Telecom and internet service providers in Panama are entrusted with the personal data of millions of users, bearing a responsibility to not only protect users’ privacy but also be transparent about their data handling policies. Digital rights organization IPANDETEC has evaluated … | Continue reading
This post was written by EFF intern Nazli Ungan as an update to a 2020 Deeplinks post by Cindy Cohn. Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable and that will ensure that the voters’ actual choices are reflected in the results. That’s as true as we head into the 2024 U … | Continue reading
The CEO of 23andMe has recently said she’d consider selling the genetic genealogy testing company–and with it, the sensitive DNA data that it’s collected, and stored, from many of its 15 million customers. Customers and their relatives are rightly concerned. Research has shown th … | Continue reading
At EFF we’ve long noted that you cannot build a backdoor that only lets in good guys and not bad guys. Over the weekend, we saw another example of this: The Wall Street Journal reported on a major breach of U.S. telecom systems attributed to a sophisticated Chinese-government bac … | Continue reading
On September 19, the FTC published a staff report following a multi-year investigation of nine social media and video streaming companies. The report found a myriad of privacy violations to consumers stemming largely from the ad-revenue based business models of companies includin … | Continue reading
The feud between X Corp. and Brazil’s Supreme Court continues to drag on: After a month-long standoff, X Corp. folded and complied with court orders to suspend several accounts, name a legal representative in Brazil, and pay 28.6 million reais ($5.24 million) in fines. That hasn’ … | Continue reading
Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East Germany. So, it is disappointing th … | Continue reading
EFF, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Mississippi, filed an amicus brief on Thursday asking a federal appellate court to continue to block Mississippi’s HB 1126—a bill that imposes age verification mandates on social media services across the internet. Our friend-of-the-court … | Continue reading
In honor of Digital Inclusion Week, Oct 7-11th 2024, it’s an honor to uplift one of our Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) members who is doing great work when it comes to making sure technology benefits everyone by addressing the disparities of the digital divide: CCTV Cambridge … | Continue reading
Did you know the City of Portland, Oregon, already owns and operates a fiber-optic broadband network? It's called IRNE (Integrated Regional Network Enterprise), and despite having it in place Portlanders are forced to pay through the nose for internet access because of a lack of … | Continue reading
We’re thrilled to announce that EFF’s “How to Fix the Internet” podcast is a finalist in the Signal Awards 3rd Annual Listener's Choice competition. Now we need your vote to put us over the top! signal-badge_finalist_voteforus.png We’re barraged by dystopian stories about technol … | Continue reading
Need help staying up-to-date on the latest in the digital rights movement? You're in luck! In our latest newsletter, we outline the privacy protections needed for digital IDs, explain our call for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down an unconstitutional age verification law, and … | Continue reading
This post was written by EFF fellow Miranda McClellan. Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are being tracked across the internet using identifiers known as Advertising IDs. When children turn 13, they age out of the data protections provided by the Children’s Online Privacy Prote … | Continue reading
Digital freedom and investigative reporting about technology have been at risk amid political and economic strife around the world. This year’s annual EFF Awards honored the achievements of people helping to ensure that the power of technology, the right to privacy and free speec … | Continue reading
You may have arrived at this post because you received an email with an attached PDF from a purported hacker who is demanding payment or else they will send compromising information—such as pictures sexual in nature—to all your friends and family. You’re searching for what to do … | Continue reading
A new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report confirms what EFF has been warning about for years: tech giants are widely harvesting and sharing your personal information to fuel their online behavioral advertising businesses. This four-year investigation into the data practices of … | Continue reading
How many times do you pull out your driver’s license a week? Maybe two to four times to purchase age restricted items, pick up prescriptions, or go to a bar. If you get a mobile driver’s license (mDL) or other forms of digital identification (ID) being offered in Google and Apple … | Continue reading
The U.S. Senate is set to vote this Thursday on two bills that could significantly empower patent trolls. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would bring back many of the abstract computer patents that have been barred for the past 10 years under Supreme Court precedent … | Continue reading
EFF along with the ACLU of Northern California and the Center for Democracy & Technology filed an amicus brief in a federal trial court in California in support of a college professor who fears being sued by Meta for developing a tool that allows Facebook users to easily clear ou … | Continue reading
New Tech Doesn’t Solve Old Problems With Age-Gating the Internet WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, and TechFreedom urged the Supreme Court today to strike down HB 1181, a Texas law that unconstitutionally restricts adults’ … | Continue reading
Across the United States, nearly every state’s prison system offers some form of tablet access to incarcerated people, many of which boast of sizable libraries of eBooks. Knowing this, one might assume that access to books is on the rise for incarcerated folks. Unfortunately, thi … | Continue reading
A previously classified transcript reveals Congress knows full well that American TikTok users engage in First Amendment protected speech on the platform and that banning the application is an inadequate way to protect privacy—but it banned TikTok anyway. The government submitted … | Continue reading
We’re happy to see that Discord will soon start offering a form of end-to-end encryption dubbed “DAVE” for its voice and video chats. This puts some of Discord’s audio and video offerings in line with Zoom, and separates it from tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, which do not … | Continue reading
Canadian lawmakers are considering a bill, S-210, that’s meant to benefit children, but would sacrifice the security, privacy, and free speech of all internet users. First introduced in 2023, S-210 seeks to prevent young people from encountering sexually explicit material by requ … | Continue reading
