Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is one of the most insidious and secretive mass surveillance authorities still in operation today. The Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act would make some much-needed and long fought-for reforms, but it also … | Continue reading
With KOSA passed, the information i can access as a minor will be limited and censored, under the guise of "protecting me", which is the responsibility of my parents, NOT the government. I have learned so much about the world and about myself through social media, and without the … | Continue reading
Why EFF Does Not Think Recent Changes Ameliorate KOSA’s Censorship The latest version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) did not change our critical view of the legislation. The changes have led some organizations to drop their opposition to the bill, but we still believe it is … | Continue reading
In a stunning reversal against the popular Transparent & Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) ordinance, the San Diego city council voted earlier this year to cut many of the provisions that sought to ensure public transparency for law enforcement surveillance techn … | Continue reading
With strong bipartisan support, the U.S. House voted 352 to 65 to pass HR 7521 this week, a bill that would ban TikTok nationwide if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell the popular video app. The TikTok bill’s future in the U.S. Senate isn’t yet clear, but President Joe Biden has said … | Continue reading
Our concerns about the selling and misuse of location data for those seeking reproductive and gender healthcare are escalating amid a recent wave of cases and incidents demonstrating that the digital trail we leave is being used by anti-abortion activists. The good news is some s … | Continue reading
Cars collect a lot of our personal data, and car companies disclose a lot of that data to third parties. It’s often unclear what’s being collected, and what's being shared and with whom. A recent New York Times article highlighted how data is shared by G.M. with insurance compani … | Continue reading
EFF Legal Intern Alissa Johnson contributed to the writing of this blog post. Earlier this month, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that harmonized standards are a part of EU law, and thus must be accessible to EU citizens and residents free of charge. While it might seem … | Continue reading
What do House Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Barbara Lee have in common with House Republicans like Thomas Massie and Andy Biggs? Not a lot. But they do know an unconstitutional bill when they see one. These and others on both sides of the aisle were among the 65 Hou … | Continue reading
Special thanks to EFF legal intern Jack Beck, who was the lead author of this post. Amid heavy criticism for its ties to weapons manufacturers supplying Israel, South by Southwest—the organizer of an annual conference and music festival in Austin—has been on the defensive. One to … | Continue reading
Welcome to your U.S. presidential election year, when all kinds of bad actors will flood the internet with election-related disinformation and misinformation aimed at swaying or suppressing your vote in November. So… what’re you going to do about it? As EFF’s Corynne McSherry w … | Continue reading
Congress’ unfounded plan to ban TikTok under the guise of protecting our data is back, this time in the form of a new bill—the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” H.R. 7521 — which has gained a dangerous amount of momentum in Congress. This … | Continue reading
The U.S. Senate is moving forward with two bills that would enrich patent trolls, patent system insiders, and a few large companies that rely on flimsy patents, at the expense of everyone else. One bill, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would bring back some of the … | Continue reading
Nevada Makes Backward Argument That Insecure Communication Makes Children SaferLAS VEGAS — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of partners urged a court to protect default encrypted messaging and children’s privacy and security in a brief filed today. The bri … | Continue reading
The First Amendment requires courts to apply a robust balancing test before unmasking anonymous online speakers, EFF explained in an amicus brief it filed recently in a New York State appeal. In the case on appeal, GSB Gold Standard v. Google, a German company that sells cryptocu … | Continue reading
We’ve been saying it for 20 years, and it remains true now more than ever: the internet is an essential service. It enables people to build and create communities, shed light on injustices, and acquire vital knowledge that might not otherwise be available. And access to it become … | Continue reading
Imagine a world in which the internet is first and foremost about empowering people, not big corporations and government. In that world, government does “after-action” analyses to make sure its tech regulations are working as intended, recruits experienced technologists as adviso … | Continue reading
Copyright’s reach is already far too broad, and courts have no business expanding it any further, particularly where that reframing will undermine adversarial interoperability. Unfortunately, a federal district court did just that in the latest iteration of Oracle v. Rimini, conc … | Continue reading
More than four years after it was first introduced, the Online Safety Act (OSA) was passed by the U.K. Parliament in September 2023. The Act seeks to make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world to be online and provides Ofcom, the country’s communications regulator, with the po … | Continue reading
For Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock compile the year's worst and most ridiculous responses to public records requests and other attempts to thwart public access to information, including through increasing attempts to gut the laws guaranteeing this … | Continue reading
Around the globe, freedom of expression varies wildly in definition, scope, and level of access. The impact of the digital age on perceptions and censorship of speech has been felt across the political spectrum on a worldwide scale. In the debate over what counts as free expressi … | Continue reading
This International Women’s Day, defend free speech, fight surveillance, and support innovation by calling on our elected politicians and private companies to uphold our most fundamental rights—both online and offline. 1. Pass the “My Body, My Data” Act Privacy fears should never … | Continue reading
While online violence is alarmingly common globally, women are often more likely to be the target of mass online attacks, nonconsensual leaks of sensitive information and content, and other forms of online violence. This International Women’s Day, visit EFF’s Surveillance Self-D … | Continue reading
Today is International Women’s Day, a day celebrating the achievements of women globally but also a day marking a call to action for accelerating equality and improving the lives of women the world over. The internet is a vital tool for women everywhere—provided they have access … | Continue reading
