The field of "mobile location analytics"—where tracking companies work with brick-and-mortar retail stores to collect insights about customer behavior based on fine-grained location information harvested from mobile phones—has taken a small step towards self-regulation with a new code of conduct published this week. The code was announced...

We have praised the Innovation Act of 2013, introduced this week by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan coalition, as the best patent troll-killing bill yet. We support the bill because it offers a host of fixes to the growing...

Ever since Google issued its first transparency report in early 2010, EFF has called on other companies to follow suit and disclose statistics about the number of government requests for user data, whether the request they receive is an official demand (such as a warrant) or an unofficial...

You might think that if the US Supreme Court's ruling that a GPS device was a "search," the inevitable conclusion is that police would need a warrant to install a GPS device on a car. After all, warrantless searches are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment (except...

The Intelligence Committee Bills Must be Stopped
Many of NSA reform bills going through Congress are encouraging, but the most important priority for those who want to stop the spying is to stop the bill by the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate. The Chairs of each...

Thank you, patent trolls.
Today, we are one giant step closer to real patent reform in the United States. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), along with a broad bipartisan coalition, has introduced the Innovation Act of 2013, comprehensive legislation that, if passed, would severely limit trolls' ability to...

We’ve documented again and again how the government has refused to tell the truth about NSA surveillance to news organizations, Congress, and the American public. Now it seems clear we can add the Supreme Court to that list.
First, it’s important to remember that just months...