Today Congress heard overwhelming evidence about how patent trolls—companies that assert patents as a business model instead of creating products—are abusing the system to stifle innovation. At a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, witness after witness testified about patent trolls who...

In an important new decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals created the first explicit limits on the government's ability to search electronic devices at the border. The court's decision in United States v. Cotterman (PDF) establishes that government agents must have "reasonable suspicion" before conducting a forensic examination...

Yesterday, the federal court in Los Angeles held a hearing in a consolidated set of copyright troll cases, filed by the notorious Prenda Law on behalf of holding companies AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13. At first, this case was just one of hundreds of similar lawsuits in which copyright trolls...

On Monday, EFF and over 30 other Internet rights organizations sent a letter to members of Congress demanding they vote no on the "cybersecurity" bill known as CISPA. The letter starts off a week in which Congress will hold three different hearings about CISPA and computer and...

Section 215 of the Patriot Act has been secretly interpreted by the government in ways, according to Senators briefed on the interpretation, that are misleading and would “stun” the American public. Today, EFF will ask a federal judge in Oakland to order the government to turn over those...

Google took an unprecedented and fantastic step towards greater transparency earlier this week by releasing data about National Security Letters that it receives, but there is another class of government orders for user data that we are still totally in the dark about: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)...

H.R. 983 seeks to reform outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act
Wednesday, Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) introduced legislation (H.R. 983) that would ensure law enforcement obtains a warrant before accessing our private electronic communications or location data. This bill, while not a...