EFF and a coalition of privacy advocates have filed comments with the California Attorney General seeking strong regulations to protect consumer data privacy. The draft regulations are a good step forward, but the final regulations should go further.The California Consumer Privac … | Continue reading
The .ORG top-level domain and all of the nonprofit organizations that depend on it are at risk if a private equity firm is allowed to buy control of it. EFF has joined with over 250 respected nonprofits to oppose the sale of Public Interest Registry, the (currently) nonprofit ent … | Continue reading
In 2006, Aaron Patzer founded Mint. Patzer had grown up in the city of Evansville, Indiana—a place he described as "small, without much economic opportunity"—but had created a successful business building websites. He kept up the business through college and grad school and inves … | Continue reading
We announced Canary Watch a year ago as a coalition project to list Warrant Canaries and monitor them for changes or removal. Canary Watch was a joint project, with EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation, NYU Law, Calyx and the Berkman Center. Along the way, the project has been pa … | Continue reading
Earlier this week EFF released Certbot 1.0, the latest version of our free, open source tool that helps websites encrypt their traffic. The release of 1.0 is a significant milestone for the project and is the culmination of the work done over the past few years by EFF and hundred … | Continue reading
Decisions about who gets to use the public airwaves and how they use it impact our lives every day. From the creation of WiFi routers to the public auctions that gave us more than two options for our cell phone providers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s decisions re … | Continue reading
Taking and sharing pictures with wireless devices has become a common practice. It’s hardly a recent development: the distinction between computers and cameras has shrunk, especially since 2007 when smartphone cameras became standard. Even though devices that can take and share p … | Continue reading
There is a lot to like about U.S. Sen. Cantwell’s new Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA). It is an important step towards the comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation that we need to protect us from corporations that place their profits ahead of our privacy.The bil … | Continue reading
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released Certbot 1.0: a free, open source software tool to help websites encrypt their traffic and keep their sites secure.Certbot was first released in 2015, and since then it has helped more than two million website … | Continue reading
It's time to shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a comprehensive report that identifies and explains the hidden technical methods and business practices companies use to collect and track our personal information from the minute we turn on our devices each da … | Continue reading
We’ve been fighting abuses of the patent system for years. Many of the worst abuses we see are committed by software patent owners who make money suing people instead of building anything. These are patent owners we call patent trolls. They demand money from people who use techno … | Continue reading
Last week, Iranians took to the streets nationwide in protest after an abrupt spike in fuel prices. As the protests grew, the government disrupted the internet across Iran in an apparent attempt to quell unrest. The slowdown was, for most, experienced as a full blackout of intern … | Continue reading
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently released a proposed rule expanding the agency’s collection of social media information on key visa forms and immigration applications. Earlier this month, EFF joined over 40 civil society organizations that signed on to comments … | Continue reading
EFF wants to help end government use of face surveillance in your community. To aid in that effort, we’ve partnered with community-based organizations in the Electronic Frontier Alliance—and other concerned civil society organizations—in launching About Face. Our About Face campa … | Continue reading
EFF and 26 other organizations just sent a letter to the Internet Society (ISOC) urging it to stop the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR)—the organization that manages the .ORG top-level domain—to private equity firm Ethos Capital. Our message is clear: .ORG is extremely … | Continue reading
Observations of election manipulation on social media, and fears about how it could get worse in future elections, are prompting several platforms to take action. Twitter’s new political ads policy goes into effect today, just days after Google announced changes to its own ads po … | Continue reading
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a forceful opinion today holding that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects individuals from being forced to disclose the passcode to their devices to the police. In a 4-3 decision in Commonwealth v. Davis, the court found tha … | Continue reading
Amid months of damaging investigative reporting and pressure by advocacy groups like EFF, senators are finally joining the fight to learn just how invasive and harmful Amazon’s Ring cameras are to the privacy of people in their vicinity.In September, after it had been revealed th … | Continue reading
Good news! The U.S. Supreme Court has finally agreed to review the Federal Circuit’s dangerous decisions in the long-running case of Oracle v. Google. The Supreme Court now has an opportunity to reverse the damage done by the Federal Circuit. The Court can explain why copyrightin … | Continue reading
Even with the looming expiration of Section 215 and other key provisions of the Patriot Act, it took the Intelligence Community almost four months to respond to a letter written by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) seeking clarification on how the Intelligence Community interprets the … | Continue reading
With federal agencies set to run out of money this week, House lawmakers today passed a short-term funding bill that contained a nasty surprise. Tucked into the end of this must-pass legislation, in a section titled “Other Matters,” is language reauthorizing three Foreign Intelli … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Kaspersky, Operation Safe Escape and seven other organizations today launched the Coalition Against Stalkerware to unite and mobilize security software companies and advocates for domestic abuse victims in actions to combat … | Continue reading
Foreign police often want to investigate a crime by gathering potential evidence from Internet companies located in another country. What if police in Poland want to get a user’s data from an ISP in Germany, Philippines, Japan—or vice versa? Can they do this? Under what rules, an … | Continue reading
