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Efforts to Expand NSA Spying Trip Up Since last night, the debate over how to reauthorize certain NSA surveillance authorities has seen a whirlwind of activity, culminating in the major news that the House Rules Committee postponed a vote today to potentially expand NSA spying powers. As we wrote yesterday: “According to reports published Tuesday evening by Politico, a group of surveillance hawks  in the House of Representatives is trying to ram through a bill that would extend mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. We expect a vote to happen on the House floor as early as [December 20], which means there are only a few hours to rally opposition.   The backers of this bill are attempting to rush a vote on a bill that we’ve criticized for failing to secure Americans’ privacy. If this bill passes, we will miss the opportunity to prevent the FBI from searching through NSA databases for American communications without a warrant. Worse, nothing will be do...

EFF Asks Copyright Office to Improve Exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the  Librarian of Congress today   to   limit the   legal barriers people face when they want to repair and modify   software-enabled products,   so that they—not manufacturers—   control the appliances, computers,   toys,   vehicles, and other products   they own. In comments   filed in Washington D.C. today , EFF continued   its   years-long fight to enable   owners   and creators   to repair , modify, and enhance products, or use snippets of films or songs, free of onerous threats that doing so somehow infringes companies’ copyrights. Software-enabled devices and Internet-connected products and appliances are ubiquitous in modern life, and people aren’t infringing anyone’s copyright when, for example, they choose to permanently disable the embedded,...

House Intelligence Committee’s NSA Surveillance Bill Includes New Threats and Old Thrown last-minute into a torrent of competing legislation, a new bill meant to expand the NSA’s broad surveillance powers is the most recent threat to American privacy. It increases who is subject to surveillance, allows warrantless search of American communications, expands how collected data can be used, and treats constitutional protections as voluntary. The bill must be stopped immediately. There is little time: despite the bill’s evening release yesterday, November 29, a committee is scheduled to markup the bill tomorrow, December 1. The bill is called the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 , and it was introduced by Rep. Nunes (R-CA), the Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It shares the same name as another bill introduced in the Senate in October. Both bills are attempts to reauthorize Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, a powerful surveillance auth...