Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Great article on my Texas Instruments dispute in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, with a picture of one of my clients: For Texas Instruments, Calculator Hackers Don't Add Up.

One of my new projects is defending researchers and bloggers discussing how to put custom operating systems on TI calculators. The press release and explanatory blog post are on the EFF site.

On October 23, 2009, the UC Berkeley School of Law will host an all-day conference at the Bancroft Hotel to explore some of the most pressing legal challenges, ethics issues, and policy questions related to the use of social networking websites by the public and the legal profession. I'm speaking at the event, and so is Lauren Gelman.

In It's My Browser, and I'll Auto-Click if I Want To, Fred blogs about how EFF is representing SkipScreen, a Firefox browser add-on that helps users avoid ads and unnecessary wait times when downloading files from hosting sites.

The California Department of Insurance (DOI) is considering regulations that would enable insurance prices to depend on the precise number of miles a car is driven in a given billing period.

What does Facebook have in common with wireless phone companies like AT&T? Both companies try to lock customers in, even if we'd rather take our business elsewhere. Facebook is suing Power.com, a company that gives users a tool to pull copies of their own friends lists, postings and other information out of Facebook so that they can aggregate it with their other social networking platforms.

September 2008 amendments to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act broaden the already extensive reach of the law, and fail to clarify the most vexing question about the statute, the definition of “unauthorized access”.

On April 21st, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Arnold (pdf) that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports.

In this week's Circuit Court column, I write about the legislative battle over changing our communications eavesdropping laws and a related issue of giving telcos immunity for illegally helping the government surveil us. This issue is so important, now that the nominee for Attorney General, Judge Michael Mukasey, says that the President does not have to obey the law if he believes it contradicts his national security responsibilities. Of course, you could argue that the laws are actually less important if the President isn't even going to follow them. However, if that's true, lawsuits against telcos may be the only way for the public to find out what our government is actually doing. Read more about one possible future of freedom and privacy here: What's at Stake in the Surveillance Debate in Congress

Proposed Reporters' Shield Law Overdue but Underpowered
This week's Circuit Court column is about the proposed federal reporters' shield law that just came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. While we need a shield law, this one has a loophole for situations where the leak is criminal or tortious activity, and the loophole may just be too large for this version of a shield to do the trick.