Over a year ago, EFF raised the desperate need for the United States to have a universal fiber infrastructure plan in order to ensure that all Americans can obtain access to 21st century communications technology. Since then, we’ve produced technical research showing why fiber is … | Continue reading
“Doxxing” is an eerie, cyber-sounding term that gets thrown around more and more these days, but what exactly does it mean? Simply put, it’s when a person or other entity exposes information about you, publicly available or secret, for the purpose of causing harm. It might be inf … | Continue reading
A COVID vaccine has been approved and vaccinations have begun. With them have come proposals of ways to prove you have been vaccinated, based on the presumption that vaccination renders a person immune and unable to spread the virus. The latter is unclear. It also raises digital … | Continue reading
After lengthy consultations and many rumors and leaks, the European Commission has released its public draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA,) represents the first major overhaul of EU Internet legislation in the 21st Century. Lik … | Continue reading
The European Commission is set to release today a draft of the Digital Services Act, the most significant reform of European Internet regulations in two decades. The proposal, which will modernize the backbone of the EU’s Internet legislation—the e-Commerce Directive—sets out new … | Continue reading
The European Commission is set to release today a draft of the Digital Services Act, the most significant reform of European Internet regulations in two decades. The proposal, which will modernize the backbone of the EU’s Internet legislation—the e-Commerce Directive—sets out new … | Continue reading
Every three years, the public has an opportunity to chip away at the harm inflicted by an offshoot of copyright law that doesn’t respect traditional safeguards such as fair use. This law, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, impedes speech, innovation, and access … | Continue reading
Before 2020 ends, Massachusetts could become the first state to implement robust state-wide protections from government use of face recognition. As part of a sweeping package of police reform legislation (S. 2963) inspired by protests for police accountability, state legislators … | Continue reading
IPANDETEC, a digital rights organization in Central America, today released its first "Who Defends Your Data" (¿Quién Defiende Tus Datos?) report for Nicaragua, assessing how well the country’s mobile phone and Internet service providers (ISPs) are protecting users' personal data … | Continue reading
Today California joined dozens of other states and countries in launching its COVID-19 exposure notification app, CA Notify, built on Google and Apple’s Exposure Notification API. Google and Apple’s API is already used in 20 other U.S. states, as well as countries including Germa … | Continue reading
The armed Florida State Trooper raid on Monday on the Tallahassee Florida home of data scientist and COVID whistleblower Rebekah Jones was shocking on many levels. This incident smacks of retaliation against someone working to provide the public with truthful information about th … | Continue reading
ContentsIntroductionYouTube's Content ID: Culture of FearCase Study 1: hbomberguyHow Content ID Dictates Expression on YouTube: Practically, Fair Use Has No EffectCase Study 2: Todd in the Shadows Creators Cannot Leave or Meaningfully Challenge the System: Where Am I Supposed to … | Continue reading
Antitrust enforcers charged with protecting us from monopolists have awoke from decades-long hibernation to finally address something users have known, and been paying for with their private data, for years: Facebook’s acquisitions of rival platforms have harmed social media user … | Continue reading
San Francisco –YouTube is supposed to be a vibrant space for new creativity, but in practice creators are sharply hampered by the site’s “Content ID” system. A new whitepaper from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) takes a deep dive into the confusing process of getting a v … | Continue reading
Today, EFF is publishing a new white paper, “How YouTube’s Content ID Discourages Fair Use and Dictates What We See Online.” The paper analyzes the effects of YouTube’s automated copyright filter, Content ID, on the creative economy that has sprung up around the platform. Major p … | Continue reading
Security researchers at EFF have tracked APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) targeting civil society for many years now. And while in many cases, the “advanced” appellation is debatable, “persistent” is not. Since 2015, EFF has tracked the cyber-mercenaries known as Dark Caracal, … | Continue reading
President Trump’s recent threat to “unequivocally VETO” the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it doesn’t include a repeal of Section 230 may represent the final attack on online free speech of his presidency, but it’s certainly not the first. The NDAA is one of the “mu … | Continue reading
Last week, five Senators joined the chorus of privacy advocates, students, and teachers expressing concern over surveillance proctoring apps being used to watch students remotely during exams. “You must be able to demonstrate that you are respecting students’ privacy,” the Senato … | Continue reading
To commemorate the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 30th anniversary, we present EFF30 Fireside Chats. This limited series of livestreamed conversations looks back at some of the biggest issues in Internet history and their effects on the modern web.To celebrate 30 years of defen … | Continue reading
“You have to choose: are you a platform or a publisher?”It’s the question that makes us pull out our hair and roll our eyes. It’s the question that makes us want to shout from the rooftops “IT DOESN’T MATTER. YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE”We’ll say it plainly here: there is no legal s … | Continue reading
The California Legislature finished the 2020 session without doing anything to address broadband access in response to the pandemic. While the California Senate sent much-needed legislation to the Assembly, it was not allowed to move forward from there. That meant no help for the … | Continue reading
Episode 006 of EFF’s How to Fix the InternetChris Lewis joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss how our access to knowledge is increasingly governed by click-wrap agreements that prevent users from ever owning things like books and music, and how this undermi … | Continue reading
EFF recently partnered with the University of Missouri's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on a virtual event, "Deciphering Data Privacy.” This event aimed to foster a conversation with journalists, technologists, and privacy experts on the ways that we can make the convers … | Continue reading
We are at a critical juncture in the world of copyright claims. The “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act”—the CASE Act—is apparently being considered for inclusion in next week’s spending bill. That is “must pass” legislation—in other words, legislation that is … | Continue reading
