This is part three of an ongoing, five-part series. Part one, the introduction, is here. Part two, about breaking up ad-tech companies, is here. The ad-tech industry is incredibly profitable, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars every year by spying on us. These companies ha … | Continue reading
Writers sit watching a stranger’s search engine terms being typed in real time, a voyeuristic peek into that person’s most private thoughts. A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company but uncovers an agenda affecting the lives of all of humanity. An app developer keeps … | Continue reading
We need your help to advance A.B. 793, a bill authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta to protect people seeking abortion and gender-affirming care from dragnet-style digital surveillance. It's facing law enforcement opposition as it heads to the Assembly floor for a vote. California … | Continue reading
After three years of virtual gatherings, RightsCon is back! The 12th edition of the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age will be a hybrid convening taking place online through the RightsCon platform and in San José, Costa Rica between June 5-8. RightsCon prov … | Continue reading
After a two-year legal battle, the state agency that certifies police officers in California has agreed to EFF's demand that it stop using copyright concerns as a predicate to withhold law enforcement training materials from public scrutiny. The immediate impact of this victory f … | Continue reading
This sharing by 71 CA police agencies violates state law and could be used by other states to identify and prosecute abortion seekers and providers.SAN FRANCISCO—Seventy-one California police agencies in 22 counties must immediately stop sharing automated license plate reader (AL … | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence technologies (AI) are all the rage in Washington D.C. these days. Policymakers are hearing stories of utopian opportunities and certain doom from technologists, CEOs, and public interest groups and trying to figure out when and how Congress should interven … | Continue reading
The news is in trouble. It’s not just the mass closures of newsrooms - it’s also the physical and ideological attacks on journalists.News websites are plastered with ads, but more than half of the money those ads generate is siphoned off by ad-tech companies, with the lion’s shar … | Continue reading
A feature of various end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging apps and other non E2EE social media messaging are disappearing messages, which automatically delete after a set period of time. This feature may be useful for general privacy within your extended network, high-risk users … | Continue reading
The Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, a fair use case that raised fundamental questions about rights and obligations of commercial artists. The Court’s opinion did not answer many of those questions, but happily it affirmed … | Continue reading
New documents EFF received through public records requests have revealed that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) received live access to the hundreds of surveillance cameras that comprise the Union Square Business Improvement District’s (USBID) camera network in anticipat … | Continue reading
A surveillance court order unsealed last week that details massive violations of Americans’ privacy by the FBI underscores why Congress must end or radically change the unconstitutional spying program enabled by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The … | Continue reading
An increasing number of cities are adding drone flights to their law enforcement tool kit. Public access to appropriately redacted video footage from those flights can provide oversight of police surveillance and help ensure cities are living up to their privacy promises. Every s … | Continue reading
EFF, in partnership with Access Now and the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL), has responded to the European Commission's consultation, "Virtual Worlds (Metaverses) – A Vision for Openness, Safety, and Respect." This follows our joint statement on International Human … | Continue reading
On May 20, 2013, a young government contractor with an EFF sticker on his laptop disembarked a plane in Hong Kong carrying with him evidence confirming, among other things, that the United States government had been conducting mass surveillance on a global scale. What came next w … | Continue reading
Across the country, states are designing broadband plans to begin spending billions of federal dollars made available by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and past COVID-19 rescue dollar investment programs. The Biden administration has consistently made clear tha … | Continue reading
The Supreme Court today refused to weaken one of the key laws supporting free expression online, and recognized that digital platforms are not usually liable for their users’ illegal acts, ensuring that everyone can continue to use those services to speak and organize. The decisi … | Continue reading
EFF supports Rep. Sara Jacobs’ “My Body, My Data" Act, which will protect the privacy and safety of people seeking reproductive health care. The bill was reintroduced this week. Privacy fears should never stand in the way of healthcare. That's why this common-sense bill will requ … | Continue reading
Location trackers like Tiles and AirTags aren’t just a helpful way to find missing luggage or a misplaced wallet—they can also be easily slipped into a bag or car, allowing stalkers and abusers unprecedented access to a person’s location without their knowledge. That’s why we are … | Continue reading
Apple has long used end-to-end encryption for some of the information on your iPhone, like passwords or health data, but the company neglected to offer a way to better protect other crucial data, including iCloud backups, until recently. This came after years of a hard fought bat … | Continue reading
Media is in crisis: newsrooms all over the world are shuttering and the very profession of journalism is under sustained ideological and physical assault. Freedom of the press is a hollow doctrine if the only news media is written or published by independently wealthy individuals … | Continue reading
Over the past few decades, we’ve seen the rise of civil lawsuits that are meant to harass and silence defendants, rather than resolve legitimate disputes. These lawsuits have become known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs. Some states’ legislatures, i … | Continue reading
Our personal data and the ways private companies harvest and monetize it plays an increasingly powerful role in modern life. Corporate databases are vast, interconnected, and opaque. The movement and use of our data is difficult to understand, let alone trace. Yet companies use i … | Continue reading
People with disabilities were the original hackers. The world can feel closed to them, so they often have had to be self-reliant in how they interact with society. And that creativity and ingenuity is an unappreciated resource. %3Ciframe%20scrolling%3D%22no%22%20seamless%3 … | Continue reading
