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Coin Center’s Report Explores Privacy Coins, Decentralized Exchanges, and the First Amendment Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh published a report exploring the potential Constitutional concerns should aggressive regulators attempt to crack down on the coders developing ideas for cryptocurrencies and decentralized exchanges. For long-time readers of the EFF blog, some of these ideas will seem familiar. EFF has been asserting that publishing code for cryptocurrency is a form of protected speech since 2014 , when we argued to the New York State Department of Financial Services that “government action triggers First Amendment protections when it regulates computer programs such as digital currency protocols—a fact that is especially true given the open source nature of these programs, which allows users to view, share, and develop ideas based upon the code itself.” We also sent a stern letter to the SEC in February over their action against a decentralized exchange, reminding...

Court Refuses to Keep Patent Licensor’s Secrets Patent owners shouldn’t be allowed to keep basic facts about their patents secret—especially when they initiate litigation in courts, which are presumptively open to the public. Uniloc is one of the worst examples of such a company: it doesn’t make any products, but sues lots of others that do. Then, it hides its licensing agreements while demanding fees from hundreds of other companies that make products supposedly covered by the patents in their vast portfolio. But those secretive tactics may finally be coming to an end: a federal judge has ruled, for the second time, that Uniloc must unseal documents about how it licenses its patents. In 2018 alone, Uniloc filed more than 170 patent infringement lawsuits against a wide array of technology companies that make products we all use. EFF has fought repeatedly for the public’s right to access court documents in patent cases, and we moved to inter...

Consumer Data Privacy Advocates to Senate Committee: Here’s How to Protect Consumers Last week, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation held a hearing on Consumer Perspectives: Policy Principles for a Federal Data Privacy Framework . Unlike previous hearings this year that only featured tech industry panelists, this hearing featured a panel of consumer privacy advocates, including: Helen Dixon, Data Protection Commissioner, Republic of Ireland Jules Polonetsky, Chief Executive Officer, Future of Privacy Forum Jim Steyer, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Common Sense Media, and Neema Singh Guliani, Senior Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union There were few, if any, fireworks, which makes sense considering this was a panel of people who largely agree with each other on the big issues facing consumers and their privacy: Too many companies are collecting too much data that is unrelated to their product or service, a “notice and consen...

Shareholders Demand To Know How Northrop Grumman Will Protect Human Rights While Building Massive DHS Database Over the next few years, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to implement an enormous biometric collection program which will endanger the rights of citizens and foreigners alike. The agency intends to collect at least seven types of biometric identifiers, including face and voice data, DNA, scars, and tattoos, often from questionable sources, and from innocent people. But DHS isn’t building all of the technology: Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor, won the nearly 100 million-dollar, 42-month contract to “develop increments one and two” of the project, named HART (Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology). Now, a group of concerned investors are demanding that the Board of Directors of the company explain how they will protect human rights while building the tech behind the massive, privacy-invasive database. It’s unsurprising that shareholders are re...

We recently wrote about the “lights-out” data center operations concept, which is all about managing data centers with few or even no people on site, to improve efficiency and lower costs. Making the concept work involves outfitting infrastructure with technology that allows for both onsite and remote monitoring and analytics to enable digital data center operations. Digital data center operations has been with us for some time in concept, but the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and the ability to connect just about anything is bringing the concept closer to reality. Now, it’s time to start plotting a strategy to get there. Digital Data Center Operations: Integrating People and Technology That isn’t to say we’ll someday perform data center operations with no people involved. Rather, it’s about integrating people and technology: using technology to provide information that enables people to take action, when necessary, and make better decisions. Today, we have criti...