At EFF we’ve long noted that you cannot build a backdoor that only lets in good guys and not bad guys. Over the weekend, we saw another example of this: The Wall Street Journal reported on a major breach of U.S. telecom systems attributed to a sophisticated Chinese-government backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon.

According to reports, the hack took advantage of systems built by ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to the ISPs’ user data. This gave China unprecedented access to data related to U.S. government requests to these major telecommunications companies. It’s still unclear how much communication and internet traffic, and related to whom, Salt Typhoon accessed.

That’s right: the path for law enforcement access set up by these companies was apparently compromised and used by China-backed hackers. That path was likely created to facilitate smooth compliance with wrong-headed laws like CALEA, which require telecommunications companies to facilitate “lawful intercepts”—in other words, wiretaps and other orders by law enforcement and national security agencies. While this is a terrible outcome for user privacy, and for U.S. government intelligence and law enforcement, it is not surprising. 

The idea that only authorized government agencies would ever use these channels for acquiring user data was always risky and flawed. We’ve seen this before: in a notorious case in 2004 and 2005, more than 100 top officials in the Greek government were illegally surveilled for a period of ten months when unknown parties broke into Greece’s “lawful access” program. In 2024, with growing numbers of sophisticated state-sponsored hacking groups operating, it’s almost inevitable that these types of damaging breaches occur. The system of special law enforcement access that was set up for the “good guys” isn’t making us safer; it’s a dangerous security flaw. 

Internet Wiretaps Have Always Been A Bad Idea

Passed in 1994, CALEA requires that makers of telecommunications equipment provide the ability for government eavesdropping. In 2004, the government dramatically expanded this wiretap mandate to include internet access providers. EFF opposed this expansion and explained the perils of wiretapping the internet.  

The internet is different from the phone system in critical ways, making it more vulnerable. The internet is open and ever-changing.  “Many of the technologies currently used to create wiretap-friendly computer networks make the people on those networks more pregnable to attackers who want to steal their data or personal information,” EFF wrote, nearly 20 years ago.

Towards Transparency And Security

The irony should be lost on no one that now the Chinese government may be in possession of more knowledge about who the U.S. government spies on, including people living in the U.S., than Americans. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies that use these backdoor legal authorities are notoriously secretive, making oversight difficult. 

Companies and people who are building communication tools should be aware of these flaws and implement, where possible, privacy by default. As bad as this hack was, it could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the hard work of EFF and other privacy advocates making sure that more than 90% of web traffic is encrypted via HTTPS. For those hosting the 10% (or so) of the web that has yet to encrypt its traffic, now is a great time to consider turning on encryption, either using Certbot or switching to a hosting provider that offers HTTPS by default.

What can we do next? We must demand real privacy and security.  

That means we must reject the loud law enforcement and other voices that continue to pretend that there are “good guy only” ways to ensure access. We can point to this example, among many others, to push back on the idea that the default in the digital world is that governments (and malicious hackers) should be able to access all of our messages and files. We’ll continue to fight against US bills like EARN IT, the EU “Chat Control” file-scanning proposal, and the UK’s Online Safety Act, all of which are based on this flawed premise. 

It’s time for U.S. policymakers to step up too. If they care about China and other foreign countries engaging in espionage on U.S. citizens, it’s time to speak up in favor of encryption by default. If they don’t want to see bad actors take advantage of their constituents, domestic companies, or security agencies, again—speak up for encryption by default. Elected officials can and have done so in the past. Instead of holding hearings that give the FBI a platform to make digital wiretaps easier, demand accountability for the digital lock-breaking they’re already doing. 

The lesson will be repeated until it is learned: there is no backdoor that only lets in good guys and keeps out bad guys. It’s time for all of us to recognize this, and take steps to ensure real security and privacy for all of us.

Update 9/26/24: The hearing and scheduled committee vote on PERA and PREVAIL was canceled. Supporters can continue to register their opposition via our action, as these bills may still be scheduled for a vote later in 2024. 

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote this Thursday on two bills that could significantly empower patent trolls. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would bring back many of the abstract computer patents that have been barred for the past 10 years under Supreme Court precedent. Meanwhile, the PREVAIL Act would severely limit how the public can challenge wrongly granted patents at the patent office. 

Take Action

Tell Congress: No New Bills For Patent Trolls

EFF has sent letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing both of these bills. The letters are co-signed by a wide variety of civil society groups, think tanks, startups, and business groups that oppose these misguided bills. Our letter on PERA states: 

Under PERA, any business method, methods of practicing medicine, legal agreement, media content, or even games and entertainment could be patented so long as the invention requires some use of computers or electronic communications… It is hard to overstate just how extreme and far-reaching such a change would be.

If enacted, PERA could revive some of the most problematic patents used by patent trolls, including: 

• The Alice Corp. patent, which claimed the idea of clearing financial transactions through a third party via a computer. 
• The Ameranth patent, which covered the use of  mobile devices to order food at restaurants. This patent was used to sue over 100 restaurants, hotels, and fast-food chains just for merely using off-the-shelf technology.  
• A patent owned by Hawk Technology Systems LLC, which claimed generic video technology to view surveillance videos, and was used to sue over 200 hospitals, schools, charities, grocery stores, and other businesses. 

The changes proposed in PERA open the door to patent compounds that exist in nature which nobody invented

A separate letter signed by 17 professors of IP law caution that PERA would cloud the legal landscape on patent eligibility, which the Supreme Court clarified in its 10-year-old Alice v. CLS Bank case. “PERA would overturn centuries of jurisprudence that prevents patent law from effectively restricting the public domain of science, nature, and abstract ideas that benefits all of society,” the professors write.  

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group also opposes both PERA and PREVAIL, and points out in its opposition letter that patent application misuse has improperly prevented generic drugs from coming on to the market, even years after the original patent has expired. They warn: 

“The changes proposed in PERA open the door to patent compounds that exist in nature which nobody invented, but are newly discovered,” the group writes. “This dramatic change could have devastating effects on drug pricing by expanding the universe of items that can have a patent, meaning it will be easier than ever for drug companies to build patent thickets which keep competitors off the market.” 

Patients’ rights advocacy groups have also weighed in. They argue that PREVAIL “seriously undermines citizens’ ability to promote competition by challenging patents,” while PERA “opens the door to allow an individual or corporation to acquire exclusive rights to aspects of nature and information about our own bodies.” 

Generic drug makers share these concerns. “PREVAIL will make it more difficult for generic and biosimilar manufacturers to challenge expensive brand-name drug patent thickets and bring lower-cost medicines to patients, and PERA will enable brand-name drug manufacturers to build even larger thickets and charge higher prices,” an industry group stated earlier this month. 

We urge the Senate to heed  the voices of this broad coalition of civil society groups and businesses opposing these bills. Passing them would create a more unbalanced and easily exploitable patent system. The public interest must come before the loud voices of patent trolls and a few powerful patent holders. 

Take Action

Tell Congress to reject pera and prevail

Documents: 

• EFF Coalition Letter Opposing PERA
• EFF Coalition Letter Opposing PREVAIL
• IP Law Academics Letter Opposing PERA
• US PIRG Letter Opposing PERA and PREVAIL
• Generation Patient, I-MAK, R Street, US PIRG Letter Opposing PERA and PREVAIL
• Association for Accessible Medicines Statement Opposing on PERA and PREVAIL

Update 9/26/24: The hearing and scheduled committee vote on PERA and PREVAIL was canceled. Supporters can continue to register their opposition via our action, as these bills may still be scheduled for a vote later in 2024. 

Update 9/20/24: The Senate vote scheduled for Thursday, Sep. 19 has been rescheduled for Thursday, Sep. 26. 

A patent on crowdfunding. A patent on tracking packages. A patent on photo contests. A patent on watching an ad online. A patent on computer bingo. A patent on upselling. 

These are just a few of the patents used to harass software developers and small companies in recent years. Thankfully, they were tossed out by U.S. courts, thanks to the landmark 2014 Supreme Court decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. The Alice ruling  has effectively ended hundreds of lawsuits where defendants were improperly sued for basic computer use. 

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Tell Congress: No New Bills For Patent Trolls

Now, patent trolls and a few huge corporate patent-holders are upset about losing their bogus patents. They are lobbying Congress to change the rules–and reverse the Alice decision entirely. Shockingly, they’ve convinced the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote this Thursday on two of the most damaging patent bills we’ve ever seen.

