When the government tries to convict you of a crime, you have a right to challenge its evidence. This is a fundamental principle of due process, yet prosecutors and technology vendors have routinely argued against disclosing how forensic technology works. For the first time, a fe … | Continue reading
The implementation process of Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the controversial Copyright Directive into national laws is in full swing, and it does not look good for users' rights and freedoms. Several EU states have failed to present balanced copyright implementation propos … | Continue reading
Section 230, a key law protecting free speech online since its passage in 1996, has been the subject of numerous legislative assaults over the past few years. The attacks have come from all sides. One of the latest, the SAFE Tech Act, seeks to address real problems Internet users … | Continue reading
Virginia’s legislature has passed a bill meant to protect consumer privacy—but the bill, called the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, really protects the interests of business far more than the interests of everyday consumers.Take ActionVirginia: Speak Up for Real PrivacyThe … | Continue reading
With a new year and a new Congress, the House of Representatives’ subcommittee covering antitrust has turned its attention to “reviving competition.” On Thursday, the first in a series of hearings was held, focusing on how to help small businesses challenge Big Tech. One very goo … | Continue reading
EFF has joined 42 other organizations, including the ACLU, the Knight Institute, and the National Security Archive calling for the new Biden administration to fulfill its promise to “bring transparency and truth back to government.” Specifically, these organizations are asking th … | Continue reading
It’s nearing the end of Black History Month, and that history is inherently tied to strife, resistance, and organizing related to government surveillance and oppression. Even though programs like COINTELPRO are more well-known now, the other side of these kinds of stories are the … | Continue reading
During the pandemic, a dangerous business has prospered: invading students’ privacy with proctoring software and apps. In the last year, we’ve seen universities compel students to download apps that collect their face images, driver’s license data, and network information. Studen … | Continue reading
If you make and share things online, professionally or for fun, you’ve been affected by copyright law. You may use a service that depends on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in order to survive. You may have gotten a DMCA notice if you used part of a movie, TV show, or … | Continue reading
Someone tries to livestream their encounters with the police, only to find that the police started playing music. In the case of a February 5 meeting between an activist and the Beverly Hills Police Department, the song of choice was Sublime’s “Santeria.” The police may not got n … | Continue reading
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing four racial and immigrant justice groups— Just Futures Law, MediaJustice, Mijente Support Committee, and the Immigrant Defense Project—suing the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Ser … | Continue reading
This blog post was co-written by EFF intern Haley Amster.EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit urging the court to hold that under the First Amendment public schools may not punish students their off-campus speech, including posting to socia … | Continue reading
Last week, we raised the alarm about an empty privacy bill moving fast through the Virginia legislature. The bill, SB 1392, is supported by Microsoft and Amazon, and would set a dangerous standard for state privacy bills. Take ActionVirginia: Speak Up for Real PrivacyThe bill has … | Continue reading
Design is incredibly important to how people use and choose products, but design patents are not. They provide exclusive rights only to ornamental product features, which by definition are not useful or artistic; for those that are, utility patent and copyright protection exist i … | Continue reading
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has obtained emails that show that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) sent at least one request—and likely many more—for Amazon Ring camera video of last summer’s Black-led protests against police violence. In a repor … | Continue reading
Along with other civil liberties organizations and activists, EFF has long warned that Amazon Ring and other networked home surveillance devices could be used to monitor political activity and protests. Now we have documented proof that our fears were founded. According to emails … | Continue reading
EFF has been tracking the Turkish government’s crackdown on tech platforms and its continuing efforts to force them to comply with draconian rules on content control and access to users’ data. As of now, the Turkish government has now managed to coerce Facebook, YouTube, and TikT … | Continue reading
Indonesia is the latest government to propose a legal framework to coerce social media platforms, apps, and other online service providers to accept local jurisdiction over their content and users’ data policies and practices. And in many ways, its proposal is the most invasive o … | Continue reading
A very weak consumer data privacy bill is sailing through the Virginia legislature with backing from Microsoft and Amazon, which have both testified in support of the bill. The bill, SB 1392 and its companion HB 2307, are based on a Washington privacy law backed by tech giants th … | Continue reading
Patents generate profits for private companies, but their power comes from the government, and in this country, the government’s power comes from the people. That means the rights patents confer, regardless of who exercises them, are fundamentally public in nature.Patent owners h … | Continue reading
The prosecution of Julian Assange for charges related to his publications of government documents on the whistleblower website Wikileaks poses a grave threat to press freedom, EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and other human rights organizations argue. In an open letter publi … | Continue reading
In all the madness that made up the last month of 2020, a number of copyright bills and proposals popped up—some even became law before most people had any chance to review them. So now that the dust has settled a little and we have some better idea what the landscape is going to … | Continue reading
As the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has begun across the U.S., there have been numerous reports of people having trouble getting it—not just because of its limited availability, but also because some counties and states have chosen to require computer and Internet access to sign … | Continue reading
Hateful speech presents one of the most difficult problems of content moderation. At a global scale, it’s practically impossible. That’s largely because few people agree about what hateful speech is—whether it is limited to derogations based on race, gender, religion, and other p … | Continue reading