New York State lawmakers unanimously passed legislation (A10500C/S8450C) to protect New Yorkers cooperating with contact tracing efforts from having their data used against them in court proceedings or administrative hearings. Once enacted, the law will also ban police and immigr … | Continue reading
Even though it’s only 26 words long, Section 230 doesn’t say what many think it does. So we’ve decided to take up a few kilobytes of the Internet to explain what, exactly, people are getting wrong about the primary law that defends the Internet.Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) is on … | Continue reading
Many of the smartphone apps people use every day are collecting data on their users and, in order to make money, many of these apps sell that information. One of the customers for this data is the U.S. government, which regularly purchases commercially available geolocation data. … | Continue reading
San Francisco—Sen. Ron Wyden, a fierce advocate for the rights of technology users, will join EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry on Thursday, December 10, for a livestream fireside chat about the fight to defend freedom of expression and innovation on the web.Wyden is an origina … | Continue reading
The undersigned organisations strongly condemn the persecution of employees of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and Egyptian civil society by the Egyptian government. We urge the global community and their respective governments to do the same and join us in cal … | Continue reading
Episode 005 of EFF’s How to Fix the InternetAbi Hassen joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss the rise of facial recognition technology, how this increasingly powerful identification tool is ending up in the hands of law enforcement, and what that means for … | Continue reading
Power Up Your Donation Week has begun! EFF is calling on tech users everywhere to give today and instantly double their impact on Internet freedom while the world needs it most.Power UpDOnate today and get an automatic 2x match!For one week starting on #GivingTuesday, anyone who … | Continue reading
We are quickly approaching the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, a powerfully hopeful time in history when—despite all odds—Egyptians rose up against an entrenched dictatorship and shook it from power, with the assistance of new technologies. Though the role of social … | Continue reading
Last week, EFF urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reconsider a split three-judge panel’s ruling that the Baltimore Police Department’s aerial surveillance of the city’s more than half a million residents is constitutional. In a friend-of-the-court brie … | Continue reading
Visa, the credit card network, is trying to buy financial technology company Plaid for $5.3 billion. The merger is bad for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it would allow a giant company with a controlling market share and a history of anticompetitive practices to snap up … | Continue reading
Let’s tell the Copyright Office that it’s not a crime to modify or repair your own devices.Every three years, the Copyright Office holds a rulemaking process where it grants the public permission to bypass digital locks for lawful purposes. In 2018, the Office expanded existing p … | Continue reading
Security researchers who reported observing Internet communications between the Russian financial firm Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization in 2016 can remain anonymous, an Indiana trial court ruled last week.The ruling protects the First Amendment anonymous speech rights of the … | Continue reading
Episode 004 of EFF’s How to Fix the InternetCory Doctorow joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss how large, established tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook can block interoperability in order to squelch competition and control their users, and ho … | Continue reading
When there are only five people in charge of a major federal agency, the personal agenda of even one of them can have a profound impact. That’s why EFF is closely watching the nomination of Nathan Simington to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).Simington’s nomination app … | Continue reading
The Internet’s domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN, the organization that regulates that system, is legally bound not to act as the Internet’s speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used thos … | Continue reading
Facebook claims that their role as guardian of users’ privacy gives them the power to shut down apps that give users more control over their own social media experience. Facebook is wrong. The latest example is their legal bullying of Friendly Social Browser.Friendly is a web bro … | Continue reading
A few years ago, when you saw a security camera, you may have thought that the video feed went to a VCR somewhere in a back office that could only be accessed when a crime occurs. Or maybe you imagined a sleepy guard who only paid half-attention, and only when they discovered a c … | Continue reading
Today, we’re pleased to announce Cover Your Tracks, the newest edition and rebranding of our historic browser fingerprinting and tracker awareness tool Panopticlick. Cover Your Tracks picks up where Panopticlick left off. Panopticlick was about letting users know that browser fin … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched Cover Your Tracks, a interactive tool that teaches users how advertisers follow them as they shop or browse online, and how to fight back against corporate trackers to protect their privacy, mitigate relentless … | Continue reading
Today EFF is launching How to Fix the Internet, a new podcast mini-series to examine potential solutions to six ills facing the modern digital landscape. Over the course of 6 episodes, we’ll consider how current tech policy isn’t working well for users and invite experts to join … | Continue reading
Last week, users of macOS noticed that attempting to open non-Apple applications while connected to the Internet resulted in long delays, if the applications opened at all. The interruptions were caused by a macOS security service attempting to reach Apple’s Online Certificate St … | Continue reading
GitHub recently reinstated the repository for youtube-dl, a popular free software tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other user-uploaded video platforms. GitHub had taken down the repository last month after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) abused th … | Continue reading
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined more than three dozen cybersecurity experts and professional security organizations in calling for the White House to keep politics out of securing this month’s election. Election security officials and computer … | Continue reading
Episode 003 of EFF’s How to Fix the Internet Jumana Musa joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss how the third-party doctrine is undermining our Fourth Amendment right to privacy when we use digital services, and how recent court victories are a hopeful sign … | Continue reading