Our Fourth Amendment rights are under attack in the digital age, and EFF is proud to announce that human rights attorney and racial justice activist Jumana Musa has joined our advisory board, bringing great expertise to our fight defending users’ privacy rights.Musa is Director o … | Continue reading
After last week’s violent attack on the Capitol, law enforcement is working overtime to identify the perpetrators. This is critical to accountability for the attempted insurrection. Law enforcement has many, many tools at their disposal to do this, especially given the very publi … | Continue reading
Last week, following riots that saw supporters of President Trump breach and sack parts of the Capitol building, Facebook and Twitter made the decision to give the president the boot. That was notable enough, given that both companies had previously treated the president, like ot … | Continue reading
The rollout of fiber broadband will never make it to many communities in the US. That’s because large, national ISPs are currently laying fiber primarily focused on high-income users to the detriment of the rest of their users. The absence of regulators has created a situation wh … | Continue reading
Perpetrators of the horrific events that took place at the Capitol on January 6 had a clear goal: to undermine the legitimate operations of government, to disrupt the peaceful transition of power, and to intimidate, hurt, and possibly kill those political leaders that disagree wi … | Continue reading
Democracy in Turkey is in a deep crisis. Its ruling party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, systematically silences marginalized voices, shuts down dissident TV channels, sentences journalists, and disregards the European Court of Human Rights decisions. As we wrote in November, in t … | Continue reading
Washington, D.C. - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with New Jersey-based Tarver Law Offices, are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination extends to the digital … | Continue reading
Like most people in the United States and around the world, EFF is shocked and disgusted by Wednesday’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. We support all those who are working to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and we are grateful for the service of policymakers, st … | Continue reading
The arrival of government-operated autonomous police robots does not look like predictions in science fiction movies. An army of robots with gun arms is not kicking down your door to arrest you. Instead, a robot snitch that looks like a rolling trash can is programmed to decide w … | Continue reading
Just as the 2020 holiday season was beginning in earnest, Solano Superior Court Judge Bradley Nelson upheld the gift of surveillance accountability that the California State legislature had provided state residents when they passed 2015's Senate Bill 741 (Cal. Govt. Code § 53166) … | Continue reading
Today, EFF submitted comments to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) opposing the agency’s proposal for new regulations of cryptocurrency transactions. As we explain in our comments, financial records can be deeply personal and revealing … | Continue reading
Today, a British judge denied the Trump Administration’s extradition request for Wikileaks Editor Julian Assange, who is facing charges in the United States under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The judge largely confirmed the charges against him, but ulti … | Continue reading
Boston – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the ACLU of Massachusetts will urge an appeals court on Tuesday to require warrants for the government to search electronic devices at U.S. airports and other ports of entry—ensuring … | Continue reading
Here at EFF, we take particular notice of the way that intellectual property law leads to expression being removed from the Internet. We document the worst examples in our Takedown Hall of Shame. Some, we use to explain more complex ideas. And in other cases, we offer our help.In … | Continue reading
If there was any question about the gravity of problems with police use of face surveillance technology, 2020 wasted no time in proving them dangerously real. Thankfully, from Oregon to Massachusetts, local lawmakers responded by banning their local governments' use. The Alarm On … | Continue reading
Government knowledge of what sites activists have visited can put them at risk of serious injury, arrest, or even death. This makes it a vitally important priority to secure DNS. DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a protocol that encrypts the Domain Name System (DNS) by performing lookups o … | Continue reading
Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (VR/AR) are rapidly maturing and becoming more prevalent to a wider audience, especially as the pandemic drives more people to virtual activities. This technology provides the promise to entertain and educate, to connect and enha … | Continue reading
Californians in November voted to repeal a 2018 law that would have ended cash bail and replaced it with a digital pretrial risk assessment tool that dictates whether a person can be released as they await their trial. By voting No on Proposition 25, Californians voted to keep th … | Continue reading
EFF takes on fights for the long run, and some of our longest running legal fights are focused on bringing the National Security Agency within the rule of law, and batting back the arguments that the state secrets privilege should insulate the government from accountability for s … | Continue reading
The coronavirus dominated the news cycles, and our personal lives, in 2020. Scientists around the world raced forward to create a vaccine. Alongside that massive effort to create a critical new invention, we saw a renewed debate about patents and their role in helping, or hinderi … | Continue reading
2020 saw governments on three continents take action against the dominance of the biggest tech platforms, with a flurry of pro-competition rules, investigations and lawsuits. As exciting as this is, it's just the beginning. Antitrust enforcement is often a matter of years or even … | Continue reading
EFF works in state legislatures across the country to fight for your civil liberties. This year, the pandemic upended the priorities and plans of every statehouse. But, with your support, EFF was able to quickly respond to surveillance threats, defend privacy, and counter the way … | Continue reading
As students were sent home from school in the spring due to the coronavirus pandemic, schools followed them home with invasive surveillance technology. This trend, spurred by the surge in remote learning, was an opportunistic move by tech companies and schools already in a race t … | Continue reading
On March 15, 2020, Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act—a surveillance law with a rich history of government overreach and abuse—expired due to its sunset clause. Along with two other PATRIOT Act provisions, Section 215 lapsed after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a broader s … | Continue reading
