Category: Business

California is one of the nation’s few full-time state legislatures. That means advocates have to track and speak up on hundreds of bills that move through the legislative process on a strict schedule between January and August every year. The legislature has been adjourned for a month, and won’t be back until August. So it’s […]

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a ban on reading any copyrighted work that is encumbered by access restrictions. It makes it illegal for you to read and understand the code that determines how your phone or car works and whether those devices are safe. It makes it illegal to create fair […]

Legal intern Danya Hajjaji was the lead author of this post. EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit supporting a group of journalists in their lawsuit against Israeli spyware company NSO Group. In our amicus brief backing the plaintiffs’ appeal, we argued that victims of human rights […]

Last month’s unprecedented global IT failure should be a wakeup call. Decades of antitrust inaction have made many industries dangerously reliant on the same tools, making such crises inevitable. We must demand regulators break up the digital monocultures that are creating a less competitive, less safe, and less free digital world. The Federal Trade Commission […]

Today, the Department of State published the 2024 Investment Climate Statements (ICS).  These reports describe the investment climates of more than 160 countries and economies, helping U.S. companies make informed decisions about doing business overseas.  The ICS are also a resource for partner governments to create business environments that are economically sound and sustainable to grow the […]

In Texas’ first public enforcement of its biometric privacy law, Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle claims that its now-defunct face recognition system violated state law. The law was first passed in 2001. As part of the Texas settlement, Meta (formerly Facebook) can seek pre-approval from the state for any future biometric projects. […]

As UN delegates sat down in New York this week to restart negotiations, calls are mounting from all corners—from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to Big Tech—to add critical human rights protections to, and fix other major flaws in, the proposed UN surveillance treaty, which as written will jeopardize fundamental rights […]

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good morning, everyone.  Bienvenidos a Washington. It’s so good to have so many friends from all across the hemisphere.  We wanted to give you, as I said to a couple of colleagues, the warmest possible greeting; we may have overcorrected, because I think we’ve had the two hottest days on record in Washington in […]

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey urged the FTC to investigate several car companies caught selling and sharing customer information without clear consent. Alongside details previously gathered from reporting by The New York Times, the letter also showcases exactly how much this data is […]

It’s unlikely you’ve heard of Signaling System 7 (SS7), but every phone network in the world is connected to it, and if you have ever roamed networks internationally or sent an SMS message overseas you have used it. SS7 is a set of telecommunication protocols that cellular network operators use to exchange information and route […]