People who want their day in court should be able to have it. That's why EFF has long opposed forced arbitration agreements—agreements that require people to resolve conflicts without going to court—because they place unfair limits on one’s ability to exercise their fundamental r … | Continue reading
Reiterating its prior common-sense opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in hiQ v. LinkedIn that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act likely does not bar scraping data from a public website against the wishes of the website owner. Last year, after the Supreme Court decide … | Continue reading
Note: This post provides technical guidance only. Testing described in this post is done at the reader’s own risk and should only be conducted on devices and networks that you have permission to test on. Introduction In order to audit the privacy and security practices of the app … | Continue reading
Through the pandemic, the state of California passed a number of bills that resulted in a once-in-a-generation, multi-billion dollar investment to solve the digital divide. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in response, initiated a proceeding to explore the rules … | Continue reading
Let’s Encrypt is part of the effort to encrypt the entire internet as a means of maximizing privacy and security online. SAN FRANCISCO—Let’s Encrypt—a project of the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), which is supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) … | Continue reading
Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Underscores Need to Plan for Emergencies and Treat All Crisis Zones Even-HandedlySAN FRANCISCO—Whether in Ukraine or in other crisis zones around the globe, social media platforms have a duty to ensure that people have access to the free flow of … | Continue reading
Censorship doesn’t always look like a black line across a document, or a clear order to remove a piece of content. Websites feel pressured without the government having to issue a clear directive that they host certain speakers or carry certain content. The First Amendment recogn … | Continue reading
The joy of tinkering, making, and sharing is part of the human condition. In modern times, this creative freedom too often is stifled by secrecy as a means of monetization - from non-compete laws to quashing people’s right to repair the products they’ve already paid for. Adam Sav … | Continue reading
An officer hands you a digital tablet and assures you that you can use it to communicate to sort out your affairs. It's a glimmer of a lifeline… but then you try to use the device. A pop-up opens on the tablet's screen, and you're forced to watch a commercial for a shady bail bon … | Continue reading
Paraguay’s leading broadband service providers last year upped their commitments to users to be transparent about their privacy policies and to adopt accessibility practices, but most fell short on disclosing information about government requests seeking their data, according to … | Continue reading
Copyright filters are having a bit of a moment in Washington D.C. The Copyright Office is moving ahead with a process to determine what, if anything, constitutes a standard technical measure (STM) that platforms would have to accommodate. And, if that proves too onerous, Congress … | Continue reading
Google is fighting back against a Brazilian court order to turn over data on all users who searched for specific terms, including the name of a well-known elected official and a busy downtown thoroughfare. (Brief in Portuguese / English*) While we applaud Google for challenging t … | Continue reading
Democracy means allowing everyday people to have their voices heard on public matters involving their communities. One of the goals of civic technology is to allow a more diverse group of people to have input on government affairs through the use of technology and the internet. … | Continue reading
Recently at EFF’s Threat Lab, we’ve been focusing a lot on the Android malware ecosystem and providing tools for its analysis. We’ve noticed lot of samples of Android malware in the tor-hydra family have surfaced, masquerading as banking apps to lure unsuspecting customers into i … | Continue reading
The First Amendment guarantees the right to speak your own involvement about court proceedings. Yet the Stored Communications Act currently allows the government to prevent electronic communications companies from notifying their users when they receive law enforcement orders for … | Continue reading
Today, EFF joins a diverse coalition of civil society and tech companies to call on Congress to pass strong anti-monopoly rules for the Internet. We do this because it has long been EFF’s belief that users have the right to make their own choices—and the current state of Big Tech … | Continue reading
California has shown itself to be a national privacy leader. But there is still work to do. That’s why EFF is proud to sponsor two bills in this year’s legislature—both with the co-sponsorship of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse—that would strengthen privacy protections in the state. … | Continue reading
Private entities lose bid to control and profit from how we learn about the lawSan Francisco – As part of its ongoing work to ensure that people can know and understand the laws they live under, Public.Resource.org, a nonprofit organization, on Thursday vindicated its ability to … | Continue reading
We’ve got an amazing opportunity for a litigator to join EFF’s legal team. If you have experience and interest in patent policy or litigation and want to represent the public interest in patent and copyright policy, we want to hear from you. EFF has always stood up for the freed … | Continue reading
Colombia’s top internet and cell phone companies continued to maintain a high level of transparency about their privacy practices, and continued to implement best practices to protect customer data, free expression, and security in 2021. But they faced challenges from the impacts … | Continue reading
Want the latest news on your digital rights? Well, you're in luck! Version 34, issue 2 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our newsletter or listening to the new audio version below. This issue covers stories from our opposition of th … | Continue reading
Today almost everything is connected to the internet - from your coffeemaker to your car to your thermostat. But the “Internet of Things” may not be hardwired for security. Window Snyder, computer security expert and author, joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they de … | Continue reading
When a pipeline bursts, journalists might want to investigate whether the pipeline complied with federal regulations. When a toy is recalled, parents want to know whether its maker followed child safety rules. When a fire breaks out, homeowners and communities want to know whethe … | Continue reading
Being able to accurately determine your location anywhere on the planet is a useful technological trick. But when tracking isn’t done by you, but to you—without your knowledge or consent—it’s a violation of your privacy. That’s why at EFF we’ve long fought against dragnet surveil … | Continue reading