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA, S. 2140) would overturn Alice, enabling patent trolls to extort small business owners and even hobbyists, just for using common software systems to express themselves or run their businesses. PERA would also overturn a 2013 Supreme Court case that prevents most kinds of patenting of human genes.

Meanwhile, the PREVAIL Act (S. 2220) seeks to severely limit how the public can challenge bad patents at the patent office. Challenges like these are one of the most effective ways to throw out patents that never should have been granted in the first place. 

This week, we need to show Congress that everyday users and creators won’t stand for laws that actually expand avenues for patent abuse.

The U.S. Senate must not pass new legislation to allow the worst patent scams to expand and flourish. 

Take Action

Tell Congress: No New Bills For Patent Trolls

A misguided bill that would have required many people to show ID to get online has died without getting a floor vote in the California legislature, where key deadlines for bill passage passed this weekend. Thank you to our supporters for helping us to kill this wrongheaded bill, especially those of you who took the time to reach out to your legislators. 

EFF opposed this bill from the start. Bills that allow politicians to define what is “sexually explicit” content and then enact punishments for those who engage with it are inherently censorship bills—and they never stop with minors. 

A.B. 3080 would have required an age verification system, most likely a scanned uploaded government-issued ID, to be erected for any website that had more than 33% “sexually explicit” content. The proposal did not, and could not have, differentiated between sites that are largely graphic sexual content and a huge array of sites that have some content that is appropriate for minors, along with other content that is geared towards adults. Bills like this are similar to having state prosecutors insist on ID uploads in order to turn on Netflix, regardless of whether the movie you’re seeking is G-rated or R-rated. 

Political attempts to use pornography as an excuse to censor and control the internet are now almost 30 years old. These proposals persist despite the fact that applying government overseers to what Americans read and watch is not only unconstitutional, but broadly unpopular. In Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court overruled almost all of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that was intended to keep “obscene or indecent” material away from minors. In 2004, the Supreme Court again rejected an age-gated internet in ACLU v. Ashcroft, striking down most of a federal law of that era. 

The right of adults to read and watch what they want online is settled law. It is also a right that the great majority of Americans want to keep. The age-gating systems that propose to analyze and copy our biometric data, our government IDs, or both, will be a huge privacy setback for Americans of all ages. Electronically uploading and copying IDs is far from the equivalent of an in-person card check. And they won’t be effective at moderating what children see, which can and must be done by individuals and families. 

Other states have passed online age-verification bills this year, including a Texas bill that EFF has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to evaluate. Tennessee’s age-verification bill even includes criminal penalties, allowing prosecutors to bring felony charges against anyone who “publishes or distributes”—i.e., links to—sexual material. 

California politicians should let this unconstitutional and censorious proposal fade away, and resist the urge to bring it back next year. Californians do not want mandatory internet ID checks, nor are they interested in fines and incarceration for those who fail to use them. 

The Senate just passed a bill that will let the federal and state governments investigate and sue websites that they claim cause kids mental distress. It’s a terrible idea to let politicians and bureaucrats decide what people should read and view online, but the Senate passed KOSA on a 91-3 vote.   

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Don't let congress censor the internet

Bill proponents have focused on some truly tragic stories of loss, and then tied these tragedies to the internet. But anxiety, eating disorders, drug abuse, gambling, tobacco and alcohol use by minors, and the host of other ills that KOSA purports to address all existed well before the internet. 

The Senate vote means that the House could take up and vote on this bill at any time. The House could also choose to debate its own, similarly flawed, version of KOSA. Several members of the House have expressed concerns about the bill. 

The members of Congress who vote for this bill should remember—they do not, and will not, control who will be in charge of punishing bad internet speech. The Federal Trade Commission,  majority-controlled by the President’s party, will be able to decide what kind of content “harms” minors, then investigate or file lawsuits against websites that host that content. 

Politicians in both parties have sought to control various types of internet content. One bill sponsor has said that widely used educational materials that teach about the history of racism in the U.S. causes depression in kids. Kids speaking out about mental health challenges or trying to help friends with addiction are likely to be treated the same as those promoting addictive or self-harming behaviors, and will be kicked offline. Minors engaging in activism or even discussing the news could be shut down, since the grounds for suing websites expand to conditions like “anxiety.” 

KOSA will lead to people who make online content about sex education, and LGBTQ+ identity and health, being persecuted and shut down as well. Views on how, or if, these subjects should be broached vary widely across U.S. communities. All it will take is one member of the Federal Trade Commission seeking to score political points, or a state attorney general seeking to ensure re-election, to start going after the online speech his or her constituents don’t like. 

All of these speech burdens will affect adults, too. Adults simply won’t find the content that was mass-deleted in the name of avoiding KOSA-inspired lawsuits; and we’ll all be burdened by websites and apps that install ID checks, age gates, and invasive (and poorly functioning) software content filters. 

The vast majority of speech that KOSA affects is constitutionally protected in the U.S., which is why there is a long list of reasons that KOSA is unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the lawmakers voting for this bill have hand-waved away those concerns. They’ve also blown off the voices of millions of young people who will have their free expression constricted by this bill, including the thousands who spoke to EFF directly about their concerns and fears around KOSA. 

We can’t rely solely on lawsuits and courts to protect us from the growing wave of anti-speech internet legislation, with KOSA at its forefront. We need to let the people making the laws know that the public is becoming aware of their censorship plans—and won’t stand for them.

TAKE ACTION

Our Freedom Of Speech Doesn't End Online

The U.S. patent system is broken, particularly when it comes to software patents. At EFF, we’ve been fighting hard for changes that make the system more sensible. Last month, we got a big victory when we defeated a set of rules that would have mangled one of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)’s most effective systems for kicking out bad patents. 

In 2012, recognizing the entrenched problem of a patent office that spewed out tens of thousands of ridiculous patents every year, Congress created a new system to review patents called “inter partes reviews,” or IPRs. While far from perfect, IPRs have resulted in cancellation of thousands of patent claims that never should have been issued in the first place. 

At EFF, we used the IPR process to crowd-fund a challenge to the Personal Audio “podcasting patent” that tried to extract patent royalty payments from U.S. podcasters. We won that proceeding and our victory was confirmed on appeal.

It’s no surprise that big patent owners and patent trolls have been trying to wreck the IPR system for years. They’ve tried, and failed, to get federal courts to dismantle IPRs. They’ve tried, and failed, to push legislation that would break the IPR system. And last year, they found a new way to attack IPRs—by convincing the USPTO to propose a set of rules that would have sharply limited the public’s right to challenge bad patents. 

That’s when EFF and our supporters knew we had to fight back. Nearly one thousand EFF supporters filed comments with the USPTO using our suggested language, and hundreds more of you wrote your own comments. 

Today, we say thank you to everyone who took the time to speak out. Your voice does matter. In fact, the USPTO withdrew all three of the terrible proposals that we focused on. 

Our Victory to Keep Public Access To Patent Challenges 

The original rules would have greatly increased expanded what are called “discretionary denials,” enabling judges at the USPTO to throw out an IPR petition without adequately considering the merits of the petition. While we would like to see even fewer discretionary denials, defeating the proposed limitations patent challenges is a significant win.

First, the original rules would have stopped “certain for-profit entities” from using the IPR system altogether. While EFF is a non-profit, for-profit companies can and should be allowed to play a role in getting wrongly granted patents out of the system. Membership-based patent defense organizations like RPX or Unified Patents can allow small companies to band together and limit their costs while defending themselves against invalid patents. And non-profits like the Linux Foundation, who joined us in fighting against these wrongheaded proposed rules, can work together with professional patent defense groups to file more IPRs. 

EFF and our supporters wrote in opposition to this rule change—and it’s out. 

Second, the original rules would have exempted “micro and small entities” from patent reviews altogether. This exemption would have applied to many of the types of companies we call “patent trolls”—that is, companies whose business is simply demanding license fees for patents, rather than offering actual products or services. Those companies, specially designed to threaten litigation, would have easily qualified as “small entities” and avoided having their patents challenged. Patent trolls, which bully real small companies and software developers into paying unwarranted settlement fees, aren’t the kind of “small business” that should be getting special exemptions from patent review. 

EFF and our supporters opposed this exemption, and it’s out of the final rulemaking. 

