As we said last year, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken an unusually active interest in internet free speech issues over the past couple years. All five pending cases at the end of last year, covering three issues, were decided this year, with varying degrees of First Amendment gu … | Continue reading
People’s ability to speak online, share ideas, and advocate for change are enabled by the countless online services that host everyone’s views. Despite the central role these online services play in our digital lives, lawmakers and courts spent the last year trying to undermine a … | Continue reading
EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists were media rockstars in 2024, informing the public about important issues that affect privacy, free speech, and innovation for people around the world. Perhaps the single most exciting media hit for EFF in 2024 was “Secrets in Your Da … | Continue reading
EFF supporters get that strong encryption is tied to one of our most basic rights: the right to have a private conversation. In the digital world, privacy is impossible without strong encryption. That’s why we’ve always got an eye out for attacks on encryption. This year, we push … | Continue reading
It is our end-of-year tradition at EFF to look back at the last 12 months of digital rights. This year, the number and diversity of our reflections attest that 2024 was a big year. If there is something uniting all the disparate threads of work EFF has done this year, it is this: … | Continue reading
It is our end-of-year tradition at EFF to look back at the last 12 months of digital rights. This year, the number and diversity of our reflections attest that 2024 was a big year. If there is something uniting all the disparate threads of work EFF has done this year, it is this: … | Continue reading
It’s critical that copyright be balanced with limitations that support users’ rights, and perhaps no limitation is more important than fair use. Critics, humorists, artists, and activists all must have rights to re-use and re-purpose source material, even when it’s copyrighted. Y … | Continue reading
A federal appeals court just gave software developers, and users, an early holiday present, holding that software updates aren’t necessarily “derivative,” for purposes of copyright law, just because they are designed to interoperate the software they update. This sounds kind of o … | Continue reading
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has failed to address six out of six main privacy protections for three of its border surveillance programs—surveillance towers, aerostats, and unattended ground sensors—according to a new assessment by the Government Accountability Office … | Continue reading
Every year, countless emails hit our inboxes telling us that our personal information was accessed, shared, or stolen in a data breach. In many cases, there is little we can do. Most of us can assume that at least our phone numbers, emails, addresses, credit card numbers, and soc … | Continue reading
This post is part two in a series of posts about EFF’s work in Europe. Read about how and why we work in Europe here. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. While our work has taken us to far corners of th … | Continue reading
In the early years of the internet, website administrators had to face off with a burdensome and expensive process to deploy SSL certificates. But today, hundreds of thousands of people have used EFF’s free Certbot tool to spread that sweet HTTPS across the web. Now almost all in … | Continue reading
Some people just can’t take a hint. Today’s perfect example is a group of independent movie distributors that have repeatedly tried, and failed, to force Reddit to give up the IP addresses of several users who posted about downloading movies. The distributors claim they need this … | Continue reading
As the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have failed to secure the release of British-Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, UK politicians call for tougher measures to secure Alaa’s immediate return to the UK. During a debate o … | Continue reading
Bluesky promises to rethink social media by focusing on openness and user control. But what does this actually mean for the millions of people joining the site? November was a good month for alternatives to X. Many users hit their balking point after two years of controversial ch … | Continue reading
Age verification systems are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s privacy and anonymity. But Australia’s government recently decided to ignore these dangers, passing a vague, sweeping piece of age verification legislation after giving only a day for comments. The Online … | Continue reading
The TikTok ban itself and the DC Circuit's approval of it should be of great concern even to those who find TikTok undesirable or scary. Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation i … | Continue reading
Winnie Kabintie is a journalist and Communications Specialist based in Nairobi, Kenya. As an award-winning youth media advocate, she is passionate about empowering young people with Media and Information Literacy skills, enabling them to critically engage with and shape the evolv … | Continue reading
You should be able to message your family and friends without fear that law enforcement is reading everything you send. Privacy is a human right, and that’s why we break down the ways you can protect your ability to have a private conversation. Learn how governments are able to r … | Continue reading
Get a head-start on your New Year's resolution to stay up-to-date on digital rights news by subscribing to EFF's EFFector newsletter! This edition of the newsletter covers our top ten digital security resources for those concerned about the incoming administration, a new bill tha … | Continue reading
Most UN Member States, including the U.S., are expected to support adoption of the flawed UN Cybercrime Treaty when it’s scheduled to go before the UN General Assembly this week for a vote, despite warnings that it poses dangerous risks to human rights. EFF and its civil society … | Continue reading
This post is part one in a series of posts about EFF’s work in Europe. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. While our work has taken us to far corners of the globe, in recent years we have worked to expa … | Continue reading
Interviewer: David Greene This interview has been edited for length and clarity.* Prasanth Sugathan is Legal Director at Software Freedom Law Center, India. (SFLC.in). Prasanth is a lawyer with years of practice in the fields of technology law, intellectual property law, administ … | Continue reading
No one gets to abuse copyright to shut down debate. Because of that, we at EFF represent Channel 781, a group of citizen journalists whose YouTube channel was temporarily shut down following copyright infringement claims made by Waltham Community Access Corporation (WCAC). As par … | Continue reading
