My conditions are but a drop in a dark sea of injustice. - Alaa Abdel Fattah, November 7, 2019, at State Security ProsecutionEFF is profoundly concerned about our friend, Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, who has been jailed for more than two years at a ma … | Continue reading
EFF legal intern Rob Ferrari was the lead author of this post.A new school year has started, the second one since the pandemic began. With our education system becoming increasingly reliant on the use of technology (“edtech”), especially for remote learning during the pandemic, p … | Continue reading
This is the fourth post in a series about recommendations EFF, European Digital Rights, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy... | Continue reading
In a powerful new ruling for digital privacy rights, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has confirmed that the police need to get a warrant before they open your email attachments—even if a third party’s automated system has flagged those attachments as potentially illegal. We fi … | Continue reading
European Union (EU) civil society organizations, led by EFF and Access Now, are keeping a sharp eye on the myriad proposals to amend the European Commission’s Digital Services Act (DSA) ahead of important committee votes in the European Parliament (EP). We want to see the DSA, wh … | Continue reading
EFF and the ACLU of Northern California recently filed a brief asking the San Francisco Superior Court to rule that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) violated the law when it obtained and used a remote, live link to a business district’s surveillance camera network to mo … | Continue reading
Congress is once again trying to fix a very specific problem with a broad solution. We support the SHOP SAFE Act’s underlying goal of protecting consumers from unsafe and defective counterfeit products. The problem is that SHOP SAFE tackles the issue in a way that would make it i … | Continue reading
Want the latest news on your digital rights? Then you’ve come to the right place! Version 33, issue 6 of EFFector, our monthly-ish newsletter, is out now! Catch up on the latest EFF news, from our protests at Apple stores to celebrating that HTTPS is actually everywhere, by readi … | Continue reading
EFF Legal Intern Hannah Donahue co-wrote this post.Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, in a case called People v. Tafoya, that three months of warrantless continuous video surveillance outside a home by the police violated the Fourth Amendment. We, along with the ACLU an … | Continue reading
A federal statute authorizes the Pentagon to transfer surveillance technology, among other military equipment, to state and local police. This threatens privacy, free speech, and racial justice. So Congress should do the right thing and enact Representative Ayanna Pressley’s amen … | Continue reading
For more than 10 years, EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere browser extension has provided a much-needed service to users: encrypting their browser communications with websites and making sure they benefit from the protection of HTTPS wherever possible. Since we started offering HTTPS Everywh … | Continue reading
For the last month, civil liberties and human rights organizations, researchers, and customers have demanded that Apple cancel its plan to install photo-scanning software onto devices. This software poses an enormous danger to privacy and security. Apple has heard the message, an … | Continue reading
The legislative session has ended and Governor Newsom is expected to sign into law S.B. 4 and A.B. 14, bills that stand as the final piece of the state’s new broadband infrastructure program. With a now- estimated $7.5 billion assembled between federal and state funds, California … | Continue reading
In what appears to be a “throw spaghetti on the wall approach” to stopping antitrust reform targeting Big Tech, a few Members of Congress and a range of former military and intelligence officials wrote a letter asserting that these companies need to be protected for national secu … | Continue reading
WhatsApp is rolling out an option for users to encrypt their message backups, and that is a big win for user privacy and security. The new feature is expected to be available for both iOS and Android “in the coming weeks.” EFF has pointed out unencrypted backups as a huge weaknes … | Continue reading
In EFF’s Catalog of Carceral Surveillance, we explore patents filed by or awarded to prison communication technology companies Securus and Global Tel*Link in the past five years. The dystopian technology the patents describe are exploitative and dehumanizing. And if the companies … | Continue reading
There are more federal facial recognition technology (FRT) systems than there are federal agencies using them, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office. Its latest report on current and planned use of FRT by federal agencies reveals that, among the 24 agencies surveyed, th … | Continue reading
The big-name social media companies have all done a rather atrocious job of moderating user speech on their platforms. However, much like Florida's similarly unconstitutional attempt to address the issue (S.B. 7072), Texas' recently enacted H.B. 20 would make the matter worse for … | Continue reading
As the United States pulled its troops out of Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation, byproducts of the prolonged deployment took on new meaning and represented a new chapter of danger for the Afghan people. For two decades, the United States spearheaded the collection of informa … | Continue reading
As part of our goal to expand the impact of our digital security guide, Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD), we recently translated the majority of its contents into Burmese. This repository of resources on circumventing surveillance across a variety of different platforms, devices, … | Continue reading
EFF, European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy... | Continue reading
Yesterday in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, and other cities across the U.S activists rallied in front of Apple stores demanding that the company fully cancel its plan to introduce surveillance software into its devices. In addition to protests at stores organized by E … | Continue reading
In the novel 1984, George Orwell imagines a technology called a “viewscreen” which not only lets you watch TV but lets a surveillance state watch you. This omni-present panopticon helped “big brother” keep the citizens paranoid and under control. Now, thanks to the work of the no … | Continue reading
In the days following the police shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23, 2020, hundreds of protestors marched in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Federal law enforcement, it turns out, collected location data on many of those protesters. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm … | Continue reading