Third, last year’s proposal would have allowed for IPR petitions to be kicked out if they had a “parallel proceeding”—in other words, a similar patent dispute—in district court. This was a wholly improper reason to not consider IPRs, especially since district court evidence rules are different than those in place for an IPR. 

EFF and our supporters opposed these new limitations, and they’re out. 

While the new rules aren’t perfect, they’re greatly improved. We would still prefer more IPRs rather than fewer, and don’t want to see IPRs that otherwise meet the rules get kicked out of the review process. But even there, the new revised rules have big improvements. For instance, they allow for separate briefing of discretionary denials, so that people and companies seeking IPR review can keep their focus on the merits of their petition. 

Additional reading: 

• EFF Comments on the 2024 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
• EFF Comments on the 2023 Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

The EU Council has now passed a 4th term without passing its controversial message-scanning proposal. The just-concluded Belgian Presidency failed to broker a deal that would push forward this regulation, which has now been debated in the EU for more than two years. 

For all those who have reached out to sign the “Don’t Scan Me” petition, thank you—your voice is being heard. News reports indicate the sponsors of this flawed proposal withdrew it because they couldn’t get a majority of member states to support it. 

Now, it’s time to stop attempting to compromise encryption in the name of public safety. EFF has opposed this legislation from the start. Today, we’ve published a statement, along with EU civil society groups, explaining why this flawed proposal should be withdrawn.  

The scanning proposal would create “detection orders” that allow for messages, files, and photos from hundreds of millions of users around the world to be compared to government databases of child abuse images. At some points during the debate, EU officials even suggested using AI to scan text conversations and predict who would engage in child abuse. That’s one of the reasons why some opponents have labeled the proposal “chat control.” 

There’s scant public support for government file-scanning systems that break encryption. Nor is there support in EU law. People who need secure communications the most—lawyers, journalists, human rights workers, political dissidents, and oppressed minorities—will be the most affected by such invasive systems. Another group harmed would be those whom the EU’s proposal claims to be helping—abused and at-risk children, who need to securely communicate with trusted adults in order to seek help. 

The right to have a private conversation, online or offline, is a bedrock human rights principle. When surveillance is used as an investigation technique, it must be targeted and coupled with strong judicial oversight. In the coming EU council presidency, which will be led by Hungary, leaders should drop this flawed message-scanning proposal and focus on law enforcement strategies that respect peoples’ privacy and security. 

Further reading: 

• EFF and EDRi Coalition Statement on the Future of the CSA Regulation

California lawmakers are debating an ill-advised bill that would require internet users to show their ID in order to look at sexually explicit content. EFF has sent a letter to California legislators encouraging them to oppose Assembly Bill 3080, which would have the result of censoring the internet for all users. 

If you care about a free and open internet for all, and are a California resident, now would be a good time to contact your California Assemblymember and Senator and tell them you oppose A.B. 3080. 

Adults Have The Right To Free And Anonymous Internet Browsing

If A.B. 3080 passes, it would make it illegal to show websites with one-third or more “sexually explicit content” to minors. These “explicit” websites would join a list of products or services that can’t be legally sold to minors in California, including things like firearms, ammunition, tobacco, and e-cigarettes. 

But these things are not the same, and should not be treated the same under state or federal law. Adults have a First Amendment right to look for information online, including sexual content. One of the reasons EFF has opposed mandatory age verification is because there’s no way to check ID online just for minors without drastically harming the rights of adults to read, get information, and to speak and browse online anonymously. 

As EFF explained in a recent amicus brief on the issue, collecting ID online is fundamentally different—and more dangerous—than in-person ID checks in the physical world. Online ID checks are not just a momentary display—they require adults “to upload data-rich, government-issued identifying documents to either the website or a third-party verifier” and create a “potentially lasting record” of their visit to the establishment. 

The more information a website collects about visitors, the more chances there are for such data to get into the hands of a criminal or other bad actor, a marketing company, or someone who has filed a subpoena for it. So-called “anonymized” data can be reassembled, especially when it consists of data-rich government ID together with browsing data like IP addresses. 

Data breaches are a fact of life. Once governments insist on creating these ID logs for visiting websites with sexual content, those data breaches will become more dangerous. 

This Bill Mandates ID Checks For A Wide Range Of Content 

The bar is set low in this bill. It’s far from clear what websites prosecutors will consider to have one-third content that’s not appropriate for minors, as that can vary widely by community and even family standards. The bill will surely rope in general-use websites that allow some explicit content. A sex education website for high-school seniors, for instance, could be considered “offensive” and lacking in educational value for young minors. 

Social media sites, online message forums, and even email lists may have some portion of content that isn’t appropriate for younger minors, but also a large amount of general-interest content. Bills like California’s that require ID checks for any site with 33% content that prosecutors deem explicit is similar to having Netflix require ID checks at login, whether a user wants to watch a G-rated movie or an R-rated movie. 

Adults’ Right To View Websites Of Their Choice Is Settled Law 

U.S. courts have already weighed in numerous times on government efforts to age-gate content, including sexual content. In Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court overruled almost all of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that was intended to keep “obscene or indecent” material away from minors. 

The high court again considered the issue in 2004 in ACLU v. Ashcroft, when it found that a federal law of that era, which sought to impose age-verification requirements on sexual online content, was likely unconstitutional. 

Other States Will Follow 

In the past year, several other state legislatures have passed similar unwise and unconstitutional “online ID check” laws. They are being subject to legal challenges now working their way through courts, including a Texas age verification law that EFF has asked the Supreme Court to look at. 

Elected officials in many other states, however, wisely refused to enact mandatory online ID laws, including Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin. In April, Arizona’s governor vetoed a mandatory ID-check bill that was passed along partisan lines in her state, stating that the bill “goes against settled case law” and insisting any future proposal must be bipartisan and also “work within the bounds of the First Amendment.” 

California is not only the largest state, it is the home of many of the nation’s largest creative industries. It has also been a leader in online privacy law. If California passes A.B. 3080, it will be a green light to other states to pass online ID-checking laws that are even worse. 

Tennessee, for instance, recently passed a mandatory ID bill that includes felony penalties for anyone who “publishes or distributes” a website with one-third adult content. Tennessee’s fiscal review committee estimated that the state will incarcerate one person per year under this law, and has budgeted accordingly. 

California lawmakers have a chance to restore some sanity to our national conversation about how to protect minors online. Mandatory ID checks, and fines or incarceration for those who fail to use them, are not the answer. 

Further reading: 

• EFF Opposition Letter Regarding A.B. 3080

As the current leadership of the EU Council enters its final weeks, it is debating a dangerous proposal that could lead to scanning the private files of billions of people. 

EFF strongly opposes this proposal, put forward by the Belgian Presidency at the EU Council, which is part of the EU’s executive branch. Together with European Digital Rights (EDRi) and other groups that defend encryption, we have sent an open letter to the EU Council explaining the dangers of the proposal. The letter asks Ministers in the Council of the EU to reject all proposals that are inconsistent with end-to-end encryption, including surveillance technologies like client-side scanning. 

The Belgian proposal was debated behind closed doors, and civil society groups have only recently been able to even evaluate and discuss the proposal after it was leaked to the press. 

Users who don’t agree to the scanning will be forbidden from sharing images or links.

If the proposal is adopted, it would represent a significant step backwards. Since 2022, the EU has been debating a file-scanning regulation that would eviscerate end-to-end encryption. Realizing that this system of client-side scanning, which some have called “chat control,” would violate the human rights of EU residents, a key European Parliament committee agreed in November to amendments that would protect end-to-end encryption. 

How We Got Here

EFF’s advocacy has always defended the right to have a private conversation online, and the technology that can enable that: end-to-end encryption. That’s why, since 2022, we have opposed the efforts by some EU officials to put a backdoor into encrypted communications, in the name of protecting children online. 

TAKE ACTION

SIGN THE PETITION: STOP SCANNING ME!

Without major changes, the child protection proposal would have been a disaster for privacy and security online. In November, we won a victory when the EU Parliament’s civil liberties agreed to make big changes to the proposal that would make it clear that states could not engage in mass scanning of files, photos and messages in the name of fighting crime. 

The Belgian proposal, which EFF has reviewed, specifies that online services would be forced to install software so that child abuse material “should remain detectable in all interpersonal communications services.” To do this, the online services must apply “vetted technology”—in other words, government-approved software—that would allow law enforcement to scan the photos, messages and files of any user. 

