Join us in San Francisco on April 27th for EFF’s 7th 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…
Tag: Deeplinks
The U.S. Deserves Stronger Spyware Protections Than Biden’s Executive Order
U.S. President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that limits U.S. government agencies from using commercially available spyware – but that doesn’t mean there will be no government use of spyware in the United States. Spyware is a type…
In SAS v. WPL, the Federal Circuit Finally Gets Something Right on Computer Copyright
Figuring out the correct boundaries of software copyright protection is a difficult task. As several judges have put it, “applying copyright law to computer programs is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not quite fit.” Last week, the…
UN Cybercrime Draft Treaty Timeline
October 2017The Russian Federation presents a letter to the UN General Assembly containing a draft of the United Nations Convention on Cooperation in Combating Cybercrime, intended for circulation to Member States. November 2019A resolution, sponsored by Russia—along with Belarus, Cambodia,…
UN Cybercrime Treaty Timeline
October 2017The Russian Federation presents a letter to the UN General Assembly containing a draft of the United Nations Convention on Cooperation in Combating Cybercrime, intended for circulation to Member States. November 2019A resolution, sponsored by Russia—along with Belarus, Cambodia,…
Decoding the U.N. Cybercrime Treaty
Negotiations for a proposed U.N.Cybercrime Treaty commenced in 2017 but began to take shape in 2022—and there’s a lot at stake. The draft treaty has the potential to rewrite criminal laws around the world, possibly adding over 30 criminal offenses…
EFF to Ninth Circuit: Twitter Has First Amendment Right to Ban Users, Including Presidents
Time and time again, we have said–and courts have ruled–that social media platforms have the First Amendment right to ban users. We have argued that banned users cannot successfully sue platforms for acting as government censors without showing that the…
Media Briefing: Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty Negotiations Headed in Troubling Direction, Sidestepping Human Rights Protections and Threatening Free Expression, EFF and Allies Warn
Proposals for Broad Surveillance Powers and Criminalization of Speech Put Journalists, Human Rights Defenders, and Dissidents at Risk San Francisco—On Thursday, April 13, at 10:00 am Pacific Time (1:00 pm Eastern Time, 7 pm CEST), experts with Electronic Frontier Foundation…
New York City Is Dismantling Low-Cost Community Broadband
New York City is in the process of dismantling low-cost community broadband infrastructure in public housing that, if supported, could provide quality access to the internet for hundreds of thousands of families. It’s being replaced by a $90 million, three-year…
Enough is Enough. Tell Congress to Ban Federal Use of Face Recognition
Cities and counties across the country have banned government use of face surveillance technology, and many more are weighing proposals to do so. From Boston to San Francisco, Jackson, Mississippi to Minneapolis, elected officials and activists know that face surveillance…
Smart locks endanger tenants’ privacy and should be regulated
The growing deployment of smart locks in apartments, often installed without tenants’ permission, has created a new stream of sensitive location data for law enforcement, landlords, and private companies. Tenants should not be forced to submit to tracking just to…
The Broad, Vague RESTRICT Act is a Dangerous Substitute for Comprehensive Data Privacy Legislation
The recently introduced RESTRICT Act (S. 686, Sen. Warner and Sen. Thune) rightfully is causing a lot of concern. This bill is being called a “TikTok ban,” but it’s more complicated than that. As we wrote in our initial review…
Podcast Episode: Losing Until We Win: Realistic Revolution in Science Fiction
When a science-fiction villain is defeated, we often see the heroes take their victory lap and then everyone lives happily ever after. But that’s not how real struggles work: In real life, victories are followed by repairs, rebuilding, and reparations,…
AI Art Generators and the Online Image Market
Now that computer-generated imaging is accessible to anyone with a weird idea and an internet connection, the creation of “AI art” is raising questions—and lawsuits. The key questions seem to be 1) how does it actually work, 2) what work…
How We Think About Copyright and AI Art
Artists are understandably concerned about the possibility that automatic image generators like Stable Diffusion will undercut the market for their work. We live in a society that does not support people who are automated out of a job, and being…
Bad Content Moderation Is Bad, And Government Interference Can Make It Even Worse
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing titled “Preserving Free Speech and Reining in Big Tech Censorship.” Lawmakers at the hearing trotted out the usual misunderstandings of these concepts, and placed the blame on Section 230,…
Stupid Patent of the Month: Traxcell Tech Gets Ordered To Pay Attorneys’ Fees
If someone loses a patent lawsuit very badly—to the point where they face orders to pay attorneys’ fees—you wouldn’t think they would be eager to come back to court with a nearly identical lawsuit. But that’s what has happened with…
After Students Challenged Proctoring Software, French Court Slaps TestWe App With a Suspension
In a preliminary victory in the continuing fight against privacy-invasive software that “watches” students taking tests remotely, a French administrative court outside Paris suspended a university’s use of the e-proctoring platform TestWe, which monitors students through facial recognition and algorithmic…
Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.4
