Co-authored by Jens-Henrik Jeppesen, CDT Director of European Affairs

It has been more than a year since the European Union Data Protection Regulation (DPR) was unveiled, including a controversial proposal known as the "Right to Be Forgotten" (RTBF). While the proposal is intended to give Internet users more...

Last week CISPA, the cybersecurity information-sharing bill, passed the House. Though fundamentally flawed, the bill is very different from when it passed the House a year ago, demonstrating the power of a growing Internet advocacy community that sometimes underestimates its own influence. Two game-changing achievements stand out.

When CISPA was...

Last December's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), hosted by the ITU in Dubai, revealed a broad spectrum of views about the future of the Internet. Many commentators have focused on the binary outcome: more than 50 countries, including the U.S. and the EU nations, did not sign the treaty,...

You've remembered to schedule the kids' dentist appointments and the car inspection is up to date, but what about your personal information? If you are like most people, you are probably overdue for a data privacy tune-up and Data Privacy Day, which took place yesterday, is as good...

For nearly two years now, industry and advocates have been discussing how to implement "Do Not Track" -- a setting in browsers that would allow companies to serve ads while limiting the collection of personal information about users. This week, dozens of ad industry representatives, browser makers, and consumer advocates...

Is there anything to be gained by interjecting the strangling kudzu of partisan politics into Internet policy? I strongly doubt it and that's why I am frankly mystified by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Fred Campbell's bombastic and highly partisan July 26 opinion piece in the Atlantic calling...

After the historic SOPA-PIPA Internet blackout last winter, there was some question about whether that epic moment was the beginning of a sustained online movement for Internet freedom. In the last few months the answer is beginning to emerge.

The diverse set of groups that participated in SOPA have...

Yes, yes, got it: There is no International Telecommunications Union (ITU) plot to take over the Internet.

Yet, that is the message from the ITU Secretary General in a carefully worded campaign to tamp down concerns that renegotiation of the ITU's underlying treaty may provide an opportunity for mischief...

These are the prepared remarks of Leslie Harris' speech; text may differ slightly from remarks as delivered. This speech was the opening keynote for Personal Democracy Forum 2012.]

So here's a story. Maybe you've heard it:

The Internet is threatened by a shortsighted attempt by Congress to pass...

The Constitution provides a clear and simple rule for any time the government wants to search someone: it has to get a warrant, except in cases of emergency. However, the ACLU has documented how police across the U.S. are sidestepping that requirement when tracking people's location using their cell phones.

As Congress moves to take up the complex issues of cybersecurity, the National Security Agency is gaining traction in its aggressive campaign to secure statutory authority to monitor private computer networks in real time to prevent cyber attacks.

The Washington Post reports, that the NSA's quest to lead...

In the middle of one of the most contentious debates in Congress about intellectual property in recent memory, the MPAA appears to have finally found an analogy that it believes will persuade skeptics to support slash-and-burn piracy bills now before Congress: Google in China.

On Thursday, Variety

Today a remarkable "left/right" coalition that includes ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, TechFreedom, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and my own organization, the Center for Democracy & Technology, has launched a campaign urging Congress to require warrants when the...

In the wake of a number of high-profile computer invasions, Congress is looking to fight back against malicious hackers. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently announced hearings identifying its preferred legislative vehicle in that race: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the Obama...

It's always refreshing when a Member of Congress uses point-blank declarative statements that leave little room for misinterpretation. Such was the case today when Rep. James Sensenbrenner, (R-WI), opened a hearing on a bill that would require major ISPs, private and non-profit companies, libraries, coffee shops and diners...

When Apple announced its iCloud service, commentators spilled much ink wondering if the data of users would be safe from hackers. But an equally important angle to the story was ignored: whether the data in the cloud has enough legal protection to keep it from the prying eyes of the...

Government and private institutions from the Pentagon to Wall Street regularly face significant threats from unseen and unknown assailants in cyberspace -- from casual hackers to nation-state actors. The bipartisan desire in Washington to craft a national cybersecurity plan to address this broad range of threats has led to a...

Lewis Carrol once famously said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will do." But today, with the ascent of smartphones and other mobile devices, there are likely to be quite a few people who know exactly where you are going and where you have been. And...

Americans have always loved to watch a good odd-couple law enforcement pairing, from Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker to Tom Hanks and a French mastiff. Earlier this week, we got the real-life equivalent when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) released a memorandum of...

Last week Senator Al Franken made an important speech, calling Internet neutrality "the First Amendment issue of our time." If I had heard that claim a few years ago, I would have thought it verged on political hyperbole. But after reading the comments filed by major ISPs in...