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has offered no transparency about its multi-million dollar program of spying on immigrants’ and other foreign visitors’ social media posts, which it uses as evidence in deportations and visa denials. We want to change that, so we sued DHS … | Continue reading
Little is Known About Trump-Era Visa Vetting Initiative That Continues Under BidenSAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records about a multi-million dol … | Continue reading
Recently, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have introduced troubling legislation focused on how young people interact with social media platforms. While well-intentioned, these bills are overbroad, and often require platforms to collect more information on users, or … | Continue reading
First came tracking devices like Tiles and AirTags, marketed as clever, button-sized Bluetooth-enabled gizmos that can find your lost backpack. Then, after bad actors started using the devices to stalk or follow people, came scanning apps to help victims find out whether those sa … | Continue reading
EFF client Erik Johnson, a Miami University computer engineering undergraduate, reached a settlement in the lawsuit we brought on his behalf against exam surveillance software maker Proctorio, in a victory for fair use of copyrighted material and people’s right to fight back agai … | Continue reading
Putting children under surveillance and limiting their access to information doesn’t make them safer—in fact, research suggests just the opposite. Unfortunately those tactics are the ones endorsed by the Kids Online Safety Act of 2022 (KOSA), introduced by Sens. Blumenthal and Bl … | Continue reading
Remote proctoring companies like Proctorio, ProctorU, and ExamSoft collect all manner of private data on students and test takers, from biometric information to citizenship status to video and audio of a user’s surroundings. During the pandemic there has been a 500% increase in t … | Continue reading
When journalists want to know if and how local police or governments are using technology tools to surveil communities, one of the first people they call (or message on Signal) is Dave Maass, EFF Director of Investigations. Maass’ expertise in the use of police tech like automate … | Continue reading
Like many young people, Zach Latta went to a school that didn't teach any computer classes. But that didn’t stop him from learning everything he could about them and becoming a programmer at a young age. After moving to San Francisco, Zach founded Hack Club, a nonprofit network o … | Continue reading
Tech companies earn staggering profits by targeting ads to us based on our online behavior. This incentivizes all online actors to collect as much of our behavioral information as possible, and then sell it to ad tech companies and the data brokers that service them. This pervasi … | Continue reading
After the defeat of SOPA/PIPA, Big Content has mostly focused on quiet, backroom deals for copyright legislation, like the unconstitutional CASE Act, which was so unpopular it had to be slipped into a must-pass bill in the dead of winter. But now, almost exactly a decade later, t … | Continue reading
The horrific Russian military invasion of Ukraine has understandably led to a backlash against Russia. The temptation is to label anything Russian, from state media and students to cats, as bad and block it to signal outrage and ostracization. This type of thinking has infected t … | Continue reading
Brazil’s “Fake News Bill” (PL 2630/2020) is the latest salvo in the global battle between Big Tech companies and the media industry—which is itself highly concentrated, controlled by a handful of dominant firms. The remuneration rule in the “Fake News Bill” is a made-in-Brazil in … | Continue reading
Pity the poor content moderator. Big Tech platforms expect their mods to correctly apply a set of rules to users in more than a hundred countries, in over a thousand languages. These users are clustered into literally millions of online communities, each with its own norms and ta … | Continue reading
An upcoming proposal from the European Union Commission could make government scanning of user messages and photos mandatory throughout the E.U. If that happens, it would be inconsistent with providing true end-to-end encryption in Europe. That would be a disaster, not just for … | Continue reading
Today, EFF joins Article 19 and more than 50 organizations in urging the Iranian government to rescind a bill with severe implications for the privacy, security and freedom of expression of Internet users in Iran. The text of our letter is below. Iran: Human rights groups sound a … | Continue reading
Last week, Russian citizens began receiving instructions to either download a government-approved web browser, or change their basic browser settings, according to instructions issued by their government’s Ministry of Digital Development and Communications. On the one hand, these … | Continue reading
Imagine being detained by armed agents whenever you returned from traveling outside the country. That’s what life became like for Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was placed on a terrorist watch-list after she made a documentary critical of the U.S. invasion and … | Continue reading
After pushing for more than three years to access court records in a lawsuit brought by a notorious patent troll, Uniloc, against Apple, EFF is challenging a federal appellate court’s decision that imperils the public’s ability to understand what happens in patent litigation. The … | Continue reading
Each year during Sunshine Week (March 13-19), The Foilies serve up tongue-in-cheek "awards" for government agencies and assorted institutions that stand in the way of access to information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock combine forces to collect horror stories a … | Continue reading
Democracies are in many ways like the internet. In both cases, it may take a thousand cuts to demolish their foundation, yet each cut contributes significantly to their erosion. One such cut exists in the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the form of drastic and overbroad government … | Continue reading
As the debate about how to rein in Big Tech and its anti-competitive practices continues, news publishers and telecommunications providers are increasingly calling for large pay-outs from major platforms. However, these proposals risk restricting users into ever-smaller walled ga … | Continue reading
In the first order of its kind, a federal district court has held that a warrant used to identify all devices in the area of a bank robbery, including the defendant’s, “plainly violates the rights enshrined in [the Fourth] Amendment.” The court questioned whether similar warrants … | Continue reading
EFF fights for strong data privacy laws in statehouses across the country. That’s why we joined a coalition of privacy advocates in urging Utah's lawmakers to stop the bill. Now we're asking Gov. Spencer J. Cox to veto SB227, which passed quickly through the state’s legislature l … | Continue reading