Hey, look! The latest issue of our EFFector newsletter is out! Catch up on the latest digital civil liberties news, from our fights against dangerous anti-encryption and anti-speech bills, to some good news about fair use and security research tools. Click here to read the full n … | Continue reading
Latin American and Spanish telecommunications companies have made important advances in their privacy policies and practices, but persistent gaps and worrying trends pose potential risks for internet and mobile phone users, according to a new consolidated report published today b … | Continue reading
Numerous state laws passed this year, and bills proposed in Congress, would set onerous new restrictions on what young people can do online, depriving teenagers of their First Amendment rights to express themselves, access protected speech, engage in anonymous speech, and partici … | Continue reading
As the UK’s Online Safety Bill moves through negotiations in the House of Lords, EFF, Open Rights Group, Wikimedia UK, and Index on Censorship have submitted a briefing urging the Lords to uphold the right to private messaging, and protect against prior restraint of lawful speech … | Continue reading
EFF intern Reema Moussa contributed to this blog post. Every year the Cybertiger stalks his prey: pressing nerds everywhere with the most obscure, fascinating, minutiae of tech-related questions to quiz digital freedom supporters on their tech know-how. Who will come out on top, … | Continue reading
Police have their sights set on every surveillance camera in every business, on every porch, in all the cities and counties of the country. Grocery store trips, walks down the street, and otherwise minding your own business when outside your home could soon come under the ever-pr … | Continue reading
Last month, we expressed concerns about how the STOP CSAM Act threatens encrypted communications and free speech online. New amendments to the bill have some improvements, but our concerns remain. The STOP CSAM Act Should Not Use the EARN IT Act as a Template for How to Protect … | Continue reading
Certain Android TV Box models from manufacturers AllWinner and RockChip, available for purchase on Amazon, come pre-loaded with malware from the BianLian family, a variant of which we investigated last year. The malware, discovered by security researcher Daniel Milisic, adds your … | Continue reading
In a refreshingly direct opinion, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that creating and selling virtualization software for security research is a fair use. Along the way, it provides a kind of master class in applying copyright’s fair use doctrine to functional works … | Continue reading
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, for a third time, to advance the dangerous EARN IT bill (S. 1207)—a law that could lead to suspicionless scans of every online message, photo, and hosted file. In the name of fighting crime, the EARN IT Act treats all internet user … | Continue reading
Over 40 leading scientists have resigned from the prestigious journal Neuroimage last month, protesting an inequitable publishing model built on gatekeeping and false scarcity. Academic publishing is fundamental to the advancement of modern science. It facilitates expert collabor … | Continue reading
Protecting the First Amendment rights of coders to develop and publish code is a core EFF value. It’s also one where we’ve played a central role in developing the law. So, we were happy that the court in the Tornado Cash lawsuit dismissed a government objection and accepted our a … | Continue reading
The net’s long decline into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four” isn’t a mystery. Nor was it by any means a forgone conclusion. Instead, we got here through a series of conscious actions by big businesses and lawmakers that put antitrust law into … | Continue reading
“Companies that employ spyware on behalf of oppressive governments must be held accountable for the resulting human rights abuses.”PORTLAND, OR – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA), and Foley Hoag LLP on Monday filed an amended … | Continue reading
Congress has resurrected the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that would increase surveillance and restrict access to information in the name of protecting children online. KOSA was introduced in 2022 but failed to gain traction, and today its authors, Sens. Richard Blumenth … | Continue reading
For more than two decades now, developers and users of software have been plagued by a flood of bad patents. Software patents that describe everyday practices like watching an ad online, publishing nutrition information, meeting people nearby, or teaching a language class continu … | Continue reading
The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to debate multiple bills that will lead to peoples’ private messages being scanned and reported to the government. We oppose these bills, and we have sent a letter urging the Committee to vote No. On Thursday, May 4, 2023, the committee w … | Continue reading
Dr. Seuss wrote a story about a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher whose job it is to watch his town’s one lazy bee, because “a bee that is watched will work harder, you see.” But that doesn’t seem to work, so another Hawtch-Hawtcher is assigned to watch the first, and then another to w … | Continue reading
Only people can get patents. There’s a good reason for that, which is that the patent grant—a temporary monopoly granted by the government—is supposed to be given out only to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Just like monkeys can’t get a copyright on a photo, b … | Continue reading
Last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance held a hearing on “Fixing FISA: How a Law Designed to Protect Americans Has Been Weaponized Against Them,” ahead of the December 2023 expiration of the Section 702 surveillance authority. The … | Continue reading
Today, EFF and ACLU filed a brief in support of Twitter’s effort to get an appeals court to reconsider its dangerous opinion enforcing a government gag order on Twitter’s 2013 transparency report. In this long-running and important case, Twitter tried to publish a report bringing … | Continue reading
Maine State Senator Pinny Beebe-Center has introduced S.P. 527, or An Act to End the Maine Information and Analysis Center Program, a bill that would defund the Maine Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), also known as Maine’s only fusion center. EFF once again pleased to suppo … | Continue reading
The U.S. litigation system is meant to resolve serious disputes. Unfortunately, the high cost of litigation can be weaponized as a means of harassment and censorship. That’s become all too common, and the last few decades have seen the rise of what’s known as a Strategic Lawsuit … | Continue reading
Today, we’re announcing .onion addresses for eff.org and two of its affiliated projects: Certbot, an EFF-developed tool for automatically obtaining and renewing TLS certificates for websites, and Surveillance Self-Defense, which provides resources and guidance for individuals and … | Continue reading