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has announced his plans to begin freeing up valuable airwaves within the C-Band, a part of the spectrum—the radio frequencies that our cell carriers, television stations, and others use to transmit services—historically used for satellite television. Once fr … | Continue reading
A federal judge significantly moved the needle on privacy at the border this week, recognizing that international travelers have strong privacy interests in their digital data and ruling that suspicionless electronic device searches at U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amend … | Continue reading
Public.Resource.Org has one simple mission: to improve public access to government documents, including our laws. Public Resource believes—and EFF agrees—that everyone should be able to read, analyze, and share the laws that govern us, without having to pay a gatekeeper or sign a … | Continue reading
Calling all transparency advocates, investigative journalists, and assorted FOIA punks! It’s once again time to submit your nominations for The Foilies—EFF’s annual, tongue-in-cheek awards for outrageous, ridiculous, and infuriating responses to public records requests. Each year … | Continue reading
Today, we are told that the bigness of Big Tech giants was inevitable: the result of "network effects." For example, once everyone you want to talk to is on Facebook, you can't be convinced to use another, superior service, because all the people you'd use that service to talk to … | Continue reading
BOSTON—In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v … | Continue reading
Leaders of the Senate IP Subcommittee have been working, for nearly a year now, on producing some kind of legislation to weaken Section 101 of the Patent Act. Their proposal would throw out all the case law based on Section 101, including the Alice decision, which has been especi … | Continue reading
After Equifax’s calamitous 2017 data breach, its settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the private attorneys representing victims appears to offer two potential remedies to all 147 million American consumers affected: free credit monitoring, or if individuals alr … | Continue reading
BOSTON—In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v … | Continue reading
San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today to obtain information that will shine a light on the agency’s use of Rapid DNA technology on migrant families at the border to verify biological parent-child relationships. … | Continue reading
Everyone should be able to choose how they use the Internet, including being able to screen out material they don’t want and protect themselves from malicious software. The principle is core to empowering users and to ensuring that technology works for all of us.But a recent deci … | Continue reading
Javier Smaldone is a well-known figure in the Argentinian infosec community. As a security researcher, he’s worked to highlight the flaws in electronic voting in Argentina, despite the country’s local and federal attempts to move ahead with insecure software and electoral procedu … | Continue reading
Macmillan, one of the “Big Five” publishers, is imposing new limits on libraries’ access to ebooks—and libraries and their users are fighting back.Starting last week, the publisher is imposing a two-month embargo period on library ebooks. When Macmillan releases a new book, libra … | Continue reading
The FTC recently took action against stalkerware developer Retina-X, the company behind apps Flexispy, PhoneSheriff, and Teenspy. The FTC settlement bars Retina-X from distributing its mobile apps until it can adequately secure user information and ensure its apps will only be us … | Continue reading
Join EFF and others on November 9 at the Internet Archive for Aaron Swartz Day—an annual event to celebrate Aaron Swartz’s legacy as an activist, programmer, entrepreneur, and political organizer. Aaron’s life was cut short in 2013, after he was charged under the notoriously dra … | Continue reading
The popular VPN provider, NordVPN, recently announced a server breach at a third-party data center. NordVPN reassured users that its key services were not impacted by this breach in particular, however, NordVPN users credentials were used with credential stuffing attacks. NordVPN … | Continue reading
In California, as in many states, the public has a right to request public records—government documents that reveal information such as what decisions public officials make, what actions they take, and how they spend our money. But what happens when a government agency starts del … | Continue reading
Future Tense Fiction, a joint project of ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination and Slate, has just published Affordances, a new science fiction story by EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow. It's a tale of algorithmic bias, facial recognition, and technological self-determina … | Continue reading
Unless Congress stops it, foreign police will soon be able to collect and search data on the servers of U.S. Internet companies. They’ll be able to do it without a probable cause warrant, or any oversight from a U.S. judge. This is all happening because of a new law enforcement d … | Continue reading
Recent attacks on encryption have diverged. On the one hand, we’ve seen Attorney General William Barr call for “lawful access” to encrypted communications, using arguments that have barely changed since the 1990’s. But we’ve also seen suggestions from a different set of actors fo … | Continue reading
ESET researchers recently discovered a false “trojanized” version of Tor Browser that collectively stole $40,000 USD in Bitcoin.This does not mean that Tor or Tor Browser itself is compromised in any way. It only means that attackers found a new, insidious way to create and distr … | Continue reading
EFF and a coalition of privacy advocates recently asked the sponsor of a new California ballot initiative to strengthen its provisions on consumer data privacy.The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) created new ways for the state’s residents to protect themselves from … | Continue reading
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was called back to Capitol Hill to speak about the company’s impact on the financial and housing sectors—particularly in light of its proposal to launch a cryptocurrency wallet, Calibra, and its involvement in the creation of the Libra cry … | Continue reading
EFF legal intern Samantha Hamilton co-wrote this blog postNickelback never asked to become a meme. And yet, after the Internet decided it hated the Canadian alternative rock band and due to the lead singer’s unique voice, users have shared their image millions of times. But their … | Continue reading