In 2021, San Mateo County, California, banned people incarcerated in county jails from receiving physical mail. Instead, family and friends were required to mail their letters to Smart Communications, a private for-profit company based in Florida that would scan and destroy those … | Continue reading
The Foilies are our annual tongue-in-cheek “awards” for agencies and officials that thwart the public's right to government information or otherwise respond outrageously to requests for documents and records. Each year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock News, in par … | Continue reading
A ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week marks a new low in judicial deference to classification and national security, even against the nearly inviolable First Amendment right to be free of prior restraints against speech. In Twitter v. Garland, the cou … | Continue reading
Age verification systems are surveillance systems. Mandatory age verification, and with it, mandatory identity verification, is the wrong approach to protecting young people online. It would force websites to require visitors to prove their age by submitting information such as g … | Continue reading
You may have heard of the Flipper Zero. It’s marketed as a “Portable Multi-tool Device for Geeks”—a programmable portable device packed with hardware that facilitates wireless penetration testing and hacking on the go. The device, which greets its owner with an adorable cyber-dol … | Continue reading
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knight Institute, and Social Justice Legal Foundation say that the policy violates the rights to free speech and privacyREDWOOD CITY, CA—The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the Social … | Continue reading
This week, EFF asked Utah’s Governor Cox to veto a dangerous “social media regulations” bill, S.B. 152 (McKell). Utah’s bill is part of a wave of age verification laws that would make users less secure, and make internet access less private overall. EFF opposes laws that mandate … | Continue reading
A few months ahead of its expiration this fall, the Biden administration has announced its intention to seek renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—an invasive and unconstitutional law that cannot continue to exist in its current form. On its f … | Continue reading
A trademark dispute between a liquor company and a maker of novelty dog toys may not sound like an important First Amendment battleground, but the latest trademark case to come before the U.S. Supreme Court could have serious consequences for online speech and political activism. … | Continue reading
EFF recently submitted comments to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on "Privacy, Equity, and Civil Rights". NTIA is a unit of the U.S. Department of Commerce that advises the President on information policy. NTIA is writing a report on pr … | Continue reading
What would the internet look like if it weren't the greatest technology of mass surveillance in the history of mankind? Trevor Paglen wonders about this, and he makes art from it. %3Ciframe%20height%3D%2252px%22%20width%3D%22100%25%22%20frameborder%3D%22no%22%20scrolling% … | Continue reading
EFF Intern Reema Moussa authored this post. In our highly digitized society, online speech like posts, messages, and emails, can be taken out of context, repackaged in ways that distort or completely lose their meaning, and spread far beyond the intended recipients.With this in m … | Continue reading
The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has released a troubling new report detailing how federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Secret Service have conducted surveillance using cell-site si … | Continue reading
Illustrations by Chelsea Saunders, produced in collaboration with the Nib. From the days of chattel slavery until the modern Black Lives Matter movement, Black communities have developed innovative ways to communicate to fight back against oppression. EFF's Director of Engineerin … | Continue reading
Intern Reema Moussa contributed to this blog post. As government agencies increasingly use digital tools to track citizens and immigrants, we need to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make that surveillance transparent. But while the government opens its databases to p … | Continue reading
What if we told you the Stupid Patent of the Month has a sponsor, but we don’t know who it is? That would seem shady, wouldn’t it? This month’s stupid patent, U.S. Patent No. 9,986,435, was brought to you—to all of us, really—from the murky depths of the litigation finance indus … | Continue reading
This post was written by intern Devin Sullivan.Should it be a federal crime to encourage an undocumented immigrant to remain in the country? In a friend of the court brief filed today with the U.S. Supreme Court, we argue that such a prohibition is facially unconstitutional on Fi … | Continue reading
In a partial victory for police accountability, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the First Amendment protects a passenger who livestreams the traffic stop of the car he is traveling in. EFF filed an amicus brief in Sharpe v. Winterville in 2021 in suppor … | Continue reading
Too often we let the rich and powerful dictate what technology’s future will be, from Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse to Elon Musk’s neural implants. But what if we all were empowered to use our voices and perspectives to imagine a better world in which we all can thrive while creati … | Continue reading
The patent examination process is rife with problems. Too often, patent law supports applicants seeking unwarranted monopolies—not the public interest. That’s why we get things like Amazon’s patent on white-background photography. This is especially true when it comes to software … | Continue reading
The Supreme Court next week will hear two cases — Gonzalez v. Google on Tuesday, Feb. 21, and Twitter v. Taamneh on Wednesday, Feb. 22 — that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online. Nearly everyone who speaks online relies on Section 230, a 1996 law that promotes … | Continue reading
What started with a simple public records request became a journey into the absurd depths of Mexican bureaucracy. But we emerged victorious, and learned a lot about how a city experimented with a dangerous surveillance tool. Filing public records requests for government informati … | Continue reading
What started with a simple public records request became a journey into the absurd depths of Mexican bureaucracy. But we emerged victorious, and learned a lot about how a city experimented with a dangerous surveillance tool. Filing public records requests for government informati … | Continue reading
EFF proudly joins ACLU California Action and If/When/How to co-sponsor new California legislation to protect people seeking abortion and gender-affirming care from dragnet-style digital surveillance. A coalition of more than 25 reproductive justice, civil liberties, and privacy g … | Continue reading