We’ve got you covered with a collection of updates on your digital rights! Version 35, issue 4 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our newsletter or listening to the audio…
Victory at the Ninth Circuit: Twitter’s Content Moderation is Not “State Action”
Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit held that Twitter did not act as the government by banning a user months after a government agency flagged for Twitter one of his tweets on alleged election fraud. O’Handley v. Weber is the…
Courts Should Let You Sue Federal Officials Who Violate Your Right to Record
Intern Katie Farr contributed to this blog post. Late last year, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Dustin Dyer’s lawsuit against Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers who ordered him to stop recording their pat-down search of his husband. The…
Civil Rights Organizations File Amicus Brief in Support of EFF Lawsuit Against Discriminatory SFPD Surveillance
Intern Taylor Fox contributed to this blog post. At the height of the George Floyd protests in 2020, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) spied on thousands of demonstrators in real time by using a business district’s network of over…
Podcast Episode: So You Think You’re A Critical Thinker
The promise of the internet was that it would be a tool to melt barriers and aid truth-seekers everywhere. But it feels like polarization has worsened in recent years, and more internet users are being misled into embracing conspiracies and…
EU Lawmakers Must Reject This Proposal To Scan Private Chats
Having a private conversation is a basic human right. Like the rest of our rights, we shouldn’t lose it when we go online. But a new proposal by the European Union could throw our privacy rights out the window. LEARN…
Sign The Petition And Tell EU Legislators: Don’t Scan Us
The European Parliament is debating a proposal that, if it passes, could be disastrous for privacy worldwide. Every message, photo, or hosted file could be scanned, with the results sent to government agencies. We don’t need “bugs in our pockets.”…
CBP Is Expanding Its Surveillance Tower Program at the U.S.-Mexico Border–And We’re Mapping It
To provide researchers with the tools they need to analyze the impact of U.S. border security policy, EFF is releasing a new map and dataset of more than 290 surveillance towers installed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) along the…
What Policymakers Need to Know About the First Amendment and Section 230
The Supreme Court just heard two cases – Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google – that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online. Last week, EFF hosted a panel in Washington D.C. to discuss what legislators need to know…
Government Hasn’t Justified a TikTok Ban
Freedom of speech and association include the right to choose one’s communication technologies. Politicians shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say, where to say it, or who to say it to. So we are troubled by growing demands…
Civil Society Organizations Urge Ghana’s Parliament to Reject Repressive Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill
With Ghana’s ‘Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021’ set to undergo its second reading in the Ghanaian Parliament, EFF and other civil society partners are calling on the government of Ghana to immediately reject this draconian bill and…
The Aftermath of Ola Bini’s Unanimous Acquittal by Ecuadorian Court
On January 31, the Swedish free software developer and computer security expert Ola Bini was declared innocent in a unanimous verdict by a three-judge tribunal in Ecuador—the Court of Criminal Guarantees of Pichincha. After almost four years of a criminal…
Tell the UK’s House of Lords: Protect End-to-End Encryption in the Online Safety Bill
Private communication is a basic, universal right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption ensures that governments, tech companies, social media platforms, and other groups cannot view or access…
Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.3
New month, new digital rights updates! Version 35, issue 3 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our newsletter or listening to the audio version below. This issue covers our new…
ADC’s New Argentina Report Flags How ISPs Can Do More for Users’ Data Privacy
Argentinian telecommunications providers have made strides in their commitments to protecting users’ data privacy, but the gains are uneven—they are doing a better job at informing about data processing and users’ data rights, but still a poor job at disclosing…
This Texas Bill Would Systematically Silence Anyone Who Dares to Talk About Abortion Pills
Texas State Representative Steve Toth recently introduced a bill that targets the most viable form of safe and effective abortion access today—medication abortion. House Bill (HB) 2690 seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills like Mifepristone and…
The Foilies 2023
Recognizing the worst in government transparency. The Foilies are co-written by EFF and MuckRock News and published in alternative newspapers around the country through a partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. It seems like these days, everyone is finding…
Appeals Court Upholds Restriction on Twitter’s First Amendment Right to Publish National Security Transparency Report
A ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week marks a new low in judicial deference to classification and national security, even against the nearly inviolable First Amendment right to be free of prior restraints against speech.…
Age Verification Mandates Would Undermine Anonymity Online
