The launch of ChatGPT and other deep learning quickly led to a flurry of lawsuits against model developers. Legal theories vary, but most are rooted in copyright: plaintiffs argue that use of their works to train the models was infringement; developers counter that their training … | Continue reading
Campaign Aims to Ensure that People Can Access Reproductive Rights Information Through Social Media SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Repro Uncensored coalition on Wednesday launched the #StopCensoringAbortion campaign to ensure that people who need r … | Continue reading
With reproductive rights under fire across the U.S. and globally, access to accurate abortion information has never been more critical—especially online. That’s why reproductive health and rights organizations have turned to online platforms to share essential, sometimes life-sav … | Continue reading
This post is part three in a series of posts about EFF’s work in Europe. Read about how and why we work in Europe here. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. While our work has taken us to far corners of … | Continue reading
Early in January 2025 it seemed like TikTok was on the verge of being banned by the U.S. government. In reaction to this imminent ban, several million people in the United States signed up for a different China-based social network known in the U.S. as RedNote, and in China as Xi … | Continue reading
Early in January 2025 it seemed like TikTok was on the verge of being banned by the U.S. government. In reaction to this imminent ban, several million people in the United States signed up for a different China-based social network known in the U.S. as RedNote, and in China as Xi … | Continue reading
As calls by UK’s top leaders for the release of British-Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah from prison in Cairo continue, Alaa’s mother, math professor Laila Soueif, grows weaker four months into a hunger strike she began in September to keep attention focus … | Continue reading
As President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order in 2020 to retaliate against online services that fact-checked him, a team within the Department of Justice (DOJ) was finalizing a proposal to substantially weaken a key law that protects internet users’ speech. Documents releas … | Continue reading
Google continues to show us why it chose to abandon its old motto of “Don’t Be Evil,” as it becomes more and more enmeshed with the military-industrial complex. Most recently, Google has removed four key points from its AI principles. Specifically, it previously read that the com … | Continue reading
Across the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already begun increasing enforcement operations, including highly publicized raids. As immigrant communities, families, allies, and activists think about what can be done to shift policy and protect people, o … | Continue reading
For years now, there has been some concern about the coziness between technology companies and the government. Whether a company complies with casual government requests for data, requires a warrant, or even fights overly-broad warrants has been a canary in the digital coal mine … | Continue reading
Lawsuit Argues Defendants Violated the Privacy Act by Disclosing Sensitive Data NEW YORK—EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders led by Lex Lumina filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to stop the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from disclosing millions of Ameri … | Continue reading
Congress has begun debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146), a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of a troubling type of online content: non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. In recent years, concerns have also grown about the use of digital tools to alter or create such i … | Continue reading
EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders have filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the private information of millions of Americans that is stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a … | Continue reading
Digital security training can feel overwhelming, and not everyone will have access to new apps, new devices, and new tools. There also isn't one single system of digital security training, and we can't know the security plans of everyone we communicate with—some people might have … | Continue reading
Most of the internet’s blessings—the opportunities for communities to connect despite physical borders and oppressive controls, the avenues to hold the powerful accountable without immediate censorship, the sharing of our hopes and frustrations with loved ones and strangers alike … | Continue reading
Ever since Chat-GPT’s debut, artificial intelligence (AI) has been the center of worldwide discussions on the promises and perils of new technologies. This has spawned a flurry of debates on the governance and regulation of large language models and “generative” AI, which have, a … | Continue reading
The Washington Post reported that the United Kingdom is demanding that Apple create an encryption backdoor to give the government access to end-to-end encrypted data in iCloud. Encryption is one of the best ways we have to reclaim our privacy and security in a digital world fille … | Continue reading
Minors, like everyone else, have First Amendment rights. These rights extend to their ability to use social media both to speak and access the speech of others online. But these rights are under attack, as many states seek to limit minors’ use of social media through age verifica … | Continue reading
Community members coordinated to pack Little Rock City Hall on Tuesday, where board members voted 5-3 to end the city's contract with ShotSpotter. Initially funded through a federal grant, Little Rock began its experiment with the “gunshot detection” sensors in 2018. ShotSpotter … | Continue reading
Community members coordinated to pack Little Rock City Hall on Tuesday, where board members voted 5-3 to end the city's contract with ShotSpotter. Initially funded through a federal grant, Little Rock began its experiment with the “gunshot detection” sensors in 2018. ShotSpotter … | Continue reading
The Texas legislature will soon be debating a bill that would seriously weaken the free speech protections of people in that state. If you live in Texas, it’s time to contact your state representatives and let them know you oppose this effort. Texas Senate Bill 336 (SB 336) is an … | Continue reading
It’s time to expand encryption on Android and iPhone. With governments around the world engaging in constant attacks on user’s digital rights and access to the internet, removing glaring and potentially dangerous targets off of people’s backs when they use their mobile phones is … | Continue reading