To have privacy and security in the digital world, encryption is an indispensable ingredient. Without it, we’re all at risk of exploitation—by authoritarian governments, over-reaching police, nosy corporations, and online criminals.But for some years now, federal law enforcement … | Continue reading
Under traditional copyright law, security research is a well-established fair use, meaning it does not infringe copyright. When it was passed in 1998, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act upset the balance of copyright law. Since then, the balance has been further … | Continue reading
If you’re accused of a crime, you have a right to examine and challenge the evidence used against you. In an important victory, an appeals court in New Jersey agreed with EFF and the ACLU of NJ that a defendant is entitled to see the source code of software that’s used to generat … | Continue reading
This post is the fourth in a series about our new State of Communications Privacy Laws report, a set of questions and answers about privacy and data protection in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, and Spain. The research builds upon work from the … | Continue reading
This post is the third in a series about our new State of Communications Privacy Laws report, a set of questions and answers about privacy and data protection in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, and Spain. The research builds upon work from the … | Continue reading
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors last week voted unanimously in favor of requiring all special business districts—such as the Union Square Business Improvement District (USBID)—to bring any new surveillance plans to the Board before adopting new technologies. The resolution … | Continue reading
This blog post was co-written by EFF Legal Fellow Houston Davidson.It’s now common practice for politicians and other government officials to make major policy announcements on Twitter and other social media forums. That’s continuing to raise important questions about who can rea … | Continue reading
Almost one year after EFF called on Amazon’s surveillance doorbell company Ring to encrypt footage end-to-end, it appears they are starting to make this necessary change. This call was a response to a number of problematic and potentially harmful incidents, including larger conce … | Continue reading
Display the Blue Ribbon to support the essential human right of free speech, a fundamental building block of free society, affirmed by the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791 and by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Here at EFF, we continue to fight for the right to free spee … | Continue reading
EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene delivered the following as a keynote address on March 6, 2020, at the Media Law and Policy in the Digital Age: Global Challenges and Opportunities symposium hosted by Indiana University's Center for International Media Law and Policy Stud … | Continue reading
It’s an uncontroversial position that EFF has long fought for: Internet users expect their private online activities to stay that way. That’s why law enforcement should have to get a search warrant before getting records of people’s Internet activities. But in a disappointing dec … | Continue reading
As we continue to hear calls to repeal or change Section 230, it appears that many people have conflated a law that affects the tech giants (among many others) with Big Tech as a whole. Section 230 is not a gift to Big Tech, nor is repealing it a panacea for the problems Big Tech … | Continue reading
The new administration can do two things immediately that would help stop some of the more nefarious ways that police departments get surveillance technology. It should further roll back the infamous 1033 program of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows local polic … | Continue reading
Ten years ago today, Egyptians took to the streets to topple a dictator who had clung to power for nearly three decades. January 25th remains one of the most important dates of the Arab Spring, a series of massive, civilian-led protests and uprisings that spread across the Middle … | Continue reading
Late in 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey floated "Project Blue Sky," a plan for an interoperable, federated, standardized Twitter that would let users (or toolsmiths who work on behalf of users) gain more control over their participation in the Twitter system. This was an exciting m … | Continue reading
Contents IntroductionSurveillanceForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act Facial Recognition TechnologyBorder Search and Immigration SurveillanceEncryptionBackground on Encryption BackdoorsEnd-to-End Encryption and Client-Side ScanningBroadband21st-Century-Ready Access for All Ameri … | Continue reading
At noon on January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, and he and his staff took over the business of running the country.The tradition of a peaceful transfer of power is as old as the United States itself. But by the time most … | Continue reading
This blog post was co-written by EFF Legal Fellow Houston Davidson.Should an obviously fake Facebook post—one made as political satire—end with a lawsuit and a bill to pay for a police response to the post? Of course not, and that’s why EFF filed an amicus brief in Lafayette City … | Continue reading
Stupid Patent of the MonthContact tracing is critical for limiting the spread of a contagion like COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’s inventive to compare people’s locations using their smartphones. Rather, it’s all the more important to protect the basic methods of public healt … | Continue reading
The City of Oakland, California, has once again raised the bar on community control of police surveillance. Last week, Oakland's City Council voted unanimously to strengthen the city's already groundbreaking Surveillance and Community Safety Ordinance. The latest amendment, which … | Continue reading
Government and private use of face recognition technology each present a wealth of concerns. Privacy, safety, and amplification of carceral bias are just some of the reasons why we must ban government use.But what about private use? It also can exacerbate injustice, including its … | Continue reading
On Thursday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized its Fair Access to Financial Services rule, which will prevent banks from refusing to serve entire classes of customers that they find politically or morally unsavory. The rule is a huge win for civil liberties, … | Continue reading
Imagine this scenario: You’re driving home. Police pull you over, allegedly for a traffic violation. After you provide your license and registration, the officer catches you off guard by asking: “Since you’ve got nothing to hide, you don’t mind unlocking your phone for me, do you … | Continue reading
WhatsApp users have recently started seeing a new pop-up screen requiring them to agree to its new terms and privacy policy by February 8th in order to keep using the app. The good news is that, overall, this update does not make any extreme changes to how WhatsApp shares data wi … | Continue reading