The proposal actually goes on to suggest that users should be asked to “give explicit consent” for this invasion of privacy. Users who don’t agree to the scanning will be forbidden from sharing images or links. The idea of whitewashing mass surveillance with a government-approved “click-through” agreement, and banning users from basic internet functionality if they don’t agree, sounds like a dystopian novel—but it’s being seriously debated. 

We reject mass-scanning as a means of public safety. Phones and laptops must work for the users who own them, not act as “bugs in our pockets” in the service of governments, foreign or domestic. Government eavesdropping in the name of crime-fighting must always be targeted, narrowly limited, and subject to judicial oversight. 

The Belgian Presidency’s proposal is the latest in a long line of attempts by governments to evade this basic human rights concept. As its details become more widely known, this colossally unpopular spying idea will be rejected not just by EFF and other NGOs, but by voting publics in the EU and beyond. 

As Congress appears ready to gut one of the internet’s most important laws for protecting free speech, they are ignoring how that law protects and benefits millions of Americans’ ability to speak online every day.  

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding a hearing on Wednesday on a bill that would end Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) in 18 months. The authors of the bill argue that setting a deadline to either change or eliminate Section 230 will force the Big Tech online platforms to the bargaining table to create a new regime of intermediary liability. 

Take Action

Ending Section 230 Will Make Big Tech Monopolies Worse

As EFF has said for years, Section 230 is essential to protecting individuals’ ability to speak, organize, and create online. 

Congress knew exactly what Section 230 would do – that it would lay the groundwork for speech of all kinds across the internet, on websites both small and large. And that’s exactly what has happened.  

Section 230 isn’t in conflict with American values. It upholds them in the digital world. People are able to find and create their own communities, and moderate them as they see fit. People and companies are responsible for their own speech, but (with narrow exceptions) not the speech of others. 

The law is not a shield for Big Tech. Critically, the law benefits the millions of users who don’t have the resources to build and host their own blogs, email services, or social media sites, and instead rely on services to host that speech. Section 230 also benefits thousands of small online services that host speech. Those people are being shut out as the bill sponsors pursue a dangerously misguided policy.  

If Big Tech is at the table in any future discussion for what rules should govern internet speech, EFF has no confidence that the result will protect and benefit internet users, as Section 230 does currently. If Congress is serious about rewriting the internet’s speech rules, it needs to abandon this bill and spend time listening to the small services and everyday users who would be harmed should they repeal Section 230.  

Section 230 Protects Everyday Internet Users 

The bill introduced by House Energy & Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) is based on a series of mistaken assumptions and fundamental misunderstandings about Section 230. Mike Masnick at TechDirt has already explained many of the flawed premises and factual errors that the co-sponsors have made. 

We won’t repeat the many errors that Masnick identifies. Instead, we want to focus on what we see as a glaring omission in the co-sponsor’s argument: how central Section 230 is to ensuring that every person can speak online.   

Let’s start with the text of Section 230. Importantly, the law protects both online services and users. It says that “no provider or user shall be treated as the publisher” of content created by another. That's in clear agreement with most American’s belief that people should be held responsible for their own speech—not that of other people.   

Section 230 protects individual bloggers, anyone who forwards an email, and social media users who have ever reshared or retweeted another person’s content online. Section 230 also protects individual moderators who might delete or otherwise curate others’ online content, along with anyone who provides web hosting services. 

As EFF has explained, online speech is frequently targeted with meritless lawsuits. Big Tech can afford to fight these lawsuits without Section 230. Everyday internet users, community forums, and small businesses cannot. Engine has estimated that without Section 230, many startups and small services would be inundated with costly litigation that could drive them offline. 

Deleting Section 230 Will Create A Field Day For The Internet’s Worst Users  

The co-sponsors say that too many websites and apps have “refused” to go after “predators, drug dealers, sex traffickers, extortioners and cyberbullies,” and imagine that removing Section 230 will somehow force these services to better moderate user-generated content on their sites.  

Nothing could be further from the truth. If lawmakers are legitimately motivated to help online services root out unlawful activity and terrible content appearing online, the last thing they should do is eliminate Section 230. The current law strongly incentivizes websites and apps, both large and small, to kick off their worst-behaving users, to remove offensive content, and in cases of illegal behavior, work with law enforcement to hold those users responsible. 

Take Action

Tell Congress: Ending Section 230 Will Hurt Users

If Congress deletes Section 230, the pre-digital legal rules around distributing content would kick in. That law strongly discourages services from moderating or even knowing about user-generated content. This is because the more a service moderates user content, the more likely it is to be held liable for that content. Under that legal regime, online services will have a huge incentive to just not moderate and not look for bad behavior. Taking the sponsors of the bill at their word, this would result in the exact opposite of their goal of protecting children and adults from harmful content online.  

We should all have the freedom to read, share, and comment on the laws we must live by. But yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-4 to move forward the PRO Codes Act (H.R. 1631), a bill that would limit those rights in a critical area. 

TAKE ACTION

Tell Congress To Reject The Pro Codes Act

A few well-resourced private organizations have made a business of charging money for access to building and safety codes, even when those codes have been incorporated into law. 

These organizations convene volunteers to develop model standards, encourage regulators to make those standards into mandatory laws, and then sell copies of those laws to the people (and city and state governments) that have to follow and enforce them.

They’ve claimed it’s their copyrighted material. But court after court has said that you can’t use copyright in this way—no one “owns” the law. The Pro Codes Act undermines that rule and the public interest, changing the law to state that the standards organizations that write these rules “shall retain” a copyright in it, as long as the rules are made “publicly accessible” online. 

That’s not nearly good enough. These organizations already have so-called online reading rooms that aren’t searchable, aren’t accessible to print-disabled people, and condition your ability to read mandated codes on agreeing to onerous terms of use, among many other problems. That’s why the Association of Research Libraries sent a letter to Congress last week (supported by EFF, disability rights groups, and many others) explaining how the Pro Codes Act would trade away our right to truly understand and educate our communities about the law for cramped public access to it. Congress must not let well-positioned industry associations abuse copyright to control how you access, use, and share the law. Now that this bill has passed committee, we urgently need your help—tell Congress to reject the Pro Codes Act.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: No one owns the law

You’re not supposed to be able to litigate in secret in the U.S. That’s especially true in a patent case dealing with technology that most internet users rely on every day.

 Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening in a case called Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc. The parties have made so much of their dispute secret that it is hard to tell how the patents owned by Entropic might affect the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) standard, a key technical standard that ensures cable customers can access the internet.

In Entropic, both sides are experienced litigants who should know that this type of sealing is improper. Unfortunately, overbroad secrecy is common in patent litigation, particularly in cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

EFF has sought to ensure public access to lawsuits in this district for years. In 2016, EFF intervened in another patent case in this very district, arguing that the heavy sealing by a patent owner called Blue Spike violated the public’s First Amendment and common law rights. A judge ordered the case unsealed.

As Entropic shows, however, parties still believe they can shut down the public’s access to presumptively public legal disputes. This secrecy has to stop. That’s why EFF, represented by the Science, Health & Information Clinic at Columbia Law School, filed a motion today seeking to intervene in the case and unseal a variety of legal briefs and evidence submitted in the case. EFF’s motion argues that the legal issues in the case and their potential implications for the DOCSIS standard are a matter of public concern and asks the district court judge hearing the case to provide greater public access.

Protective Orders Cannot Override The Public’s First Amendment Rights

As EFF’s motion describes, the parties appear to have agreed to keep much of their filings secret via what is known as a protective order. These court orders are common in litigation and prevent the parties from disclosing information that they obtain from one another during the fact-gathering phase of a case. Importantly, protective orders set the rules for information exchanged between the parties, not what is filed on a public court docket.

The parties in Entropic, however, are claiming that the protective order permits them to keep secret both legal arguments made in briefs filed with the court as well as evidence submitted with those filings. EFF’s motion argues that this contention is incorrect as a matter of law because the parties cannot use their agreement to abrogate the public’s First Amendment and common law rights to access court records. More generally, relying on protective orders to limit public access is problematic because parties in litigation often have little interest or incentive to make their filings public.

