The New York Times reported this morning on a Federal government plan to put government-mandated back doors in all communications systems, including all encryption software. The Times said the Obama administration is drafting a law that would impose a new "mandate" that all communications services be "able to intercept...

Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users...

Last week, we questioned whether Sarah Palin may have violated Facebook's terms of use by using a ghostwriter to update her profile. We also criticized Facebook's attempts to enforce those terms with state and federal computer crime laws — which carry both civil and criminal penalties — in ...

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit issued an unfortunate revised opinion in United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc., a case featuring blatantly unconstitutional government action. As the court put it:
“This case is about a federal investigation into steroid use by professional baseball players. More generally, however, it’s about...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling en banc in a case called Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, yesterday adopted the Bush and Obama Administration's joint Executive Branch power grab in the form of the state secrets privilege. The Court, in a 6-5 en banc ruling, dismissed a case brought...

EFF is pleased to announce two new additions to our FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project: Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch and Open Government Legal Fellow Mark Rumold. Our FLAG Project uses the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other tools to uncover and expose important government...

Vanity Fair suggests that Sarah Palin's distinctive voice on Facebook and Twitter is actually someone else's. According to the article, she appears to have given a ghostwriter access to her social networking accounts to speak on her behalf:
When it was first set up, in January 2009,...