The internet provides people space to build communities, shed light on injustices, and acquire vital knowledge that might not otherwise be available. And for LGBTQ+ individuals, digital spaces enable people that are not yet out to engage with their gender and sexual orientation. … | Continue reading
This post was written by EFF legal intern Danya Hajjaji. Corporations should not be able to collect data from a state’s residents while evading the jurisdiction of that state’s courts, EFF and the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice explained in a friend-of-t … | Continue reading
The U.S. patent system is broken, particularly when it comes to software patents. At EFF, we’ve been fighting hard for changes that make the system more sensible. Last month, we got a big victory when we defeated a set of rules that would have mangled one of the U.S. Patent and T … | Continue reading
The amount of data modern cars collect is a serious privacy concern for all of us. But in an abusive situation, tracking can be a nightmare. As a New York Times article outlined, modern cars are often connected to apps that show a user a wide range of information about a vehicle, … | Continue reading
In a first-of-its-kind agreement, the Detroit Police Department recently agreed to adopt strict limits on its officers’ use of face recognition technology as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a victim of this faulty technology. Robert Williams, a Black resident of a De … | Continue reading
It’s unlikely you’ve heard of Signaling System 7 (SS7), but every phone network in the world is connected to it, and if you have ever roamed networks internationally or sent an SMS message overseas you have used it. SS7 is a set of telecommunication protocols that cellular networ … | Continue reading
Social media platforms, at least in their most common form, have a First Amendment right to curate the third-party speech they select for and recommend to their users, and the government’s ability to manipulate those processes is extremely limited, the U.S. Supreme Court stated i … | Continue reading
Instead of relaxing for the summer, EFF is in first gear defending your rights online! Catch up on what we're doing with the latest issue of our EFFector newsletter. This time we're sharing updates regarding California law enforcement illegally sharing drivers' location data out- … | Continue reading
Oh the stories I could tell you about EFF's adventures anchoring the digital rights movement. Clandestine whistleblowers. Secret rooms. Encryption cracking. Airships over mass spying facilities. Even appearances from a badger, a purple dinosaur, and an adorable toddler dancing to … | Continue reading
Legal intern Danya Hajjaji was the lead author of this post. The Sixth Circuit must carefully apply a new “state action” test from the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that public officials who use social media to speak for the government do not have free rein to infringe critics’ Fi … | Continue reading
The end of June concluded LGBTQ+ Pride month, yet the risks LGBTQ+ people face persist every month of the year. This year, LGBTQ+ Pride took place at a time of anti-LGBTQ+ violence, harassment and vandalism and back in May, US officials had warned that LGBTQ+ events around the wo … | Continue reading
This is the third post in a series highlighting flaws in the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. Check out Part I, our detailed analysis on the criminalization of security research activities, and Part II, an analysis of the human rights safeguards. As we near the final negotiatin … | Continue reading
This post was co-written by EFF research intern Andrew Zuker. Whenever government officials generate fear about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration, they also generate dollars–hundreds of millions of dollars–for tech conglomerates and start-ups. The Electronic Frontier Foundat … | Continue reading
Craig Newmark Philanthropies will match up to $30,000 for your entire first year as a new monthly or annual EFF Sustaining Donor! Many thanks to Craig Newmark—founder of craigslist and a persistent supporter of digital freedom— for making this possible. This generous matching cha … | Continue reading
Despite a long history of courts ruling that government efforts to regulate speech online harm all internet users and interfere with their First Amendment rights, state and federal lawmakers continue to pass laws that do just that. Three separate rulings issued in the past week s … | Continue reading
EFF’s summer membership drive ends next week! Through EFF's 34th anniversary: Get 2 rare gifts (including a Bigfoot privacy pin), Be an EFF member for as little as $20, and Monthly and annual recurring donations get matched for the first year! The digital future relies on your su … | Continue reading
The early internet had a lot of “technological self-determination" — you could opt out of things, protect your privacy, control your experience. The problem was that it took a fair amount of technical skill to exercise that self-determination. But what if it didn’t? What if the b … | Continue reading
The Supreme Court correctly found that social media platforms, like newspapers, bookstores, and art galleries before them, have First Amendment rights to curate and edit the speech of others they deliver to their users, and the government has a very limited role in dictating what … | Continue reading
Right-to-repair advocates have spent more than a decade working for a simple goal: to make sure you can fix and tinker with your own stuff. That should be true whether we’re talking about a car, a tractor, a smartphone, a computer, or really anything you buy. Yet product manufact … | Continue reading
The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) wants to get a robot quadruped, popularly known as a robot dog. The city’s Board of Supervisors has a regulatory duty to probe into this intended purchase, including potentially blocking it altogether. The SFPD recently proposed the acqu … | Continue reading
The EU Council has now passed a 4th term without passing its controversial message-scanning proposal. The just-concluded Belgian Presidency failed to broker a deal that would push forward this regulation, which has now been debated in the EU for more than two years. For all those … | Continue reading
Hacker Summer Camp is almost here... and with it comes the Third Annual EFF Benefit Poker Tournament at DEF CON 32 hosted by security expert Tarah Wheeler. Please join us at the same place and time as last year: Friday, August 9th, at high noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room. The fe … | Continue reading
No points for guessing the subject of the first question the Wall Street Journal asked FTC Chair Lina Khan: of course it was about AI. Between the hype, the lawmaking, the saber-rattling, the trillion-dollar market caps, and the predictions of impending civilizational collapse, t … | Continue reading
Thanks to support from local advocates across the country, we’ve been able to have a few strong years for the right to repair. Both California and Minnesota’s right to repair laws go into effect today, and we've even made some headway convincing large companies, like Apple, to co … | Continue reading