Unfortunately, parties in patent litigation too often seek to seal a variety of information that should be public. EFF continues to push back on these claims. In addition to our work in Texas, we have also intervened in a California patent case, where we also won an important transparency ruling. The court in that case prevented Uniloc, a company that had filed hundreds of patent lawsuits, from keeping the public in the dark as to its licensing activities.

That is why part of EFF’s motion asks the court to clarify that parties litigating in the Texas district court cannot rely on a protective order for secrecy and that they must instead seek permission from the court and justify any claim that material should be filed under seal.

On top of clarifying that the parties’ protective orders cannot frustrate the public’s right to access federal court records, we hope the motion in Entropic helps shed light on the claims and defenses at issue in this case, which are themselves a matter of public concern. The DOCSIS standard is used in virtually all cable internet modems around the world, so the claims made by Entropic may have broader consequences for anyone who connects to the internet via a cable modem.

It’s also impossible to tell if Entropic might want to sue more cable modem makers. So far, Entropic has sued five big cable modem vendors—Charter, Cox, Comcast, DISH TV, and DirecTV—in more than a dozen separate cases. EFF is hopeful that the records will shed light on how broadly Entropic believes its patents can reach cable modem technology.

EFF is extremely grateful that Columbia Law School’s Science, Health & Information Clinic could represent us in this case. We especially thank the student attorneys who worked on the filing, including Sean Hong, Gloria Yi, Hiba Ismail, and Stephanie Lim, and the clinic’s director, Christopher Morten.

The U.S. Senate is moving forward with two bills that would enrich patent trolls, patent system insiders, and a few large companies that rely on flimsy patents, at the expense of everyone else. 

One bill, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would bring back some of the worst software patents we’ve seen, and even re-introduce types of patents on human genes that were banned years ago. Meanwhile, a similar group of senators is trying to push forward the PREVAIL Act (S. 2220), which would shut out most of the public from even petitioning the government to reconsider wrongly granted patents. 

Take Action

Tell Congress: No New Bills For Patent Trolls

Patent trolls are companies that don’t focus on making products or selling services. Instead, they collect patents, then use them to threaten or sue other companies and individuals. They’re not a niche problem; patent trolls filed the majority of patent lawsuits last year and for all the years in which we have good data. In the tech sector, they file more than 80% of the lawsuits. These do-nothing companies continue to be vigorous users of the patent system, and they’ll be the big winners under the two bills the U.S. Senate is considering pushing forward. 

Don’t Bring Back “Do It On A Computer” Patents 

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overturn key legal precedents that we all rely on to kick the worst-of-the-worst patents out of the system. PERA would throw out a landmark Supreme Court ruling called the Alice v. CLS Bank case, which made it clear that patents can’t just claim basic business or cultural processes by adding generic computer language. 

The Alice rules are what—finally—allowed courts to throw out the most ridiculous “do it on a computer” software patents at an early stage. Under the Alice test, courts threw out patents on “matchmaking”, online picture menus, scavenger hunts, and online photo contests. 

The rules under Alice are clear, fair, and they work. It hasn’t stopped patent trolling, because there are so many patent owners willing to ask for nuisance-value settlements that are far below the cost of legal defense. It’s not perfect, and it hasn’t ended patent trolling. But Alice has done a good job of saving everyday internet users from some of the worst patent claims. 

PERA would allow patents like the outrageous one brought forward in the Alice v. CLS Bank case, which claimed the idea of having a third party clear financial transactions—but on a computer. A patent on ordering restaurant food through a mobile phone, which was used to sue more than 100 restaurants, hotels, and fast-food chains before it was finally thrown out under the Alice rules, could survive if PERA becomes law. 

Don’t Bring Back Patents On Human Genes 

PERA goes further than software. It would also overturn a Supreme Court rule that prevents patents from being granted on naturally occurring human genes. For almost 30 years, some biotech and pharmaceutical companies used a cynical argument to patent genes and monopolize diagnostic tests that analyzed them. That let the patent owners run up the costs on tests like the BRCA genes, which are predictive of ovarian and breast cancers. When the Supreme Court disallowed patents on human genes found in nature, the prices of those tests plummeted. 

Patenting naturally occurring human genes is a horrific practice and the Supreme Court was right to ban it. The fact that PERA sponsors want to bring back these patents is unconscionable. 

Allowing extensive patenting of genetic information will also harm future health innovations, by blocking competition from those who may offer more affordable tests and treatments. It could affect our response to future pandemics. Imagine if the first lab to sequence the COVID-19 genome filed for patent protection, and went on to threaten other labs that seek to create tests with patent infringement. As an ACLU attorney who litigated against the BRCA gene patents has pointed out, this scenario is not fantastical if a bill like PERA were to advance. 

Take Action

Tell Congress To Reject PERA and PREVAIL

Don’t Shut Down The Public’s Right To Challenge Patents

The PREVAIL Act would bar most people from petitioning the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to revoke patents that never should have been granted in the first place. 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues hundreds of thousands of patents every year, with less than 20 hours, on average, being devoted to examining each patent. Mistakes happen. 

That’s why Congress created a process for the public to ask the USPTO to double-check certain patents, to make sure they were not wrongly granted. This process, called inter partes review or IPR, is still expensive and difficult, but faster and cheaper than federal courts, where litigating a patent through a jury trial can cost millions of dollars. IPR has allowed the cancellation of thousands of patent claims that never should have been issued in the first place. 

The PREVAIL Act will limit access to the IPR process to only people and companies that have been directly threatened or sued over a patent. No one else will have standing to even file a petition. That means that EFF, other non-profits, and membership-based patent defense companies won’t be able to access the IPR process to protect the public. 

EFF used the IPR process back in 2013, when thousands of our supporters chipped in to raise more than $80,000 to fight against a patent that claimed to cover all podcasts. We won’t be able to do that if PREVAIL passes. 

And EFF isn’t the only non-profit to use IPRs to protect users and developers. The Linux Foundation, for instance, funds an “open source zone” that uses IPR to knock out patents that may be used to sue open source projects. Dozens of lawsuits are filed each year against open source projects, the majority of them brought by patent trolls. 

IPR is already too expensive and limited; Congress should be eliminating barriers to challenging bad patents, not raising more.

Congress Should Work For the Public, Not For Patent Trolls

The Senators pushing this agenda have chosen willful ignorance of the patent troll problem. The facts remain clear: the majority of patent lawsuits are brought by patent trolls. In the tech sector, it’s more than 80%. These numbers may be low considering threat letters from patent trolls, which don’t become visible in the public record. 

These patent lawsuits don’t have much to do with what most people think of when they think about “inventors” or inventions. They’re brought by companies that have no business beyond making patent threats. 

The Alice rules and IPR system, along with other important reforms, have weakened the power of these patent trolls. Patent trolls that used to receive regular multi-million dollar paydays have seen their incomes shrink (but not disappear). Some trolls, like Shipping and Transit LLC finally wound up operations after being hit with sanctions (more than 500 lawsuits later). Trolls like IP Edge, now being investigated by a federal judge after claiming its true “owners” included a Texas food truck owner who turned out to be, essentially, a decoy. 

There’s big money behind bringing back the patent troll business, as well as a few huge tech and pharma companies that prefer to use unjustified monopolies rather than competing fairly. Two former Federal Circuit judges, two former Directors of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and many other well-placed patent insiders are all telling Congress that Alice should be overturned and patent trolls should be allowed to run amok. We can’t let that happen. 

Take Action

Tell Congress: Don't Work For Patent Trolls

The authors of the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) unveiled an amended version this week, but it’s still an unconstitutional censorship bill that continues to empower state officials to target services and online content they do not like. We are asking everyone reading this to oppose this latest version, and to demand that their representatives oppose it—even if you have already done so. 

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: OPPOSE THE KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT

KOSA remains a dangerous bill that would allow the government to decide what types of information can be shared and read online by everyone. It would still require an enormous number of websites, apps, and online platforms to filter and block legal, and important, speech. It would almost certainly still result in age verification requirements. Some of its provisions have changed over time, and its latest changes are detailed below. But those improvements do not cure KOSA’s core First Amendment problems. Moreover, a close review shows that state attorneys general still have a great deal of power to target online services and speech they do not like, which we think will harm children seeking access to basic health information and a variety of other content that officials deem harmful to minors.  

