Senator Ron Wyden has released a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General voicing his concern over a previously-unknown bulk data collection program that was carried out by Homeland Security Investigations(HSI), a unit within DHS’s U.S. Immigra … | Continue reading
EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann contributed to the corresponding comment. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has big decisions to make in its effort to implement the new federal broadband infrastructure program. If done right, and with the right … | Continue reading
Secure communications are especially important in times of crisis. Just being aware of surveillance has chilling effects in how we exercise speech, which is often under attack by all sorts of actors from criminals to our own governments. With war in Ukraine and political crackdow … | Continue reading
The “right to be forgotten," which exists in European Union member states and allows for mandatory delisting of results from search engines, must be balanced against the rights of the public to read media archives. EFF joined together with more than a dozen other media and free e … | Continue reading
Copyright maximalists just don’t know when to stop. Having failed in their 2020 attempt to use U.S. law to force GitHub to permanently cut off access to youtube-dl, an open source tool that allows users to download and preserve videos, on the theory that the tool can also be used … | Continue reading
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. | Continue reading
Telegram has gained a reputation as the “secure” communications app in the post-Soviet states, but whenever you make choices about your digital security, it’s important to start by asking yourself, “What exactly am I securing? And who am I securing it from?” If you are in Ukraine … | Continue reading
eidas_cybersecurity_community_open_letter_1_1.pdf | Continue reading
While tensions run high across the globe over the invasion of Ukraine, the world’s governments are meeting at the UN this week and next to find common ground on a proposed treaty to facilitate international cooperation and coordination in computer crime investigations. The treaty … | Continue reading
Like most people, we at EFF are horrified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Also like most people, we are not experts on military strategy or international diplomacy. But we do have some expertise with the internet and civil liberties, which is why we are deeply concerned that gov … | Continue reading
SAN FRANCISCO—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) technologists, along with 36 of the world’s top cybersecurity experts, today urged European lawmakers to reject proposed changes to European Union (EU) regulations for securing electronic payments and other online transactions th … | Continue reading
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has pulled a harmful ballot initiative that threatened to gut the city’s landmark 2019 surveillance oversight ordinance. This withdrawal followed intense community pressure, including a coalition letter signed by over 30 San Francisco community an … | Continue reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), with co-counsel Durie Tangri, is defending the Internet Archive against a lawsuit that threatens its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program.The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library, preserving and providing access to cultural … | Continue reading
This post was written by EFF Media Relations Specialist Malaika Fraley.Private messages, voicemails, internet browsing, passwords and location data—this is the type of private phone data that is being monitored in real time, unbeknownst to hundreds of thousands of people around t … | Continue reading
EFF and McSweeney’s have teamed up to bring you The End of Trust (McSweeney’s 54). The first all-nonfiction McSweeney’s issue is a collection of essays and interviews focusing on issues related to technology, privacy, and surveillance.The collection features writing by EFF’s team … | Continue reading
Anonymous speech is an important protection for those concerned about political or economic retribution, harassment, or even threats to their lives. The shield that protects those speakers’ anonymity in U.S. court is the First Amendment, and applying the appropriate constitutiona … | Continue reading
As the Ghanaian Parliament considers a bill that would criminalize being LGBTQI+ or an ally of LGBTQI+ people, and ban all speech on and offline that even remotely supports LGBTQI+ rights, Twitter and Facebook's parent company Meta must publicly speak out against the proposal and … | Continue reading
We live in a world increasingly governed by technology. Too often, that technology includes security vulnerabilities that could allow malicious actors access to our most important and private information. That’s why it’s so important that security researchers be allowed to do the … | Continue reading
In a victory for privacy and security, the Internal Revenue Service reversed course from its recent announcement that it was partnering with ID.me, a third-party identity verification service, to use facial recognition for verification of users managing many aspects of their taxe … | Continue reading
This week we learned that San Francisco Police used a woman’s own DNA—collected years earlier as part of an investigation into her sexual assault—to charge her for an unrelated property crime. What’s worse—it appears the S.F. police routinely search victims’ DNA in criminal inves … | Continue reading
Are you well organized? Do you have a garage full of well-labeled bins or a pantry full of neatly labeled jars? Do you ship a lot of stuff and print labels? If so, you probably own and cherish your label maker. What’s not to like? Well, if you’re a Dymo label maker owner, there’s … | Continue reading
It is critically important that lawmakers stand up to protect their constituents from the abuse of biometric information, through strong laws with strong enforcement. That’s why we were proud to testify in support last week of Maryland’s SB 335, which would give Marylanders much- … | Continue reading
As a UN-convened committee of government experts from around the world gets ready to begin negotiations to draft a Cybercrime Treaty, there's a pronounced lack of consensus among UN member states about what constitutes a "cybercrime" and how expansive the treaty will be. After ye … | Continue reading
Face surveillance is a growing menace to racial justice, privacy, free speech, and information security. So EFF supports bans on government use of this dangerous technology, and laws requiring corporations to get opt-in consent from a person before taking their faceprint.One of t … | Continue reading
