Just like us, federal judges are continuing to grapple with the challenges of COVID-19 and its impact on their ability to do their jobs. Less than two weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. announced that April’s oral arguments in our cas … | Continue reading
Since senators introduced the EARN IT Act (S. 3398) in early March, EFF has called attention to the many ways in which the bill would be a disaster for Internet users’ free speech and security. We’ve explained how the EARN IT Act could be used to drastically undermine encryption. … | Continue reading
You probably know the feeling: you reach for your phone only to realize it’s not where you thought it was. Total panic quickly sets in. If you’re like me (us), you don’t stop in the moment to think about why losing a phone is so scary. But the answer is clear: In addition to bein … | Continue reading
Sandra (Sandy) Ordoñez is dedicated to protecting women being harassed online. Sandra is an experienced community engagement specialist, a proud NYC Latina resident of Sunset Park Brooklyn, and a recipient of Fundación Carolina’s Hispanic Leadership Award. She is also a long-time … | Continue reading
As Bay Area residents sheltered at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vallejo City Council assembled via teleconference last week to vote on the purchase of one of the most controversial pieces of surveillance equipment—a cell-site simulator. What’s worse is that the city cou … | Continue reading
Communities across the country are stepping up to self-organize mutual aid groups, uniting virtually to offer and coordinate support to those who are in need. In solidarity with the need for physical distancing, many people are organizing online using Google spreadsheets, Google … | Continue reading
In late December, only a few hundred people knew of COVID-19. Now it’s March—just 90 days later—and much of the world has had to learn about and adapt and respond to the deadly disease. Though the highly contagious virus seems impossible to ignore today, it’s in part thanks to wh … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today joined the legal team defending Sports Fans Coalition NY, Inc. (SFCNY), the nonprofit organization that runs Locast, a free, local TV streaming service facing bogus copyright infringement claims by broadcast giants ABC, … | Continue reading
Today, EFF once again joined a coalition of privacy advocates filing comments with the California Attorney General (AG) on the latest proposed regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The CCPA was passed in June 2018 and took effect on January 1, 2020. Later th … | Continue reading
As the proposed sale of the .ORG domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital plays out, we see more and more why this sale was rushed through: the longer we have to look at it, the more questions we all have, and the fewer answers we get. For the second time, some of the … | Continue reading
COVID-19 has trapped many of us in our homes, isolating us from family and friends and limiting our movements. But there are few people who feel the isolating impacts of COVID-19 more acutely than those who are actually incarcerated in jails and prisons across the country. As Je … | Continue reading
Should the fact that your neighbors can see the outside of your house mean the police can use a camera to record everything that happens there for more than five months? We don’t think so either. That’s why we joined ACLU, ACLU of Massachusetts, and the Center for Democracy... | Continue reading
EFF and a number of other organizations that advocate for government transparency have signed onto a letter written by the First Amendment Coalition asking the California state judiciary to ensure public access to court proceedings and records.Many clerk’s offices are restricting … | Continue reading
It’s unthinkable that bad actors could take advantage of patent law and keep the public from getting access to COVID-19 tests and treatment, but they can and will—it already happened this month. Fortunately, an often-overlooked section of U.S. patent law allows the government to … | Continue reading
One week after Alphabet’s Verily launched its COVID-19 screening website, several unanswered questions remain about how exactly the project will collect, use, and retain people’s medical information.Verily, a healthcare data subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, has unt … | Continue reading
Cristian León, based in Buenos Aires, works for Asuntos del Sur, a “think/do tank” that works to strengthen democracy and participation. Originally from Bolivia, Cristian works on open government and democracy across several countries in Latin America. Our interview touched on fr … | Continue reading
“There are myriad reasons why individuals may wish to use a name other than the one they were born with. They may be concerned about threats to their lives or livelihoods, or they may risk political or economic retribution. They may wish to prevent discrimination or they may use … | Continue reading
Social distancing, work from home, shelter in place—these are all strategies employed in response to the COVID-19 epidemic. Americans who have jobs allowing them to engage in social distancing are very dependent on their Internet connection. That dependence is only going to grow … | Continue reading
EFF is proud to announce that independent researcher and technologist Ashkan Soltani has joined our advisory board, where he will share his expertise in privacy and security. Ashkan is a long-time EFF friend and collaborator whose research has informed our efforts to protect user … | Continue reading
As Californians shelter-at-home up and down the state, the journalists and citizen watchdogs who file California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests know that trade-offs must be made. We know that local agencies may be understaffed at this time and that they may be slow to respond … | Continue reading
EFF and its members work to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all the people of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has made obvious how important the Internet and digital tools are to our lives and how vital it is that we maintain an open and secu … | Continue reading
At a time when government officials are justifiably limiting in-person gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19, the public should have access to essential government activities. The Supreme Court is no exception, which is why it must finally allow cameras in its courtroom.Respo … | Continue reading
Governments around the world are demanding new dragnet location surveillance powers to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. But before the public allows their governments to implement such systems, governments must explain to the public how these systems would be effective in stopping … | Continue reading
Responding to the threat of COVID-19, science advisers from twelve countries have signed on to an open letter urging scientific publishers to make all COVID-19 research freely available to the public through PubMed Central or the World Health Organization's COVID Database.This is … | Continue reading