We’ll dive into the details of KOSA’s latest changes, but first we want to remind everyone of the stakes. KOSA is still a censorship bill and it will still harm a large number of minors who have First Amendment rights to access lawful speech online. It will endanger young people and impede the rights of everyone who uses the platforms, services, and websites affected by the bill. Based on our previous analyses, statements by its authors and various interest groups, as well as the overall politicization of youth education and online activity, we believe the following groups—to name just a few—will be endangered:  

• LGBTQ+ Youth will be at risk of having content, educational material, and their own online identities erased.  
• Young people searching for sexual health and reproductive rights information will find their search results stymied. 
• Teens and children in historically oppressed and marginalized groups will be unable to locate information about their history and shared experiences. 
• Activist youth on either side of the aisle, such as those fighting for changes to climate laws, gun laws, or religious rights, will be siloed, and unable to advocate and connect on platforms.  
• Young people seeking mental health help and information will be blocked from finding it, because even discussions of suicide, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders will be hidden from them. 
• Teens hoping to combat the problem of addiction—either their own, or that of their friends, families, and neighbors, will not have the resources they need to do so.  
• Any young person seeking truthful news or information that could be considered depressing will find it harder to educate themselves and engage in current events and honest discussion. 
• Adults in any of these groups who are unwilling to share their identities will find themselves shunted onto a second-class internet alongside the young people who have been denied access to this information. 

What’s Changed in the Latest (2024) Version of KOSA 

In its impact, the latest version of KOSA is not meaningfully different from those previous versions. The “duty of care” censorship section remains in the bill, though modified as we will explain below. The latest version removes the authority of state attorneys general to sue or prosecute people for not complying with the “duty of care.” But KOSA still permits these state officials to enforce other part of the bill based on their political whims and we expect those officials to use this new law to the same censorious ends as they would have of previous versions. And the legal requirements of KOSA are still only possible for sites to safely follow if they restrict access to content based on age, effectively mandating age verification.   

KOSA is still a censorship bill and it will still harm a large number of minors

Duty of Care is Still a Duty of Censorship 

Previously, KOSA outlined a wide collection of harms to minors that platforms had a duty to prevent and mitigate through “the design and operation” of their product. This includes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and bullying, among others. This seemingly anodyne requirement—that apps and websites must take measures to prevent some truly awful things from happening—would have led to overbroad censorship on otherwise legal, important topics for everyone as we’ve explained before.  

The updated duty of care says that a platform shall “exercise reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature” to prevent and mitigate those harms. The difference is subtle, and ultimately, unimportant. There is no case law defining what is “reasonable care” in this context. This language still means increased liability merely for hosting and distributing otherwise legal content that the government—in this case the FTC—claims is harmful.  

Design Feature Liability 

The bigger textual change is that the bill now includes a definition of a “design feature,” which the bill requires platforms to limit for minors. The “design feature” of products that could lead to liability is defined as: 

any feature or component of a covered platform that will encourage or increase the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the covered platform, or activity of minors on the covered platform. 

Design features include but are not limited to 

(A) infinite scrolling or auto play; 

(B) rewards for time spent on the platform; 

(C) notifications; 

(D) personalized recommendation systems; 

(E) in-game purchases; or 

(F) appearance altering filters. 

These design features are a mix of basic elements and those that may be used to keep visitors on a site or platform. There are several problems with this provision. First, it’s not clear when offering basic features that many users rely on, such as notifications, by itself creates a harm. But that points to the fundamental problem of this provision. KOSA is essentially trying to use features of a service as a proxy to create liability for speech online that the bill’s authors do not like. But the list of harmful designs shows that the legislators backing KOSA want to regulate online content, not just design.   

For example, if an online service presented an endless scroll of math problems for children to complete, or rewarded children with virtual stickers and other prizes for reading digital children’s books, would lawmakers consider those design features harmful? Of course not. Infinite scroll and autoplay are generally not a concern for legislators. It’s that these lawmakers do not like some lawful content that is accessible via online service’s features. 

What KOSA tries to do here then is to launder restrictions on content that lawmakers do not like through liability for supposedly harmful “design features.” But the First Amendment still prohibits Congress from indirectly trying to censor lawful speech it disfavors.  

We shouldn’t kid ourselves that the latest version of KOSA will stop state officials from targeting vulnerable communities.

Allowing the government to ban content designs is a dangerous idea. If the FTC decided that direct messages, or encrypted messages, were leading to harm for minors—under this language they could bring an enforcement action against a platform that allowed users to send such messages. 

Regardless of whether we like infinite scroll or auto-play on platforms, these design features are protected by the First Amendment; just like the design features we do like. If the government tried to limit an online newspaper from using an infinite scroll feature or auto-playing videos, that case would be struck down. KOSA’s latest variant is no different.   

Attorneys General Can Still Use KOSA to Enact Political Agendas 

As we mentioned above, the enforcement available to attorneys general has been narrowed to no longer include the duty of care. But due to the rule of construction and the fact that attorneys general can still enforce other portions of KOSA, this is cold comfort. 

For example, it is true enough that the amendments to KOSA prohibit a state from targeting an online service based on claims that in hosting LGBTQ content that it violated KOSA’s duty of care. Yet that same official could use another provision of KOSA—which allows them to file suits based on failures in a platform’s design—to target the same content. The state attorney general could simply claim that they are not targeting the LGBTQ content, but rather the fact that the content was made available to minors via notifications, recommendations, or other features of a service. 

We shouldn’t kid ourselves that the latest version of KOSA will stop state officials from targeting vulnerable communities. And KOSA leaves all of the bill’s censorial powers with the FTC, a five-person commission nominated by the president. This still allows a small group of federal officials appointed by the President to decide what content is dangerous for young people. Placing this enforcement power with the FTC is still a First Amendment problem: no government official, state or federal, has the power to dictate by law what people can read online.  

The Long Fight Against KOSA Continues in 2024 

For two years now, EFF has laid out the clear arguments against this bill. KOSA creates liability if an online service fails to perfectly police a variety of content that the bill deems harmful to minors. Services have little room to make any mistakes if some content is later deemed harmful to minors and, as a result, are likely to restrict access to a broad spectrum of lawful speech, including information about health issues like eating disorders, drug addiction, and anxiety.  

The fight against KOSA has amassed an enormous coalition of people of all ages and all walks of life who know that censorship is not the right approach to protecting people online, and that the promise of the internet is one that must apply equally to everyone, regardless of age. Some of the people who have advocated against KOSA from day one have now graduated high school or college. But every time this bill returns, more people learn why we must stop it from becoming law.   

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: OPPOSE THE KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT

We cannot afford to allow the government to decide what information is available online. Please contact your representatives today to tell them to stop the Kids Online Safety Act from moving forward. 

Our government shouldn’t be spying on journalists. Nor should law enforcement agencies force journalists to identify their confidential sources or go to prison. 

To fix this, we need to change the law. Now, we’ve got our best chance in years. The House of Representatives has passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act, H.R. 4250, and it’s one of the strongest federal shield bills for journalists we’ve seen. 

Take Action

Tell Congress To Pass the PRESS Act Now

The PRESS Act would do two critical things: first, it would bar federal law enforcement from surveilling journalists by gathering their phone, messaging, or email records. Secondly, it strictly limits when the government can force a journalist to disclose their sources. 

Since its introduction, the bill has had strong bipartisan support. And such “shield” laws for reporters have vast support across the U.S., with 49 states and the District of Columbia all having some type of law that prevents journalists from being forced to hand over their files to assist in criminal prosecutions, or even private lawsuits. 

While journalists are well protected in many states, federal law is currently lacking in protections. That’s had serious consequences for journalists, and for all Americans’ right to freely access information. 

Multiple Presidential Administrations Have Abused Laws To Spy On Journalists

The Congressional report on this bill details abuses against journalists by all of the past three Presidential administrations. Federal law enforcement officials improperly acquired reporters’ phone records on numerous occasions since 2004, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. 

On at least 12 occasions since 1990, law enforcement threatened journalists with jail or home confinement for refusing to give up their sources; some reporters served months in jail. 

Elected officials must do more about these abuses than preside over after-the-fact apologies. 

PRESS Act Protections

The PRESS Act bars the federal government from surveilling journalists through their phones, email providers, or other online services. These digital protections are critical because they reflect how journalists operate in the field today. The bill restricts subpoenas aimed not just at the journalists themselves, but their phone and email providers. Its exceptions are narrow and targeted. 