Paraguay’s five leading broadband service providers made some strides in making their privacy policies more accessible to the public, but continue to fall short in their commitments to transparency, due process in sharing metadata with authorities, and promoting human rights—all … | Continue reading
Jack Poulson is a reporter, and when a confidential source sent him the police report of a tech CEO’s arrest for felony domestic violence, he did what journalists do: reported the news. The CEO, Maury Blackman, didn’t like that. So he sued Poulson—along with Amazon Web Service, S … | Continue reading
Who needs a DDoS (Denial of Service) attack when you have a new president? As of February 2nd, thousands of web pages and datasets have been removed from the U.S. government agencies following a series of executive orders. The impacts span the Department of Veteran Affairs and th … | Continue reading
The European Commission was caught failing to comply with its own data protection regulations and, in a first, ordered to pay damages to a user for the violation. The €400 ($415) award may be tiny compared to fines levied against Big Tech by European authorities, but it’s still a … | Continue reading
We’re taking a moment to reflect on the 2024 state legislative session and what it means for the future of digital rights at the state level. Informed by insights from the State of State Technology Policy 2024 report by NYU’s Center on Technology Policy and EFF’s own advocacy wor … | Continue reading
EFF has been at the forefront of defending civil liberties in the digital age, with our activism team working across state, federal, and local levels to safeguard everyone's rights in the rapidly evolving tech landscape. As federal action on technology policy often lags, many are … | Continue reading
At EFF, we’re big fans of the Creative Commons project, which makes copyright work in empowering ways for people who want to share their work widely. EFF uses Creative Commons licenses on nearly all of our public communications. To highlight the importance of open licensing as a … | Continue reading
If you’ve got lawyers and a copyright, the law gives you tremendous power to silence speech you don’t like. Copyright’s statutory damages can be as high as $150,000 per work infringed, even if no actual harm is done. This makes it far too dangerous to rely on the limitations and … | Continue reading
In the first weeks of the Trump Administration, we have witnessed a spate of sweeping, confusing, and likely unconstitutional executive orders, including some that have already had devastating human consequences. EFF is tracking many of them, as well as other developments that im … | Continue reading
If there is one axiom that we should want to be true about the internet, it should be: the internet never forgets. One of the advantages of our advancing technology is that information can be stored and shared more easily than ever before. And, even more crucially, it can be stor … | Continue reading
Late last year, Bumble finally rolled out its updated privacy policy after a coalition of twelve digital rights, LGBTQ+, human rights, and gender justice civil society organizations launched a campaign demanding stronger data protections. Unfortunately, the company, like other da … | Continue reading
Discovering that you’re pregnant can trigger a mix of emotions—excitement, uncertainty, or even distress—depending on your circumstances. Whatever your feelings are, your next steps will likely involve disclosing that news, along with other deeply personal information, to a medic … | Continue reading
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we nee … | Continue reading
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits. The sheriff’s department’s 6,789 abuse … | Continue reading
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we nee … | Continue reading
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we nee … | Continue reading
Last week, EFF, along with the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, ACLU, and ACLU of Michigan, filed an amicus brief in People v. Carson in the Supreme Court of Michigan, challenging the constitutionality of the search warrant of Mr. Carson's smart phone. In this case, Mr. Ca … | Continue reading
Government must stop restricting website access with laws requiring age verification. Some advocates of these censorship schemes argue we can nerd our way out of the many harms they cause to speech, equity, privacy, and infosec. Their silver bullet? “Age estimation” technology th … | Continue reading
In a major win for creator communities, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has once again handed video streaming site Vimeo a solid win in its long-running legal battle with Capitol Records and a host of other record labels. The labels claimed that Vimeo was liable … | Continue reading
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.* Jillian York: Welcome, let’s start here. What does free speech or free expression mean to you personally? Lina Attalah: Being able to think without too many calculations and without fear. York: What are the qualities that ma … | Continue reading
As age verification bills pass across the world under the guise of “keeping children safe online,” governments are increasingly giving themselves the authority to decide what topics are deemed “safe” for young people to access, and forcing online services to remove and block anyt … | Continue reading
States need to have and use data privacy laws to bring privacy violations to light and hold companies accountable for them. So, we were glad to see that the Texas Attorney General’s Office has filed its first lawsuit under Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA) to take the A … | Continue reading
The Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement agreeing that General Motors and its subsidiary, OnStar, will be banned from selling geolocation and driver behavior data to credit agencies for five years. That’s good news for G.M. owners. Every car owner and driver d … | Continue reading
Better late than never: last night a federal district court held that backdoor searches of databases full of Americans’ private communications collected under Section 702 ordinarily require a warrant. The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, afte … | Continue reading
The White House executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship,” published Monday, misses the mark on truly protecting Americans’ First Amendment rights. The order calls for an investigation of efforts under the Biden administration to “moderate, depla … | Continue reading