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In our 681st issue:
On more than 50 occasions, award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras was searched, questioned, and often subjected to hours-long security screenings at U.S. and overseas airports. Now EFF is representing her in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. government. We're seeking records related to her harassment at the border, which in turn may shed light on how the U.S. government exploits border crossings for retaliation, harassment, or other reasons beyond the rule of law. Poitras is the creator of the documentary CITIZENFOUR about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
We're pleased to launch Democracy.io, a tool that lets people send an email to their congressional representatives, on any topic they wish, through one super-simple interface. It’s built on the same free software that EFF uses for our own action center, and connects you to Congress through the open data set created by volunteer web developers across the world.
The First Amendment of the United States protects "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Democracy.io is a tool to help people exercise that crucial right. We hope you use it.
When works enter the public domain, they fuel creativity, experimentation, and renewed interest in writing, music, and art that would otherwise have languished under onerous copyright terms. In the U.S., corporate lobbyists have successfully ratcheted up copyright terms year after year, at great cost to our culture. Now they're trying to export those same terms to other countries with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. We've launched a campaign against the TPP's Copyright Trap, mounting our last stand against an undemocratic international trade agreement that seeks to devastate the public domain.
EFF Updates
EFF and ACLU Win Review of Automated License Plate Reader Case
The California Supreme Court granted our petition to review the lawsuit filed by EFF and the ACLU of Southern California that seeks to shine a light on the collection of license plate data by the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s Departments. This gives us a chance to convince the state’s highest court that police agencies should turn over data so the privacy risks of this mass data collection can be scrutinized.
Stupid Patent of the Month: Do It With A Computer
Recently, a company called Tzu Technologies, LLC began suing makers of sex toys for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,368,268. This resulted in more than a few news stories (and probably a few snickers as well). But the case also shows how our broken patent system is preventing innovation in many spaces.
NSA Tries to Blame Privacy Advocates for Keeping Americans' Telephone Records
The NSA is dragging its heels about destroying records of innocent Americans' phone calls, saying that it must maintain the records until court cases about phone record surveillance are resolved. The implication is that the privacy advocates are the reason that these records aren't being destroyed. To set the record straight: we've been asking them to destroy records for years.
Jeep Hack Shows Why the DMCA Must Get Out of the Way of Vehicle Security Research
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. One major reason that serious vulnerabilities have gone undisclosed and unfixed is that laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act chill independent security research. That’s why we filed for an exemption to Section 1201 that would specifically protect security and safety research on vehicle software from DMCA liability.
Busting Myths and Countering Misinformation From the Campaign Against Patent Reform
We’ve seen an all-out assault aimed at killing the House’s Innovation Act and the Senate’s PATENT Act. As a result, patent reform stands on shaky ground in Congress. The reality is this bill would do much to promote innovation and address some of the problems of patent trolls.
The Crypto Wars Have Gone Global
Congress recently heard testimony about whether or not backdoors should be introduced into encryption technologies, a technically problematic proposal that would fundamentally weaken the security of the Internet. But while Congress is reliving these debates from the nineties, the Crypto Wars are very much alive and well in other parts of the world.
miniLinks
Medium: This Bill Won't Protect You From Hackers
Senator Ron Wyden explains why the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) invades privacy without making us more secure.
Australian Digital Alliance: Will TPP Set a Copyright Trap?
Copyright term extension disproportionately affects countries like Australia that have relatively narrow and limited exceptions to copyright.
New App Explains Fair Use
New Media Rights has a free app that will walk you through some of the questions you should ask yourself about your video project if you intend to reuse existing content such as images, audio, or video.
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Editor: Rainey Reitman, Activism Director
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EFFector is a publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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