In January 2020, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan, setting a path to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure. The plan was a clear response to the gap created from systemic di … | Continue reading
In 2018, EFF along with researchers from Lookout Security published a report describing the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) we dubbed "Dark Caracal." Now we have uncovered a new Dark Caracal campaign operating since March of 2022, with hundreds of infections across more than a d … | Continue reading
Have no fear, EFF is here to keep you updated on your digital rights! Version 35, issue 2 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our newsletter or listening to the audio version below. This issue covers the new season of our podcast, How … | Continue reading
Last week, the New York Attorney General secured a $410,000 fine from Patrick Hinchy and 16 companies that he runs which produce and sell spyware and stalkerware. In addition, he and his companies must modify their stalkerware to alert victims that their devices have been comprom … | Continue reading
Parts of the fediverse have been in something of an uproar recently over an experimental search service that was under development called (appropriately enough) Searchtodon. The project aimed to enable people to search their own home timeline and worked by being authorized by a u … | Continue reading
When a tech company moves to your city, the effects ripple far beyond just the people it employs. It can impact thousands of ancillary jobs – from teachers to nurses to construction workers – as well as the community’s housing, transportation, health care, and other businesses. A … | Continue reading
Meritless defamation lawsuits can deter legal speech by forcing people to spend time and money fighting them. That is why courts must diligently protect people’s First Amendment rights by quickly dismissing claims that target people’s protected opinions. That did not happen in a … | Continue reading
Amicus Brief Urges the Court to Increase Transparency of SCA Warrant Requests ST. LOUIS — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an appeal filed by the Reporters Committee for Fr … | Continue reading
The Washington Post recently published an op-ed by Megan McArdle titled "Twitter might be replaced, but not by Mastodon or other imitators." The article argues that Mastodon is falling into a common trap for open source projects: building a look-alike alternative which improves t … | Continue reading
As the UK's Online Safety Bill enters its Second Reading in the House of Lords, EFF, Liberty, Article 19, and Big Brother Watch are calling on Peers to protect end-to-end encryption and the right to private messaging online. As we've said before, undermining protections for end-t … | Continue reading
In the last week, a number of dangerous and conspiracy-driven attacks were made against EFF board member Gigi Sohn, an eminently qualified nominee to the Federal Communications Commission. These attacks attempt to twist EFF's long-held positions and commitments into dog whistles … | Continue reading
Should the police be able to identify everyone who was in a busy metropolitan area, just because a crime occurred there? In two amicus briefs just filed in appellate courts, we argue that’s a clearly unconstitutional search.[1] The two cases are People v. Meza, in the California … | Continue reading
EFF was proud to support New York’s A. 7326/S. 6541, which the legislature passed to protect the confidentiality of medical immunity information. It limits what data can be collected or shared, who it can be shared with, and how long it can be stored. (In New York, bills must hav … | Continue reading
Patent trolls make patents, and argue over them. They don’t have to ever make the thing described in their patents, if it’s even possible to determine what those things are. Instead, they generate legal threats and waste the time and money of companies that do do these things. T … | Continue reading
When it was passed in 2015, the California Electronic Communications Act (CalECPA) was heralded as a major achievement for digital privacy, because it required law enforcement to obtain a warrant in most cases before searching a suspect's data, be it on a personal device or on th … | Continue reading
Brazil’s biggest internet connection providers made moderate advances in protecting customer data and being transparent about their privacy practices, but fell short on meeting certain requirements for upholding users’ rights under Brazil's data protection law, according to Inte … | Continue reading
The Supreme Court is about to hear a case that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online. EFF has filed a brief explaining what’s at stake, and urging the court to preserve the key law protecting user expression, 47 U.S.C § 230 (Section 230.) In Gonzalez v. Google, th … | Continue reading
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released their new broadband map in November 2022, many hoped the chronic inaccuracies of past FCC maps would be resolved. Previous maps of high-speed broadband access in the United States painted inaccurate pictures partly because … | Continue reading
Swedish computer security expert Ola Bini was arrested in April, 2019, in Ecuador, and a cloud has hung over his case ever since. Bini's case has been impacted by numerous due process violations and human rights concerns, and there have been suspensions or delays at nearly every … | Continue reading
What can a bustling electronic components bazaar in Shenzhen, China, tell us about building a better technology future? To researcher and hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, it symbolizes the boundless motivation, excitement, and innovation that can be unlocked if people have the right … | Continue reading
Yesterday, we wrote about the importance of fair use as a safeguard for free expression. But all too often, fair use and other legal limits on copyright are not enough to stop copyright enforcement from serving as cover for silencing critics. Time and again, we see copyright cla … | Continue reading
It’s been a good year for right to repair advocates. Colorado passed an important law to allow wheelchair users access to resources they need to fix their own chairs. The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up enforcement of companies that limit the right to repair. And New York … | Continue reading
Lawyers, scholars, and activists, including EFF, often highlight Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 (originally of the Communications Decency Act) as the legal foundations of the internet. But there’s another, much older, doctrine that’s at least … | Continue reading
The Internet Copyright Wars are in their third decade, and despite the billions of dollars and trillions of phosphors spilled on its battlegrounds around the world, precious little progress has been made. A quarter of a century after Napster’s founding, we’re still haunted by the … | Continue reading