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Spain passes SOPA-like law that U.S. allegedly pushed for

An anti-piracy law passed in Spain on January 3 has striking similarities to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is stirring controversy in the U.S.

The Sinde Law, which is named after former Spanish Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, lets copyright holders report Web sites that host content which infringes on their rights. The government must then choose to take action against the site or ISP. If moved along, a judge will decide whether to shut down the Web site.

What's interesting about the law is that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges the U.S. had a … Read more

The new politics of Silicon Valley: Revenge of the nerds

commentary It was a dangerous year for innovation. Governments around the world became increasingly aware that digital technology could disrupt the political and economic status quo.

Lawmakers and lobbyists were calling for new laws to curb innovations that challenged traditional law enforcement and old ways of doing business. But the laws would have stifled innovation far beyond their intended goals. Technology industry leaders sounded the alarm, but their voices went largely unheard in the corridors of power.

But one proposal gave birth to an organized resistance. Top government officials tried to force industry to re-engineer key technologies to dramatically expand … Read more

Carrier IQ apologizes, drops threat to security researcher

Carrier IQ, a maker of software to monitor smartphone performance, has withdrawn a legal attack against Trevor Eckhart and apologized after the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to the security researcher's defense.

Eckhart published his research last week, saying that some Samsung and HTC Android phones include Carrier IQ's software, and that Verizon and Sprint use it. He documented details of what the Carrier IQ software logs, then leveled a heavy charge by calling the software a rootkit--a program that gets privileged access to a computing device but that hides its presence.

Carrier IQ didn't like Eckhart's conclusions … Read more

Apple, Dropbox join Electronic Privacy Act fight

Apple and Dropbox have joined the Digital Due Process coalition, according to an announcement yesterday from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the sponsors of the group.

Digital Due Process is made up of a host of organizations and companies, including the EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Amazon, that have publicly noted their disapproval of the treatment of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) on the part of law enforcement officials.

The ECPA was passed in 1986, and since then, few modifications have been made to it to adequately govern the changing times in technology, the EFF argues. … Read more

HTTPS Everywhere opens to all

The security add-on for Firefox called HTTPS Everywhere (download) that forces HTTPS encryption on numerous popular Web sites has graduated to its first stable release, about a year after it was released into public beta.

The tool does not let you force HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) willy-nilly on Web sites. Instead, it includes a series of rules that supports sites that allow HTTPS encryption. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in the blog post announcing the release that it encompasses more than 1,000 popular sites, including Google Search, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, bit.ly, GMX, Wordpress.com blogs, The New … Read more

DOJ takes swipe at EFF over encryption passphrases

The U.S. Department of Justice took a thinly veiled swipe at an online civil liberties group that's arguing a Colorado woman can't be forced to decrypt her laptop for police inspection.

In a legal brief filed yesterday in what is likely to be a precedent-setting case, the Justice Department claimed that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had previously agreed that being forced to type in your passphrase was legal and did not violate Americans' rights to self-incrimination.

Prosecutors are hoping to convince a federal judge to order Ramona Fricosu, accused of running a mortgage scam, to decrypt an … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1494: We Like + 1 Yonanna (Podcast)

The otherwise staid and professional Jason Hiner joins us from TechRepublic to discuss important issues like the amazing Yonanna machine, which turns your banana into froyo just like that! Ok, ok, in tech news, a 19-year-old is arrested in the UK, but LulzSec says he's just the IRC moderator. Sounds important to us. Plus, your Facebook and Twitter posts will haunt you for seven years, just like your bad credit card purchases.

EFF: Apple needs to defend its developers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called Apple out for not responding fast enough, or at all, to a developing legal situation that's got some iOS developers spooked.

In a post on the group's blog today, EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels said Apple has put developers in a difficult position by requiring them to use within their apps in-app purchase (IAP), a mechanism that's been targeted by a third-party group that says the technology infringes on its patents.

That group, Lodsys, triggered a controversy last week when it began going after developers--instead of Apple--in seeking a licensing … Read more

GeoHot gives leftover legal funds to EFF, mocks Sony

A week ago, it looked like the drama between Sony Computer Entertainment America and infamous hacker George Hotz (aka GeoHot) was all but over. But this weekend Hotz donated $10,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for individuals' digital rights internationally. The EFF came down on Hotz' side in Sony's suit against him and espouses principles not too unlike the "freedom to hack" movement that jailbreakers like Hotz espouse.

The $10,000 represents the remainder of Hotz's legal defense money, a fund put together out of donations to support him in … Read more

Comodo hack may reshape browser security

Major browser makers are beginning to revisit how they handle Web authentication after last month's breach that allowed a hacker to impersonate sites including Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Skype.com.

The efforts are designed to remedy flaws in the odd way Web security is currently handled. Currently, everyone from the Tunisian government to a wireless carrier in the United Arab Emirates that implanted spyware on customers' BlackBerry devices and scores of German colleges are trusted to issue digital certificates for the largest and most popular sites on the Internet.

Microsoft's manager for trustworthy computing, Bruce Cowper, told … Read more