.C. intellectual property attorney James Denaro today during a talk at the Black Hat conference made no...

Appeals Court Rules NSA Metadata Collection Not Authorized by Section 215

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that the Patriot Act does not authorize the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. The ruling undermines the key foundation upon which the federal government’s phone metadata surveillance program is built, Section 215 ...

National Security Letters Challenged in Ninth Circuit Court

In the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco Wednesday morning, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s EFF Kurt Opsahl urged the federal appeals court to uphold a lower court’s ruling that national security letters NSLs are unconstitutional. Regardless whether the ruling is upheld, the matter of NSL...

Twitter Files Suit Over Government Restrictions on National Security Letter Data

Twitter has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking that the United States Department of Justice’s prohibitions on publishing the number and kind of government requests for data the company receives be declared unconstitutional. The suit claims that the rules infringe on Twitter’s right to free...

US Prosecutor drops Criminal charges against Barrett Brown

U.S. Prosecutors decided not to pursue crucial criminal charges against journalist and activist Barrett Brown, and dismiss a majority of charges related to sharing a link to a dump of credit card numbers connected to the breach of intelligence firm Stratfor. Supporters say Brown just copied the...

LinkedIn Asks for Transparency on National Security Letters

LinkedIn on Tuesday joined the fray of Internet companies requesting permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to publish data on the number of National Security Letters it receives. Unlike Google, Microsoft and others that have petitioned the FISA court to lift its ban on the...

EFF, Eclectic Group of Organizations Sue NSA Over Data Collection

If politics makes strange bedfellows, as the saying goes, wholesale government surveillance takes that to an entirely new level. The clearest evidence yet of the broad and diverse set of groups opposed to the NSA’s domestic spying programs came Tuesday when the EFF said that is representing a...

Google, Microsoft Seek Help in Lifting FISA Gag Order

Google and Microsoft have locked arms with a number of civil liberties advocates in filing a brief with the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court hoping to lift a gag order preventing the two tech giants from releasing information on their role in the NSA’s surveillance activities. To...

Suit Filed Against NSA, Obama Over Surveillance Program

A group of people, including a former federal prosecutor and the parents of a Navy SEAL sniper killed in action, have filed a class-action law suit against the National Security Agency, Verizon and President Obama over the NSA’s collection of cell phone data. The suit says the order that enabled...