The PRESS Act also has an appropriately broad definition of the practice of journalism, covering both professional and citizen journalists. It applies regardless of a journalist’s political leanings or medium of publication. 

The government surveillance of journalists over the years has chilled journalists’ ability to gather news. It’s also likely discouraged sources from coming forward, because their anonymity isn’t guaranteed. We can’t know the important stories that weren’t published, or weren’t published in time, because of fear of retaliation on the part of journalists or their sources. 

In addition to EFF, the PRESS Act is supported by a wide range of press and rights groups, including the ACLU, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition, the News Media Alliance, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and many others. 

Our democracy relies on the rights of both professional journalists and everyday citizens to gather and publish information. The PRESS Act is a long overdue protection. We have sent Congress a clear message to pass it; please join us by sending your own email to the Senate using our links below. 

Take Action

Tell Congress To Pass the PRESS Act Now

At EFF, we believe that all the rights we have in the offline world–to speak freely, create culture, play games, build things and do business–must hold up in the digital world, as well. 

EFF’s longstanding project of fighting for a more balanced, just patent system has always borne free expression in mind. And patent trolls, who simply use intellectual property (IP) rights to extract money from others, continue to be a barrier to people who want to freely innovate, or even just use technology. 

Defending IPR 

The inter partes review (IPR) process that Congress created about a decade ago is far from perfect, and we’ve supported a few ideas that would make it stronger. But overall, IPR has been a big step forward for limiting the damage of wrongly granted patents. Thousands of patent claims have been canceled through this process, which uses specialized administrative judges and is considerably faster and less expensive than federal courts. 

And IPR does no harm to legitimate patent holders. In fact, it only affects a tiny proportion of patents at all. In fiscal year 2023, there were 392 patents that were partially invalidated, and 133 patents that were fully invalidated. That’s out of a universe of an estimated 3.8 million “live” patents, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) own data. 

Patent examiners have less than 20 hours, on average, to go through the entire review process for a particular patent application. The process ends with the patent applicant getting a limited monopoly from the government–a monopoly right that’s now given out more than 300,000 times per year. It only makes sense to have some type of post-grant review system to challenge the worst patents at the patent office. 

Despite this, patent trolls and other large, aggressive patent holders are determined to roll back the IPR process. This year, they lobbied the USPTO to begin a process that would allow wrongheaded rule changes that would severely threaten access to the IPR process. 

EFF, allied organizations, and tens of thousands of individuals wrote to the U.S. Patent Office opposing the proposed rules, and insisting that patent challenges should remain open to the public. 

We’re also opposing an even more extreme set of rule changes to IPR that has been unfortunately put forward by some key Senators. The PREVAIL Act would sharply limit IPR to only the immediately affected parties, and bar groups like EFF from accessing IPR at all. (A crowdfunded IPR process is how we shut down the dangerous “podcasting” patent.) 

Defending Alice

The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank barred patents that were nothing more than abstract ideas with computer jargon added in. Using the Alice test, federal courts have kicked out a rogue’s gallery of hundreds of the worst patents, including patents claiming “matchmaking”, online picture menus, scavenger hunts, and online photo contests. 

Dozens of individuals and small businesses have been saved by the Alice precedent, which has done a decent job of stopping the worst computer patents from surviving–at least when a defendant can afford to litigate the case. 

Unfortunately, certain trade groups keep pushing to roll back the Alice framework. For the second year in a row, we saw the introduction of a bill called the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act. This proposal would reverse course not only on the Alice rule, but also authorize the patenting of human genes that currently cannot be patented thanks to another Supreme Court case, AMP v. Myriad. It would “restore” the absolute worst patents on computer technology, and on human genes. 

We also called out the U.S. Solicitor General when that office wrote a shocking brief siding with a patent troll, suggesting that the Supreme Court re-visit Alice. 

The Alice precedent protects everyday internet users. We opposed the Solicitor General when she came out against users, and we’ll continue to strongly oppose PERA. 

Until our patent laws get the kind of wholesale change we have advocated for, profiteers and scam artists will continue to claim they “own” various types of basic internet use. That myth is wrong, it hurts innovation, and it hurts free speech. With your help, EFF remains a bulwark against this type of patent abuse.

This blog is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2023.

Private communication is a fundamental human right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. Yet throughout 2023, politicians across Europe attempted to undermine encryption, seeking to access and scan our private messages and pictures. 

But we pushed back in the EU, and so far, we’ve succeeded. EFF spent this year fighting hard against an EU proposal (text) that, if it became law, would have been a disaster for online privacy in the EU and throughout the world. In the name of fighting online child abuse, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, put forward a draft bill that would allow EU authorities to compel online services to scan user data and check it against law enforcement databases. The proposal would have pressured online services to abandon end-to-end encryption. The Commission even suggested using AI to rifle through peoples’ text messages, leading some opponents to call the proposal “chat control.”

EFF has been opposed to this proposal since it was unveiled last year. We joined together with EU allies and urged people to sign the “Don’t Scan Me” petition. We lobbied EU lawmakers and urged them to protect their constituents’ human right to have a private conversation—backed up by strong encryption. 

Our message broke through. In November, a key EU committee adopted a position that bars mass scanning of messages and protects end-to-end encryption. It also bars mandatory age verification, which would have amounted to a mandate to show ID before you get online; age verification can erode a free and anonymous internet for both kids and adults. 

We’ll continue to monitor the EU proposal as attention shifts to the Council of the EU, the second decision-making body of the EU. Despite several Member States still supporting widespread surveillance of citizens, there are promising signs that such a measure won’t get majority support in the Council. 

Make no mistake—the hard-fought compromise in the European Parliament is a big victory for EFF and our supporters. The governments of the world should understand clearly: mass scanning of peoples’ messages is wrong, and at odds with human rights. 

A Wrong Turn in the U.K.

EFF also opposed the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill (OSB), which passed and became the Online Safety Act (OSA) this October, after more than four years on the British legislative agenda. The stated goal of the OSB was to make the U.K. the world’s “safest place” to use the internet, but the bill’s more than 260 pages actually outline a variety of ways to undermine our privacy and speech. 

The OSA requires platforms to take action to prevent individuals from encountering certain illegal content, which will likely mandate the use of intrusive scanning systems. Even worse, it empowers the British government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to scan for illegal content. The U.K. government said that content will only be scanned to check for specific categories of content. In one of the final OSB debates, a representative of the government noted that orders to scan user files “can be issued only where technically feasible,” as determined by the U.K. communications regulator, Ofcom. 

But as we’ve said many times, there is no middle ground to content scanning and no “safe backdoor” if the internet is to remain free and private. Either all content is scanned and all actors—including authoritarian governments and rogue criminals—have access, or no one does. 

Despite our opposition, working closely with civil society groups in the UK, the bill passed in September, with anti-encryption measures intact. But the story doesn't end here. The OSA remains vague about what exactly it requires of platforms and users alike. Ofcom must now take the OSA and, over the coming year, draft regulations to operationalize the legislation. 

The public understands better than ever that government efforts to “scan it all” will always undermine encryption, and prevent us from having a safe and secure internet. EFF will monitor Ofcom’s drafting of the regulation, and we will continue to hold the UK government accountable to the international and European human rights protections that they are signatories to. 

EFF believes you have the right to have a private conversation–in the physical world, and in the digital world. The best technology to protect that right is end-to-end encryption. 

Governments around the world are working hard to monitor online conversations, far beyond the bounds of traditional targeted law enforcement. 2023 has been a year of unprecedented threats to encryption and privacy. 

In the US, three Senate bills were introduced that, in our view, would discourage, weaken, or create backdoors into encryption technology. With your help, we’ve stopped all three from moving forward–and we’ll continue to do so in the year to come. 

EARN IT, S. 1207

Simply put, EARN IT allows providers of secure communications services to be sued or prosecuted. The excuse for EARN IT is to combat online child abuse. EARN IT would allow state attorneys general to regulate the internet, as long as the stated purpose for their regulation is to protect kids from online exploitation.  

There’s no doubt that the purpose of this bill is to scan user messages, photos, and files. In a Q&A document published last year, the bill sponsors even suggested specific software that could be used to monitor users. If you offer your users encrypted services, the bill specifically allows the fact that you offered encryption to constitute evidence against you in court. 

