New RSS Feeds

EFF is making some changes to the site's RSS feeds. If you subscribe to EFF.org with RSS, you've probably been using either our Blog Feed or our Press Release Feed or our Action Alert Feed or some combination of those three. To simplify things, we've consolidated them into one place: The EFF Updates Feed.

We've also just relaunched the long-dormant Line Noise Podcast. Line Noise has two feeds for your favorite podcast aggregator, depending on your audio-codec of choice: MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. Check out our latest episode, in which EFF designer Hugh D'Andrade speaks with Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry about The Lost Art of Orphan Works.

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A Second Chance to See "Spying on the Home Front"

As Congress gears up to debate giving amnesty to telecoms involved in illegal spying, the terrific Frontline documentary "Spying on the Home Front" will be rebroadcast Tuesday on many PBS stations across the country. This program examines just how far the government has gone with its surveillance program, and features EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn discussing EFF's ongoing case against AT&T for its illegal collaboration with the NSA. AT&T whisleblower Mark Klein also tells his compelling story about his discovery of a "secret room" diverting AT&T network traffic to the NSA.

But our case is only part of the story. As Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald put it, the documentary "powerfully dramatizes the severity of privacy erosion at the hands of a federal government operating largely in the dark."

Check your local listings for times, or you can always watch the program on the Frontline website. Then tell lawmakers to stop the spying and to block amnesty for telecoms that broke the law.

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Salon Blogger Interviews EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn

Glenn Greenwald is one of the most thorough political bloggers covering the issue of warrantless wiretapping. Week after week, his Unclaimed Territory blog at Salon has kept abreast of the latest developments, tenaciously covering every twist and turn in the debate as Congress mulls whether to grant immunity to telecom lawbreakers for their participation in the illegal program.

Today’s post from Greenwald includes selections from a long interview with EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, highlighting some of the most recent developments in EFF’s class-action suit against telecom giant AT&T:

GG: The lawsuit you originally brought was against only AT&T and not against the Bush administration or any government officials. Is that correct?

CC: Yes. We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

No one covers the details like Greenwald, but his most important contribution is in helping readers get beyond the details to view the wider picture. Greenwald reminds us that the broader issue at play in this case is the question of Executive power, and whether the courts will have the opportunity to rule on the limits of that power.

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EFF Website Overhaul!

As you may have noticed if you're hitting the site directly, rather than our RSS feeds, we've just launched a full site redesign and restructure. It's been a long time coming, and we're way excited about it!

We’ve made some design and navigational changes that should be immediately apparent. But by far the biggest change for eff.org is that we're now running on the open source content management system Drupal. Migrating into a CMS was a hefty challenge, as our website is almost as old as our organization, and has thousands of pages and files. But we did it, and the end result of this herculean data massage should be that we're able to get more information up on our website, and to you, more quickly.

This project was a major undertaking for EFF, and we have some much-deserved Thank Yous to hand out:

• Big thanks to all the people who work on Drupal, it's a great open source CMS and provides an excellent content management solution to many nonprofit & grassroots websites. And extra special thanks to the helpers on Drupal IRC, who handled quite a few eff.org related questions.
• About halfway through the migration project, we were graced with the tech chops of Tim Jones, who ended up writing a bunch of custom Drupal modules for us and generally making this whole thing come together. Without his extensive help there's no way we would have gotten the site out the door, and he proved so invaluable that as of November he’ll be at EFF fulltime.
• Huge thanks to EFF ally Matt Earp, who handled a lot of the messier parts of content migration over the summer.
• Finally, thanks to EFF staff and associates, who helped along the way by answering questions, sifting through piles of site content, offering input, and being incredibly patient.

One of our main goals with this site migration was to make eff.org more usable and organized, and we hope you like it! We'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions. Email us about the new site by emailing newsite@eff.org.

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EFF Hosts Web 2.0 Compliance "Bootcamp"

EFF is hosting a one-day session on October 10, 2007 for Web 2.0 workers who handle issues arising from users and user-generated content.

Does your interactive company have to contend with the maze of laws dealing with user privacy and publishing user content? Want to do the right thing by the online community that gives your business value, and still fulfill your legal obligations? Let us help. Our Mountain View Bootcamp will let front-line staff meet and question lawyers from the EFF and the top tech attorneys about the laws governing internet content, from the DMCA to ECPA to the CDA.

You can find out more information at our Bootcamp Page, or email to reserve your place. We have a sliding scale of $100-200 per person: space is limited, so sign up soon!

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EFF Seeks Staff Intellectual Property Attorney

We're hiring!

EFF is seeking an intellectual property staff attorney for its legal team. Responsibilities will include litigation, public speaking, media outreach, plus legislative and regulatory advocacy, all in connection with a variety of intellectual property and high technology matters.

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Doctorow Podcasts "The Hacker Crackdown"

Somewhere in his busy schedule ? in between writing brilliant sci-fi novels, commenting on the current state of copyright law and intellectual property, co-editing the popular blog BoingBoing, and teaching at USC ? EFF Fellow Cory Doctorow finds time to podcast.

Cory has been podcasting his fiction, reading his novels in serialized form that can be downloaded from his site as MP3, since 2005. Having mostly sped through his own work, he is now moving on to other people?s stuff, and he is starting with Bruce Sterling?s seminal book, The Hacker Crackdown.

Sterling?s 1992 book recounts the early history of the hacker subculture, the rise of the Internet, and the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The book was a major influence on a generation of hackers, writers, techies, and activists, and obviously Cory was one of them. Notably, Sterling released the book in downloadable form in 1994, a bold statement that Cory credits as having inspired him to do the same.

The book will be available in bite-sized podcasts each week on Cory?s site, and should be completed in about 20 weeks.

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Every Move You Make: Location Tracking and the Law

Can the government keep track of your whereabouts through your cell phone? Do they need a warrant or not? Location tracking by law enforcement is already becoming routine, and EFF has been fighting to make sure your privacy is protected.

This week, EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston will be addressing these and other issues in a free online course offered through the State of Play Academy (SOPA), a virtual space for conversations about law and technology located in the virtual community There.com.

Every Move You Make: Location Tracking and the Law
Wednesday, 23 May (4:00 PM ? 5:00 PM)

More information, including how to log on and participate in SOPA classes at: stateofplayacademy.com.

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Virtual Classes on Cyberlaw

Learn cyberlaw without leaving cyberspace through the State of Play Academy. The Academy offers free classes through the virtual world There.com. The Spring Semester has already started, and runs through June 8.

The virtual classes will teach you the sort of fascinating stuff your real college never gets around to offering, like "Claims of Copyright Misuse based on First Amendment Interests," "The Viacom-Youtube Lawsuit," and "Election 2008 and the Remix Culture." EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston is signed up to teach a class called "Every Move You Make: Location Tracking and the Law."

More information, including how to log on and participate in SOPA classes at: stateofplayacademy.com.

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New EFF Blogger Shirt

EFF's Bloggers' Rights campaign has scored some big victories in defense of free speech and privacy rights for bloggers. Now, you can show your support for the Blogger's Rights campaign by picking up one of EFF's new Bloggers' Rights T-shirts. Buy a shirt for $25 from the EFF shop, or get it as part of your membership.

Shirts are black, available in women's or men's styles, all sizes.

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