In what is becoming a recurring theme, Mississippi became the latest state to pass a law requiring social media services to verify users’ ages and block lawful speech to young people. Once again, EFF explained to the court why the law is unconstitutional. Mississippi’s law (House … | Continue reading
For the past year, EFF has been sounding the alarm about police in California illegally sharing drivers' location data with anti-abortion states, putting abortion seekers and providers at risk of prosecution. We thus applaud the Sacramento County Grand Jury for hearing this call … | Continue reading
Law enforcement wants more drones, and we’ll probably see many more of them overhead as police departments seek to implement a popular project justifying the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): the “drone as first responder” (DFR). Police DFR programs involve a fleet o … | Continue reading
New Law Subject to Strictest Scrutiny Because It Imposes Prior Restraint, Directly Restricts Free Speech, and Singles Out One Platform for Prohibition, Brief Argues SAN FRANCISCO — The federal ban on TikTok must be put under the finest judicial microscope to determine its constit … | Continue reading
A global increase in anti-LGBTQ+ intolerance is having a significant impact on digital rights. As we wrote last year, censorship of LGBTQ+ websites and online content is on the rise. For many LGBTQ+ individuals the world over, the internet can be a safer space for exploring ident … | Continue reading
We’ve said it before: online age verification is incompatible with privacy. Companies responsible for storing or processing sensitive documents like drivers’ licenses are likely to encounter data breaches, potentially exposing not only personal data like users’ government-issued … | Continue reading
EFF is excited to kick off a new series of livestream events this summer! Please join EFF staff and fellow digital freedom supporters as we dive into three topics near and dear to our hearts. July 18: The U.S. Supreme Court Takes on the Internet In the first segment of EFF's live … | Continue reading
Wheeler Brings Perspectives on Information Security and International Conflict to the Board of Directors SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce today that Tarah Wheeler — a social scientist studying international conflict, an author, and a p … | Continue reading
The United States has now, for the first time in the more than 100-year history of the Espionage Act, obtained an Espionage Act conviction for basic journalistic acts. Here, Assange's Criminal Information is for obtaining newsworthy information from a source, communicating it to … | Continue reading
Protecting people's privacy is the first step we should take to create meaningful online regulation. That's why EFF has previously expressed concerns about the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) which, rather than set up strong protections, instead freezes consumer data privacy p … | Continue reading
EFF needs your help to defend privacy and free speech online. Learn why you're crucial to the fight in this edition of campfire tales from our friends, The Encryptids. These cunning critters have come out of hiding to help us celebrate EFF’s summer membership drive for internet f … | Continue reading
This post was authored by the mysterious Raul Duke. The weather was unusually cool for a summer night. Just the right amount of bitterness in the air for attorneys from all walks of life to gather in San Francisco’s Mission District for EFF’s 16th annual Cyberlaw Trivia Night. In … | Continue reading
Join EFF on a road trip through the information superhighway! As you choose the perfect playlist for the trip we'll share our findings about the latest generation of cell-site simulators; share security tips for protestors at college campuses; and rant about the surveillance abus … | Continue reading
Police in Minnesota are buying and flying more drones than ever before, according to an annual report recently released by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Minnesotan law enforcement flew their drones without a warrant 4,326 times in 2023, racking up a state-wid … | Continue reading
Government officials across the U.S. frequently promote the supposed, and often anecdotal, public safety benefits of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), but rarely do they examine how this very same technology poses risks to public safety that may outweigh the crimes they ar … | Continue reading
California lawmakers are debating an ill-advised bill that would require internet users to show their ID in order to look at sexually explicit content. EFF has sent a letter to California legislators encouraging them to oppose Assembly Bill 3080, which would have the result of ce … | Continue reading
In our recent comparison of Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, we detail a few of the ways the similar-at-a-glance microblogging social networks differ, and one of the main distinctions is how much control you have over what you see as a user. We’ve detailed how to get your Mastodon … | Continue reading
Did you know Disney’s Steamboat Willie entered the public domain this year? Since its 1928 debut, U.S. Congress has made multiple changes to copyright law, extending Disney’s ownership of this cultural icon for almost a century. A century. Creativity should spark more creativity. … | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence will neither solve all our problems nor likely destroy the world, but it could help make our lives better if it’s both transparent enough for everyone to understand and available for everyone to use in ways that augment us and advance our goals — not for c … | Continue reading
California Assemblymember Phil Ting has introduced A.B. 1814, a bill that would supposedly regulate police use of facial recognition technology. The problem is that it would do little to actually change the status quo of how police use this invasive and problematic technology. Po … | Continue reading
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s extraordinarily misguided and speech-chilling call this week to label social media platforms as harmful to adolescents is shameful fear-mongering that lacks scientific evidence and turns the nation’s top physician into a censor. This claim is partic … | Continue reading
The ongoing Twitter exodus sparked life into a new way of doing social media. Instead of a handful of platforms trying to control your life online, people are reclaiming control by building more open and empowering approaches to social media. Some of these you may have heard of: … | Continue reading
This is the first post in a series highlighting the problems and flaws in the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. Check out our detailed analysis on the criminalization of security research activities under the proposed convention. The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee is just weeks … | Continue reading
The latest and nearly final version of the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention—dated May 23, 2024 but released today June 14—leaves security researchers’ and investigative journalists’ rights perilously unprotected, despite EFF’s repeated warnings. The world benefits from people wh … | Continue reading