Constantly scanning every internet user is not a reasonable technique for investigating crimes. What’s more, evidence continues to mount that the scanning software used to detect child abuse does not work and creates false accusations. If EARN IT passes, it will push companies to either stop using encryption services or even create a dangerous backdoor to encryption that would weaken privacy and security for everyone. 

We were disappointed that EARN IT passed through a committee vote, although heartened that more senators expressed concerns with the bill’s effects. EARN IT has not seen a vote on the Senate floor, and we’re continuing to express our strong opposition, together with other groups that are concerned about human rights and privacy. 

STOP CSAM, S. 1199

Possessing or distributing child abuse images is a serious crime. Anyone who has actual knowledge of such images on a service they control is required to notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (a government entity), which then forwards reports to law enforcement agencies. 

That’s why we were surprised and disappointed to see some Senators introduced a bill that falsely suggests this existing law-enforcement framework would work better with the addition of mass surveillance. 

The STOP CSAM bill, introduced in April, would create new crimes, allowing those who “knowingly promote or facilitate” the exploitation of children to be prosecuted, based on the very low legal standard of negligence. This is the same legal standard that applies to car accidents and other situations where the defendant did not intend to cause harm. 

At first glance, it may sound good to fight those who “promote” or “facilitate” these crimes, but the bill’s broad terms will likely reach passive conduct like, you guessed it, simply providing an encrypted app. 

STOP CSAM is one more attempt to criminalize and demonize anyone who uses encryption to communicate online. That’s why we’ve opposed it throughout the year. This bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but has not received a vote on the Senate floor. 

Cooper Davis, S. 1080

This bill is a misguided attempt to deal with the nation’s fentanyl crisis by turning your smartphone into a DEA informant.  It threatens communications service providers with huge fines if they don’t report to the DEA suspected drug sales on their platforms. 

Faced with massive potential punishments, service providers will inevitably censor a wide variety of communications about drugs–including peoples’ descriptions of their own experiences, and even attempts to support others who are trying to get social or medical help with an addiction problem. 

If S.1080 were to pass Congress, legislators seeking to persecute certain groups will be eager to expand the framework. In many states, politicians and prosecutors have been vocal about their desire to find and prosecute marijuana users and doctors, people who may use abortion pills, or people who want gender-related medication. 

S. 1080 also has no provision to ensure the DEA deletes incorrect reports, does not properly notify users who get targeted, and does not require law enforcement to get a warrant to preserve the massive troves of private data they will be sent about users. The bill was passed in committee in a 16-5 vote in July, but has not received a vote on the Senate floor. 

EFF will continue to oppose proposals that seek to vacuum up our private communications, or push platforms towards censorship of legitimate content. The thousands of messages we sent to Congress opposing these wrongheaded proposals have stopped them from becoming law. We held the line in 2023 with your help–thank you. 

This blog is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2023.

Patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent. Too often, they end up being a way to try to claim “ownership” of what should be basic building blocks of human activity, culture, and knowledge. This is especially true of software patents, an area EFF has been speaking out about for more than 20 years now. 

This month’s Stupid Patent, No. 8,655,715, continues the tradition of trying to use software language to capture a monopoly on a basic human cultural activity–in this case, contests. 

A company called Opus One, which does business under the name “Contest Factory,” claims this patent and a related one cover a huge array of online contests. So far, they’ve filed five lawsuits against other companies that help build online contests, and even threatened a small photo company that organizes mostly non-commercial contests online. 

The patents held by Contest Factory are a good illustration of why EFF has been concerned about out-of-control software patents. It’s not just that wrongly issued patents extort a vast tax on the U.S. economy (although they do—one study estimated $29 billion in annual direct costs). The worst software patents also harm peoples’ rights to express themselves and participate in online culture. Just as we’re free in the physical world to sign documents, sort photos, store and label information, clock in to work, find people to date, or teach foreign languages, without paying extortionate fees to others, we must also be free to do so online. 

Patenting Contests

Claim 1 of the ‘715 patent has steps that claim: 

• Receiving, storing, and accessing data on a computer; 
• Sorting it and generating “contest data”; 
• Tabulating votes and picking a winner.

The patent also uses other terms for common activities of general purpose computers, such as “transmitting” and “displaying” data. 

In other words, the patent describes everyday use of computers, plus the idea of users participating in a contest. This is a classic abstract idea, and it never should have been eligible for a patent. 

In a 2017 article in CIO Review, the company acknowledges how incredibly broad its claims are. Contest Factory claims it patented “voting in online contests long before TV contest shows with public voting components made their appearance,” and that it holds patents “associated with online contests and integrating online voting with virtually any type of contest.” 

Lawsuit Over Radio Station Contest 

In its most recent lawsuit, Contest Factory says that a Minneapolis radio station’s “Mother’s Day Giveaway” for a mother/daughter spa day infringed its patent. The radio station asked people to post mother-daughter selfies online and share their entry to collect votes. 

Contest Factory sued Pancake Labs (complaint), the company that helped the radio station put the contest online. Contest Factory also claimed a PBS contest in which viewers created short films and voted on them was an example of infringement. 

For the “Mother’s Day Giveaway” contest, the patent infringement accusation reads in part that, “the executable instructions … cause the generation of a contest and the transmission of the first and second content data to at least one user to view and rate the content.” 

Contest Factory has sued over quite a few internet contests, dating back more than a decade. Its 2016 lawsuits, based on the ‘715 patent and two earlier related patents, were filed against three small online marketing firms: Vancouver-based Strutta, Florida-based Elettro, and California-based Votigo, for contests that go back to 2011. We don’t know how many more companies or online communities have been threatened in all. 

Sharing user-generated content like photos—cooperatively or competitively—is the kind of sharing that the digital world is ideal for. When patent owners demand a toll for these activities, it doesn’t matter whether they’re patent “trolls” or operating companies seeking to extract settlements from competitors. They threaten our freedoms in unacceptable ways. 

The government shouldn’t be issuing patents like these, and it certainly shouldn’t be making them harder to challenge. 

• Opus One d/b/a Contest Factory v. Pancake Labs complaint
• Opus One d/b/a Contest Factory v. Telescope complaint 
• Opus One d/b/a Contest Factory v. Elletro complaint 
• Opus One d/b/a Contest Factory v. Votigo complaint 
• Opus One d/b/a Contest Factory v. Strutta complaint

Update 11/14/2023: The LIBE committee adopted the compromise amendments by a large majority. Once the committee's version of the law becomes the official position of the European Parliament, attention will shift to the Council of the EU. Along with our allies, EFF will continue to advocate that the EU reject proposals to require mass scanning and compromise of end-to-end encryption.

A key European parliamentary committee has taken an important step to defend user privacy, including end-to-end encryption. The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) has politically agreed on much-needed amendments to a proposed regulation that, in its original form, would allow for mass-scanning of people’s phones and computers. 

The original proposal from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, would allow EU authorities to compel online services to analyze all user data and check it against law enforcement databases. The stated goal is to look for crimes against children, including child abuse images. 

But this proposal would have undermined a private and secure internet, which relies on strong encryption to protect the communications of everyone—including minors. The EU proposal even proposed reporting people to police as possible child abusers by using AI to rifle through people’s text messages. 

Every human being should have the right to have a private conversation. That’s true in the offline world, and we must not give up on those rights in the digital world. We deserve to have true private communication, not bugs in our pockets. EFF has opposed this proposal since it was introduced. 

More than 100 civil society groups joined us in speaking out against this proposal. So did thousands of individuals who signed the petition demanding that the EU “Stop Scanning Me.” 

The LIBE committee has wisely listened to those voices, and now major political groups have endorsed a compromise proposal that has language protecting end-to-end encryption. Early reports indicate the language will be a thorough protection that includes language disallowing client-side scanning, a form of bypassing encryption. 

The compromise proposal also takes out earlier language that could have allowed for mandatory age verification. Such age verification mandates amount to requiring people to show ID cards before they get on the internet; they are not compatible with the rights of adults or minors to speak anonymously when necessary. 

The LIBE committee is scheduled to confirm the new agreement  on November 13. The language is not perfect; some parts of the proposal, while not mandating age verification, may encourage its further use. The proposal could also lead to increased scanning of public online material that could be less than desirable, depending on how it’s done. 

Any time governments access peoples’ private data it should be targeted, proportionate, and subject to judicial oversight. The EU legislators should consider this agreement to be the bare minimum of what must be done to protect the rights of internet users in the EU and throughout the world.