As government officials at all levels move quickly to respond to COVID-19 and protect the public’s health, it is vital that they also safeguard the public’s ability to participate in and access information about those decisions, EFF and a coalition of more than 100 organizations … | Continue reading
In the current moment, governments may be tempted to funnel scarce public health resources into the use of face recognition to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Public health crises, especially a global pandemic, may require extraordinary measures in favor of the public good—but in … | Continue reading
Entropy isn't just a word, it’s the (second) law (of thermodynamics): the idea that things tend towards chaos and brokenness. That’s why the Right to Repair is so close to our heart: fixing things is nothing less than the embodiment of the ancient struggle to wring order from cha … | Continue reading
A greater portion of the world’s work, organizing, and care-giving is moving onto digital platforms and tools that facilitate connection and productivity: video conferencing, messaging apps, healthcare and educational platforms, and more. It’s important to be aware of the ways th … | Continue reading
"Google will never sell any personal information to third parties; and you get to decide how your information is used." - Sundar Pichai Sound familiar? Although big tech companies like Google keep the lights on by harvesting and monetizing your personal data, they can be quick to … | Continue reading
The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recently-issued final rule requiring the collection of DNA from hundreds of thousands of individuals in immigration detention is a dangerous and unprecedented expansion of biometric screening based not on alleged conduct, but instead on immigrati … | Continue reading
For malicious people, preying on collective fear and misinformation is nothing new. Mentioning national headlines can lend a veneer of credibility to scams. We've seen this tactic time and again, so it's no surprise that COVID-19 themed social media and email campaigns have been … | Continue reading
A group of senators in Washington is trying—for the fourth time—to sneak through dangerous and misguided language that would amend and expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), our nation’s notoriously vague anti-hacking law. The language was first floated in 2015, then aga … | Continue reading
San Francisco – A majority of Americans are in face recognition databases in use by the U.S. government. Are you one of them? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new quiz called “Who Has Your Face” to help you find out.“Your driver’s license picture and other … | Continue reading
The government and law enforcement should not be scanning your photos with face recognition technology. But at least half of Americans are likely in government face recognition databases. Who Has Your Face includes a short quiz that you can use to learn which U.S. government agen … | Continue reading
We can have beautiful cities without turning our cities into surveillance cities.Cities across the U.S. are forcing operators of shared bikes and scooters to use dangerous and privacy invasive APIs developed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. These APIs—collectively … | Continue reading
On March 15, 2020, Section 215—a provision of FISA with a rich history of government overreach and abuse—expired. That provision, along with two other provisions of FISA, lapsed after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a broader set of FISA reforms.Late last week, before t … | Continue reading
Want to show your support for EFF while you spend more and more time in video conferences and chats? Here's one fun way: virtual backgrounds! We've collected some of our favorite EFF designs that promote issues like transparency, creativity, innovation, and privacy, for users to … | Continue reading
Since the earliest days of consumer computing, computer users have asserted their right to have a say in how their tools worked: whether it was Gopher delivering easy new ways to access services that had originally been designed for power users who could memorize obscure addresse … | Continue reading
In response to an EFF campaign started last year, roughly a third of institutions that we believe requested problematic and exploitive data as part of a government automated tattoo recognition challenge deleted the data or reported that they had never received or used it.EFF has … | Continue reading
A universal fiber network that was completed years ago. Millions of 5G users. Some of the world’s fastest and cheapest broadband connections. South Korea has all of these, while other nations that have the same resources lag behind. How did South Korea become a global leader in t … | Continue reading
Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency“The Ringer,” the first track on Eminem’s 2018 album, Kamikaze, includes a line that piqued Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold’s curiosity: the rapper claimed the Secret Service visited him due to some controversial lyrics about … | Continue reading
Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian whose work lies at the intersection of ideas and historical change. She is currently on research leave from the University of Chicago, where she teaches early modern European history. In this interview, we talk about censorship during the Inq … | Continue reading
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, citing public health efforts to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 transmission, ordered that an April hearing in the Uniloc v. Apple patent case be conducted by phone rather than in person and denied EFF’s request to allow the publi … | Continue reading
Five years have passed since Colombian digital rights NGO Fundación Karisma launched its first annual ¿Dónde Están Mis Datos? assessing telecommunication companies’ commitment to transparency and user privacy. Since then, we’ve seen major telecom companies providing more transpar … | Continue reading
Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian whose work lies at the intersection of ideas and historical change. She is currently on research leave from the University of Chicago, where she teaches early modern European history. In this interview, we talk about censorship during the Inq … | Continue reading
In 2018, California established the gold standard of what states should be doing on net neutrality by passing a model law for other states to copy. So, naturally, that makes the job of any legislator truly interested in protecting net neutrality pretty easy: just copy and paste. … | Continue reading
Imagine an Internet where the law required every message sent to be read by government-approved scanning software. Companies that handle such messages wouldn’t be allowed to securely encrypt them, or they’d lose legal protections that allow them to operate.Take ActionStop the Gra … | Continue reading
This week, we filed an amicus brief in a South Dakota case arguing that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the police from surreptitiously collecting our DNA without a warrant. This case is one of the first to challenge the collection of DNA from a free person after results of a gene … | Continue reading