Late last week, the Senate released yet another version of the Kids Online Safety Act, written, reportedly, with the assistance of X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a flawed attempt to address the critical free speech issues inherent in the bill. This last minute draft remains, at its cor … | Continue reading
The Brazilian Supreme Court is on the verge of deciding whether digital platforms can be held liable for third-party content even without a judicial order requiring removal. A panel of eleven justices is examining two cases jointly, and one of them directly challenges whether Bra … | Continue reading
The promise of the internet—at least in the early days—was that it would lower the barriers to entry for any number of careers. Traditionally, the spheres of novel writing, culture criticism, and journalism were populated by well-off straight white men, with anyone not meeting on … | Continue reading
Interviewer: David Greene *This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Tomiwa Ilori is an expert researcher and a policy analyst with focus on digital technologies and human rights. Currently, he is an advisor for the B-Tech Africa Project at UN Human Rights and a Seni … | Continue reading
The European Union (EU) is a hotbed for tech regulation that often has ramifications for users globally. The focus of our work in Europe is to ensure that EU tech policy is made responsibly and lives up to its potential to protect users everywhere. As the new mandate of the Europ … | Continue reading
The Federal Trade Commission has entered a settlement with self-styled “weapon detection” company Evolv, to resolve the FTC’s claim that the company “knowingly” and repeatedly” engaged in “unlawful” acts of misleading claims about their technology. Essentially, Evolv’s technology … | Continue reading
For years now, deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have been turning to civil lawsuits to silence their opponents. These Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, aren’t designed to win on the merits, but rather to harass journalists, activists, and consu … | Continue reading
Did you know that most printer ink isn’t even expensive to make? Why then is it so expensive to refill the ink on your printer? The answer is actually pretty simple: monopolies, weird laws, and companies exploiting their users for profit. If this sounds mildly infuriating and mak … | Continue reading
EFF wrote recently about Locate X, a deeply troubling location tracking tool that allows users to see the precise whereabouts of individuals based on the locations of their smartphone devices. Developed and sold by the data surveillance company Babel Street, Locate X collects sma … | Continue reading
In the wake of the 2024 election in the United States, many people are concerned about tightening up their digital privacy and security practices. As always, we recommend that people start making their security plan by understanding their risks. For most people in the U.S., the t … | Continue reading
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Aji Fama Jobe is a digital creator, IT consultant, blogger, and tech community leader from The Gambia. She helps run Women TechMakers Banjul, an organization that provides visibility, mentorship, and resources to women and g … | Continue reading
It’s Power Up Your Donation Week! Right now, your contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation will go twice as far to protect digital privacy, security, and free speech rights for everyone. Will you donate today to get a free 2X match? Power Up! Give to EFF and get a free … | Continue reading
When a company makes a promise, the public should be able to rely on it. Today, nearly every person in the U.S. is a customer of either Amazon or Google—and many of us are customers of both technology giants. Both of these companies have made public promises that they will ensure … | Continue reading
Last year, we investigated a Dragon Touch children’s tablet (KidzPad Y88X 10) and confirmed that it was linked to a string of fully compromised Android TV Boxes that had also multiple reports of malware, adware, and a sketchy firmware update channel. Since then, Google has taken … | Continue reading
Last week the House of Representatives passed a dangerous bill that would allow the Secretary of Treasury to strip a U.S. nonprofit of its tax-exempt status. If it passes the Senate and is signed into law, H.R. 9495 would give broad and easily abused new powers to the executive b … | Continue reading
EFF, along with ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, filed a second amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit urging the court to require a warrant for border searches of electronic devices, an argument EFF has been making in the courts and Congress … | Continue reading
Sure, buying your favorite video game, movie, or album online is super convenient. I personally love being able to pre-order a game and play it the night of release, without needing to go to a store. But something you may not have thought about before making your purchase are the … | Continue reading
Recently I traveled to Portland, Oregon to speak at the PDX People’s Digital Safety Fair, meet up with five groups in the Electronic Frontier Alliance, and attend BSides PDX 2024. Portland’s first ever Digital Safety Fair was a success and five of our six EFA organizations in the … | Continue reading
*This interview took place in April 2024 at NetMundial+10 in São Paulo, Brazil. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Anriette Esterhuysen is a human rights defender and computer networking trailblazer from South Africa. She has pioneered the use of Internet and … | Continue reading
Good news: the Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped one of the two terrible patent bills it was considering, the patent-troll-enabling Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA). Bad news: the committee is still pushing the PREVAIL Act, a bill that would hamstring the U.S.’s mos … | Continue reading
The Biden White House has released a memorandum on “Advancing United States’ Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” which includes, among other things, a directive for the National Security apparatus to become a world leader in the use of AI. Under direction from the White House, … | Continue reading
The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) pledge period is underway and runs through January 15, 2024! If you're a U.S. federal employee or retiree, be sure to show your support for EFF by using our CFC ID 10437. Not sure how to make a pledge? No problem--it’s easy! First, head over to … | Continue reading
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.* Marjorie Heins is a writer, former civil rights/civil liberties attorney, and past director of the Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) and the American Civil Liberties Union's Arts Censorship Project. She is the author of … | Continue reading
Today marks prominent British-Egyptian coder, blogger, activist, and political prisoner Alaa Abd El Fattah’s 43rd birthday—his eleventh behind bars. Alaa should have been released on September 29, but Egyptian authorities have continued his imprisonment in contravention of the co … | Continue reading