Google and Amazon – You Should Take Note of Your Own Aiding and Abetting Risk EFF has long pushed companies that provide powerful surveillance tools to governments to take affirmative steps to avoid aiding and abetting human rights abuses. We have also worked to ensure they face … | Continue reading
A patent on crowdfunding. A patent on tracking packages. A patent on photo contests. A patent on watching an ad online. A patent on computer bingo. A patent on upselling. These are just a few of the patents used to harass software developers and small companies in recent years. T … | Continue reading
In a number of countries around the world, communities—and particularly those that are already vulnerable—are threatened by expansive cybercrime and surveillance legislation. One of those countries is Jordan, where a cybercrime law enacted in 2023 has been used against LGBTQ+ peo … | Continue reading
The post was written by Laura Vidal (PhD), independent researcher in learning and digital rights. This is part two of a series. Part one on surveillance and control around the July election is here. Over the past decade, the government in Venezuela has meticulously constructed a … | Continue reading
An amended version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that is being considered this week in the U.S. House is still a dangerous online censorship bill that contains many of the same fundamental problems of a similar version the Senate passed in July. The changes to the House bi … | Continue reading
For those living in one of the 22 states where abortion is banned or heavily restricted, the internet can be a lifeline. It has essential information on where and how to access care, links to abortion funds, and guidance on ways to navigate potential legal risks. Activists use th … | Continue reading
The post was written by Laura Vidal (PhD), independent researcher in learning and digital rights. This is part one of a series. Part two on the legacy of Venezuela’s state surveillance is here. As thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets across the country to demand transpare … | Continue reading
Greenwashing is a well-worn strategy to try to convince the public that environmentally damaging activities aren’t so damaging after all. It can be very successful precisely because most of us don’t realize it’s happening. Enter the Yes Men, skilled activists who specialize in el … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, the Oversight Board announced a review of three cases involving different pieces of content on Facebook that contained the phrase “From the River to the Sea.” EFF submitted to the consultation urging Meta to make individualized moderation decisions on this cont … | Continue reading
Curious about the latest digital rights news? Well, you're in luck! In our latest newsletter we cover topics including the Department of Homeland Security's use of AI in the immigration system, the arrest of Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov, and a victory in California where we helped … | Continue reading
As British-Egyptian coder, blogger, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah enters his fifth year in a maximum security prison outside Cairo, unjustly charged for supporting online free speech and privacy for Egyptians and people across the Middle East and North Africa, we stand with his … | Continue reading
Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their scho … | Continue reading
Being out in the world advocating for privacy often means having to face a chorus of naysayers and nihilists. When we spend time fighting the expansion of Automated License Plate Readers capable of tracking cars as they move, or the growing ubiquity of both public and private sur … | Continue reading
EFF, Just Futures Law, and 140 other groups have sent a letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the immigration system. For years, EFF has been monitoring and warning about the dan … | Continue reading
Like clockwork, September is here—and so is the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) pledge period! The CFC is the world’s largest and most successful annual charity campaign for U.S. federal employees and retirees. You can now make a pledge to support EFF’s lawyers, technologists, an … | Continue reading
EFF was deeply disturbed to learn that Alexey Soldatov, known as the “father of the Russian Internet,” was sentenced in July to two years in prison by a Moscow court for alleged “misuse” of IP addresses. In 1990, Soldatov led the Relcom computer network that made the first Soviet … | Continue reading
A misguided bill that would have required many people to show ID to get online has died without getting a floor vote in the California legislature, where key deadlines for bill passage passed this weekend. Thank you to our supporters for helping us to kill this wrongheaded bill, … | Continue reading
The Constitution prohibits dragnet device searches, especially when those searches are designed to uncover political speech, EFF explained in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The case, Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs, ch … | Continue reading
EFF is closely monitoring the situation in France in which Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov was charged with having committed criminal offenses, most of them seemingly related to the operation of Telegram. This situation has the potential to pose a serious danger to security, privacy, … | Continue reading
When you talk to your friends and family on Snapchat or Facebook, you should be assured that those services will not freely disclose your communications to the government or other private parties. That is why the California Supreme Court must take up and reverse the appellate opi … | Continue reading
Imagine a company you recently applied to work at used an artificial intelligence program to analyze your application to help expedite the review process. Does that creep you out? Well, you’re not alone. Consumer Reports recently released a national survey finding that Americans … | Continue reading
Copyright law is not a tool to punish or silence critics. This is a principle so fundamental that it is the ur-example of fair use, which typically allows copying another’s creative work when necessary for criticism. But sometimes, unscrupulous rightsholders misuse copyright law … | Continue reading
This article was originally published by The Legal Aid Society's Decrypting a Defense Newsletter on August 5, 2024 and is reprinted here with permission. Police departments and law enforcement agencies are increasingly collecting personal information using drones, also known as u … | Continue reading
School is back in session, so prepare for your first lesson from EFF! Today you'll learn about the latest court ruling on the dangers of geofence warrants, our letter urging Bumble to require opt-in consent to sell user data, and the continued fight against the UN Cybercrime Trea … | Continue reading