These days it's easy to feel adrift from the people in your life. At times, physical distance alongside social and political unrest seems like a never-ending rising tide. It can feel overwhelming. We have felt it here at EFF, but thankfully during our 30th Anniversary, EFF's purp … | Continue reading
One nice thing about democracy is that—at least in theory—we don’t need permission to speak freely and privately. We don’t have to prove that our speech meets the government’s criteria, online or offline. We don’t have to “earn” our rights to free speech or privacy.Times have cha … | Continue reading
For many years, we have urged platforms to operate with more transparency—both to the public and to their users—and to ensure that the people who use their services have the ability to appeal wrongful content moderation decisions. As such, in conjunction with several other organi … | Continue reading
As the world rapidly changed in 2020, new threats arose to our digital security. The shift to online education and the wave of police brutality protests brought new avenues for surveillance, so EFF created new resources to help people protect themselves.EFF maintains a repository … | Continue reading
While 2019 saw the EU ramming through a disastrous Internet copyright rule that continues to reverberate through legal and policy circles, 2020 was a very different story, as the EU introduced the Digital Services Act the most significant reform of Europe’s platform legislation t … | Continue reading
Below is a message from whistleblower Edward Snowden. His revelations about secret surveillance programs opened the world’s eyes to a new level of government misconduct, and reinvigorated EFF’s continuing work in the courts and with lawmakers to end unlawful mass spying.EFF is gr … | Continue reading
by John Perry Barlow Desperados of the DataSphere So me and my sidekick Howard, we was sitting out in front of the 40 Rod Saloon one evening when he all of a sudden says, "Lookee here. What do you reckon?" I look up and there's these two strangers riding into town. They're y … | Continue reading
This summer’s Black-led protest movement against police violence was one of the largest political movements in the history of the United States--and with it, came a massive proliferation of government surveillance technology aimed at activists and demonstrators. EFF has been stan … | Continue reading
In a year that saw every facet of online life reshaped the coronavirus pandemic, online content moderation and platform censorship were no exception. After a successful Who Has Your Back? campaign in 2019 to encourage large platforms to adopt best practices and endorse the Santa … | Continue reading
In a year that saw every facet of online life reshaped the coronavirus pandemic, online content moderation and platform censorship were no exception. After a successful Who Has Your Back? campaign in 2019 to encourage large platforms to adopt best practices and endorse the Santa … | Continue reading
Location tracking apps. Spyware to enforce quarantine. Immunity passports. Throughout 2020, governments around the world deployed invasive surveillance technologies to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.But heavy-handed tactics like these undercut public trust in government, precisely … | Continue reading
If you come at the nonprofit sector, you’d best not miss.Nonprofits and NGOs around the world were stunned last November when the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that it had agreed to sell the Public Interest Registry—the organization that manages the .ORG top-level domain (TLD … | Continue reading
“Now more than ever,” “in these uncertain times,” “unprecedented”—we’re sure you have seen these words repeated over and over in the last twelve months, including from us here at EFF. They are clichés because they are true. 2020 has been the year that lasted a whole decade.It alm … | Continue reading
One of EFF’s chief concerns about exam proctoring software—in addition to the fact that it subjects students to excessive surveillance—is the risk that it will incorrectly flag students for cheating, called “false positives.” This can be due either to the software’s technical fai … | Continue reading
As we feared, the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act”—the CASE Act—that we’ve been fighting in various forms for two years has been included in a "must-pass" spending bill. This new legislation means Internet users could face up to $30,000 in penalties for sha … | Continue reading
As we feared, the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act”—the CASE Act—that we’ve been fighting in various forms for two years has been included in Congress’ $900 billion Coronavirus relief package. This new legislation means Internet users could face up to $30,00 … | Continue reading
You weathered a year that pressed the limits of endurance. But thankfully, the more we leaned on technology to stay connected, the harder EFF members fought to protect privacy, security, and free expression. This collective mission is more meaningful than ever, and you can keep u … | Continue reading
Just yesterday we saw two wretched copyright bills-the CASE Act and a felony streaming bill -- slipped into law via a must-pass spending bill. But it seems some people in Congress were just getting started. Today, Senator Thom Tillis launched a "discussion draft" of the so-called … | Continue reading
EFF filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of WhatsApp’s lawsuit against notorious Israeli spyware company NSO Group. WhatsApp discovered last year that NSO Group had breached its systems and enabled NSO Group’s government clients to hack into … | Continue reading
One of the most important aspects of cryptocurrencies from a civil liberties perspective is that they can provide privacy protections for their users. But EFF is concerned that the U.S. government has been increasingly taking steps to undermine the anonymity of cryptocurrency tra … | Continue reading
EFF has been tracking the arrest, detention, and subsequent investigation of Ola Bini since its beginnings over 18 months ago. Bini, a Swedish-born open-source developer, was arrested in Ecuador's Quito Airport in a flurry of media attention in April 2019. He was held without tri … | Continue reading
Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses. This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple … | Continue reading
At a time when the federal government is collecting and creating massive amounts of digital data that can implicate people’s privacy and free speech rights, it is crucial that the public know what the government is doing with that information. A ruling from a federal appellate co … | Continue reading
Many in the U.S. have spent 2020 debating the problems of content moderation on social media platforms, misinformation and disinformation, and the perceived censorship of political views. But globally, this issue has been in the spotlight for a decade. This year is the tenth anni … | Continue reading