Running the Atlas of Surveillance, our project to map and inventory police surveillance across the United States, means experiencing emotional extremes. Whenever we announce that we've added new data points to the Atlas, it comes with a great sense of satisfaction. That's because … | Continue reading
Join us in San Francisco on May 9th for EFF's 8th annual Tech Trivia Night! Explore the obscure minutiae of digital security, online rights, and internet culture. Enjoy delicious tacos, churros, and complimentary adult beverages and soft drinks as you and your team battle through … | Continue reading
Over the past month, the independent news outlet Indybay has quietly fought off an unlawful search warrant and gag order served by the San Francisco Police Department. Today, a court lifted the gag order and confirmed the warrant is void. The police also promised the court to not … | Continue reading
Can free and open source software projects like Caddy and Traefik eventually replace EFF’s Certbot? Although Certbot continues to be developed, we think tools like these help offer a promising path forward in the further development of a secure and encrypted web. For some users, … | Continue reading
Monopolists want us to believe that their power over our lives is inevitable and unchangeable, just as the surveillance industry banks on convincing you that the fight for privacy was and always will be a lost cause. But we once had a better internet, and we can get a better inte … | Continue reading
In a milestone judgment - Podchasov v. Russia - the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that weakening of encryption can lead to general and indiscriminate surveillance of the communications of all users and violates the human right to privacy. In 2017, the landsca … | Continue reading
San Francisco’s ballot initiative Proposition E is a dangerous and deceptive measure that threatens our privacy, safety, and democratic ideals. It would give the police more power to surveil, chase, and harm. It would allow the police to secretly acquire and use unproven surveill … | Continue reading
On March 3rd, 2009, we launched Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD). At the time, we pitched it as, "an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying." In the last decade hundreds of people have contributed to SSD, over 20 million people have read it, … | Continue reading
As we continue the journey of fighting for digital freedoms, it can be hard to keep up on the latest happenings. Thankfully, EFF has a guide to keep you in the loop! EFFector 36.3 is out now and covers the latest news, including recent changes to the Kids Online Safety Act (spoil … | Continue reading
This interview is crossposted from The Markup, a nonprofit news organization that investigates technology and its impact on society. By: Monique O. Madan, Investigative Reporter at The Markup After reading my daily news stories amid his declining health, my grandfather made it a … | Continue reading
After three years of political discussions, MPs in Ghana's Parliament voted to pass the country’s draconian Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill on February 28th. The bill now heads to Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo to be signed into law. Pr … | Continue reading
Proposition E, which San Franciscans will be asked to vote on in the March 5 election, is so dangerous that last weekend we chartered a plane to inform our neighbors about what the ballot measure does and urge them to vote NO on it. If you were in Dolores Park, Chinatown, or anyw … | Continue reading
This post was written by Jack Beck, an EFF legal intern In a recent letter to the FTC and SEC, Sen. Ron Wyden (OR) details new information on data broker Near, which sold the location data of people seeking reproductive healthcare to anti-abortion groups. Near enabled these group … | Continue reading
Special thanks to legal intern Alissa Johnson, who was the lead author of this post. EFF recently filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit urging the court to reverse a lower court decision upholding a State Department rule that forces visa applican … | Continue reading
What if we thought about democracy as a kind of open-source social technology, in which everyone can see the how and why of policy making, and everyone’s concerns and preferences are elicited in a way that respects each person’s community, dignity, and importance? %3Cifram … | Continue reading
EFF learned last week that the state of Nevada is seeking an emergency order prohibiting Meta from rolling out end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger for all users in the state under the age of 18. The motion for a temporary restraining order is part of a lawsuit by the stat … | Continue reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court to reinstate X’s lawsuit challenging a California law that forces social media companies to file reports to the state about their content moderation decisions, and with respect to five controversial issues in … | Continue reading
In recent years, lots of proposed laws purport to reduce “harmful” content on the internet, especially for kids. Some have good intentions. But the fact is, we can’t censor our way to a healthier internet. When it comes to online (or offline) content, people simply don’t agree ab … | Continue reading
It is troubling to see that the Indian government has issued new demands to X (formerly Twitter) to remove accounts and posts critical of the government and its recent actions. This is especially bears watching as India is preparing for general elections this spring, and concerns … | Continue reading
Following an FBI raid of his home last year, the freelance journalist Tim Burke has been arrested and indicted in connection with an investigation into leaks of unaired footage from Fox News. The raid raised questions about whether Burke was being investigated for First Amendment … | Continue reading
We’ve been challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of ordinary people since we first became aware of it nearly twenty years ago. Now, Section 702 is back up for a major renewal since it was last approved in 2018, and we need to pull out all the stops to make … | Continue reading
Incarceration rates in the United States have long been among the highest in the world, and in response to the systemic flaws and biases unveiled by the renewed scrutiny of the criminal legal system, many advocates have championed new policies aimed at reducing sentences and impr … | Continue reading
Decentralized web technologies have the potential to make the internet more robust and efficient, supporting a new wave of innovation. However, the fundamental technologies and services that make it work are already being hit with overreaching legal threats. Exhibit A: the Interp … | Continue reading
The authors of the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) unveiled an amended version this week, but it’s still an unconstitutional censorship bill that continues to empower state officials to target services and online content they do not like. We are asking everyone reading th … | Continue reading