Content moderation is complex, difficult and, frankly, exhausting. The most recent example involves Spotify and its decision to stick with the controversial podcast host, Joe Rogan, over other creators. There is no question that Spotify has the right to determine whom to host, pr … | Continue reading
As a UN-convened committee of government experts from around the world gets ready to begin negotiations to draft a Cybercrime Treaty, there's a pronounced lack of consensus among UN member states about what constitutes a "cybercrime" and how expansive the treaty will be. After ye … | Continue reading
For more than three years, EFF has been fighting for public access to court records in a patent case between Uniloc, one of the world’s most prolific patent trolls, and Apple, one of the world’s biggest tech companies. The district court has ruled three different times that the p … | Continue reading
EFF, ACLU, and 34 other community and civil rights groups have signed onto a letter urging San Francisco’s Mayor and the Board of Supervisors not to gut the city’s landmark 2019 surveillance technology ordinance. Mayor London Breed recently introduced a proposed ballot initiative … | Continue reading
The Central Intelligence Agency has been collecting American’s private data without any oversight or even the minimal legal safeguards that apply to the NSA and FBI, an unconstitutional affront to our civil liberties. According to a declassified report released yesterday by the P … | Continue reading
Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the dangerous EARN IT bill. We’re disappointed to see the committee advance this misguided bill. If enacted, EARN IT will put massive legal pressure on internet companies both large and small to stop using encryption … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, February 9, EFF sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee to strongly oppose S. 3538, the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2022 (EARN IT Act). EFF opposed the original and amended versions of this bill in the previous … | Continue reading
Software robots should not be deciding whether your creative content, whether written words, videos, photos, or music, ought to be pulled off the internet.That’s what we told the U.S. Copyright office in comments we filed February 8 arguing against requiring service providers to … | Continue reading
Along with 60 other human rights, civil rights and open Internet organizations, EFF sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, February 9 outlining our concerns with the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2022 (EARN IT, S … | Continue reading
Encryption is under attack. In liberal democracies, elected leaders are giving lip service to our right to privacy—while seeking to create a system where they can scan any data we send over the internet. Earlier this month, the U.K. Home Office spent public money on a high-priced … | Continue reading
First, the Internal Revenue Service reversed course from its recent announcement that it was partnering with ID.me, a third-party identity verification service, to use facial recognition for verification of users managing many aspects of their taxes online. Now, ID.me—which provi … | Continue reading
It's become easier over the years for websites to improve their security, thanks to tools that allow more people to automate and easily set-up secure measures for web applications and the services they provide. A proposed amendment to Article 45 in the EU’s Digital Identity Frame … | Continue reading
On February 1, 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, the official research and development arm of the agency, released a cutesy press release about how robotic dogs made in collaboration with Ghost Robotics are “one step closer” to d … | Continue reading
Last year, Apple announced a controversial plan to install photo scanning software in every device. Apple has long been seen as a pro-privacy company—billboards emblazoned with the slogan “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone” were common sights in 2019. A global coa … | Continue reading
Ohio lawmakers are giving big tech companies a gift in the form of the Ohio Personal Privacy Act. This law purports to strike a balance between consumer protection and company demands. Instead, it stacks the deck even further against individuals who want to protect their privacy. … | Continue reading
When users fork over money for an iPhone (average price: over $800), many expect to be able to play their favorite mobile game on it. They expect the apps they buy to work. Many users also expect to install apps that enhance their security and privacy beyond what Apple provides.U … | Continue reading
Six months have passed since the Biden Administration signed an Executive Order to restore Net Neutrality at the FCC. And three months have passed since the President nominated net neutrality champion Gigi Sohn, a member of the EFF board, to the FCC (Sohn will leave the EFF board … | Continue reading
The House of Representatives has inserted SHOP SAFE—a piece of legislation that would make it extremely difficult for any individual to sell things online and equally difficult for any online platform to compete with Amazon—into a 3,000-page trade bill. It cannot remain there.The … | Continue reading
San Francisco is considering whether to strengthen or roll back civil rights protections against government surveillance. Nearly three years ago, EFF joined a coalition of community groups to support the city’s passage of the Surveillance Technology Ordinance, which bans governme … | Continue reading
People don’t want outsiders reading their private messages —not their physical mail, not their texts, not their DMs, nothing. It’s a clear and obvious point, but one place it doesn’t seem to have reached is the U.S. Senate.A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT … | Continue reading
Right now, the U.S. Copyright Office is collecting information on the use of "standard technical measures" to address copyright infringement, as part of a longer effort that, we fear, will lead to filtering mandates.The Copyright Office is also holding a plenary session on Februa … | Continue reading
schneier_letter_to_senate_judiciary_re_app_stores.pdf | Continue reading
Podcast Episode 110Imagine getting a letter in the mail—and then another, and then another—telling you that if you don’t pay $25,000 to a company you’ve never heard of, you’ll have to shut down the small business that you’ve worked for years to build.That’s exactly the situation … | Continue reading
The Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of California over the large national internet service providers (ISPs), paving the way for California’s gold standard state net neutrality law to go forward. Throughout the long battle on net neutrality, from Ajit Pai’s repeal of federal net neut … | Continue reading