The twentieth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2021 are a good time to reflect on the world we’ve built since then. Those attacks caused incalculable heartbreak, anger and fear. But by now it is clear that far too many things that were put into place in the immediate a … | Continue reading
Prison phone companies have been profiting off the desire for human connection for as long as they’ve been in business. Historically, there’s been one primary instrument for that connection — voice — and only one way to milk it for revenue: by charging exorbitant rates for phone … | Continue reading
We’re winning—but we can’t let up the pressure. Apple has delayed their plan to install dangerous mass surveillance software onto their devices, but we need them to cancel the program entirely. Next week, just before Apple’s big iPhone launch event, we need your help to make sure … | Continue reading
No matter how many rights are taken away from people in prison, no matter how brutally they are treated by the prison industrial complex, there is one right so fundamental, so essential, that even controversial prison telecommunications company Securus can't bear to see it violat … | Continue reading
No matter how many rights are taken away from people in prison, no matter how brutally they are treated by the prison industrial complex, there is one right so fundamental, so essential, that even controversial prison telecommunications company Securus can't bear to see it violat … | Continue reading
San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activists will lead a protest on Monday, September 13, at 6 pm PT, demanding Apple drop its planned iPhone surveillance software program, which will endanger the privacy and security of its customers and open a backdoor to increa … | Continue reading
The Freedom of Information Act requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to disclose deidentified data that would enable greater public oversight of the agency while protecting the privacy of immigrants and others, EFF argued in an amicus brief filed last month in f … | Continue reading
This is the third post in a series about recommendations EFF, European Digital Rights, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy... | Continue reading
There are too many people in U.S. prisons. Their guards are overworked, underpaid, and prone to human errors. Some have taken this as a sign that we need to rework our criminal justice system. Prison technology companies have another approach prepared: robots. Human guards, of co … | Continue reading
There are too many people in U.S. prisons. Their guards are overworked, underpaid, and prone to human errors. Some have taken this as a sign that we need to rework our criminal justice system. Prison technology companies have another approach prepared: robots. Human guards, of co … | Continue reading
Prison technology and telecom companies such as Securus and Global Tel*Link are already notorious for their ongoing efforts to extract every last penny and destroy any last shred of privacy afforded to incarcerated people. They have so far succeeded in their goals, operating in t … | Continue reading
Securus and GTL have spent the last several years inventing new and improved ways to extract money from incarcerated people, violate human rights, and surveil not only prisoners but their families, and friends. Over the next two weeks we will be shedding light on some of the pate … | Continue reading
Prison wardens and detention center administrators have, for years, faced what they believe to be a serious problem. While they can surveill every aspect of the lives of the people imprisoned in their facilities, they typically have no ability to violate the privacy and civil lib … | Continue reading
San Francisco—On Wednesday, September 8, at 9 am PT, internationally renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier and EFF Policy Analyst Joe Mullin will speak on a panel with digital rights activists delivering petitions with more than 50,000 signatures calling on Apple to cance … | Continue reading
Apple announced today that it would “take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements” to a program that will weaken privacy and security on iPhones and other products. EFF is pleased Apple is now listening to the concerns of customers, researche … | Continue reading
To track state-sponsored malware and combat the stalkerware of abusive partners, you need tools. Safe, reliable, and fast tools. That’s why EFF’s Threat Lab is proud to announce our very own tool to download Android APK files, apkeep. This enables users to download an Android APK … | Continue reading
The Council of Europe (CoE) is on track to approve the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Cybercrime Convention, which will set new invasive international rules for law enforcement access to user data and cooperation between States conducting criminal investigations. In o … | Continue reading
In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman’s reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech. The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts to punish and silence anyone whos … | Continue reading
In a major victory in our campaign to stop stalkerware, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today banned the Android app company Support King and its CEO Scott Zuckerman, developers of SpyFone, from the surveillance business. The stalkerware app secretly “harvested and shared data … | Continue reading
In a blow to millions of people who rely on local television broadcasts, a federal court ruled yesterday that the nonprofit TV-streaming service Locast is not protected by an exception to copyright created by Congress to ensure that every American has access to their local statio … | Continue reading
Over the weekend, our petition to Apple asking the company not to install surveillance software in every iPhone hit an important milestone: 25,000 signatures. We plan to deliver this petition to Apple soon; and the more individuals who sign, the more impact it will have. We are d … | Continue reading
Docket of the Living DeadIn 2017, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai - a former Verizon lawyer appointed by Donald Trump - announced his intention to dismantle the Commission’s hard-won 2015 Network Neutrality regulation. The 2015 order owed its existence to peop … | Continue reading
When it comes to software, it seems that no matter how many times a company loses on a clearly wrong copyright claim, it will soldier on—especially if it can find a path to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit is supposed to be almost entirely fo … | Continue reading
Face surveillance is a growing menace to racial justice, privacy, and free speech. So EFF supports laws that ban government use of this dangerous technology, and laws requiring corporations to get written opt-in consent from a person before collecting their faceprint.One of the w … | Continue reading