Age verification systems are surveillance systems. Mandatory age verification, and with it, mandatory identity verification, is the wrong approach to protecting young people online. It would force websites to require visitors to prove their age by submitting information such as…
Flipper Zero Devices Being Seized by Brazil’s Telecom Agency
You may have heard of the Flipper Zero. It’s marketed as a “Portable Multi-tool Device for Geeks”—a programmable portable device packed with hardware that facilitates wireless penetration testing and hacking on the go. The device, which greets its owner with…
Incarcerated Individuals & Advocacy Groups Challenge California County’s Policy of Digitizing and Destroying Jail Mail
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knight Institute, and Social Justice Legal Foundation say that the policy violates the rights to free speech and privacy REDWOOD CITY, CA—The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the Social Justice Legal…
Utah’s Governor Should Veto “Social Media Regulations” Bill S.B. 152
This week, EFF asked Utah’s Governor Cox to veto a dangerous “social media regulations” bill, S.B. 152 (McKell). Utah’s bill is part of a wave of age verification laws that would make users less secure, and make internet access less…
Section 702’s Unconstitutional Domestic Spying Program Must End
A few months ahead of its expiration this fall, the Biden administration has announced its intention to seek renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—an invasive and unconstitutional law that cannot continue to exist in its…
EFF Tells Supreme Court: Trademark Law Doesn’t Trump the First Amendment
A trademark dispute between a liquor company and a maker of novelty dog toys may not sound like an important First Amendment battleground, but the latest trademark case to come before the U.S. Supreme Court could have serious consequences for…
EFF Comments to NTIA on Privacy and Civil Rights
EFF recently submitted comments to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on “Privacy, Equity, and Civil Rights”. NTIA is a unit of the U.S. Department of Commerce that advises the President on information policy. NTIA is writing a…
Podcast Episode: Making the Invisible Visible
What would the internet look like if it weren’t the greatest technology of mass surveillance in the history of mankind? Trevor Paglen wonders about this, and he makes art from it. %3Ciframe%20height%3D%2252px%22%20width%3D%22100%25%22%20frameborder%3D%22no%22%20scrolling%3D%22no%22%20seamless%3D%22%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fplayer.simplecast.com%2F04c961d3-fe06-4b98-bf70-067432bacfc3%3Fdark%3Dtrue%26amp%3Bcolor%3D000000%22%20allow%3D%22autoplay%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy info. This embed will serve content from…
EFF and Student Press Law Center Urge Supreme Court to Require Government to Show Subjective Intent in Threat Cases
EFF Intern Reema Moussa authored this post. In our highly digitized society, online speech like posts, messages, and emails, can be taken out of context, repackaged in ways that distort or completely lose their meaning, and spread far beyond the…
Report: ICE and the Secret Service Conducted Illegal Surveillance of Cell Phones
The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has released a troubling new report detailing how federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Secret Service have conducted surveillance using cell-site simulators (CSS) without proper…
Coded Resistance, the Comic!
Illustrations by Chelsea Saunders, produced in collaboration with the Nib. From the days of chattel slavery until the modern Black Lives Matter movement, Black communities have developed innovative ways to communicate to fight back against oppression. EFF’s Director of Engineering,…
Win for Government Transparency and Immigrant Privacy Rights at Second Circuit
Intern Reema Moussa contributed to this blog post. As government agencies increasingly use digital tools to track citizens and immigrants, we need to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make that surveillance transparent. But while the government opens…
EFF Files Amicus Brief to Protect the Speech Rights of Immigrants and Immigrant Rights Advocates
This post was written by intern Devin Sullivan. Should it be a federal crime to encourage an undocumented immigrant to remain in the country? In a friend of the court brief filed today with the U.S. Supreme Court, we argue…
Fourth Circuit: Individuals Have a First Amendment Right to Livestream Their Own Traffic Stops
In a partial victory for police accountability, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the First Amendment protects a passenger who livestreams the traffic stop of the car he is traveling in. EFF filed an amicus…
Podcast Episode: The Right to Imagine Your Own Future
Too often we let the rich and powerful dictate what technology’s future will be, from Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse to Elon Musk’s neural implants. But what if we all were empowered to use our voices and perspectives to imagine a better…
Two Ways The U.S. Patent Office Could Do Better At Examination
The patent examination process is rife with problems. Too often, patent law supports applicants seeking unwarranted monopolies—not the public interest. That’s why we get things like Amazon’s patent on white-background photography. This is especially true when it comes to software…
How We Fought For and Won Access to Records About Predictive Policing in General Escobedo, Mexico
What started with a simple public records request became a journey into the absurd depths of Mexican bureaucracy. But we emerged victorious, and learned a lot about how a city experimented with a dangerous surveillance tool. Filing public records requests…
Section 230 is On Trial. Here’s What You Need to Know.
The Supreme Court next week will hear two cases — Gonzalez v. Google on Tuesday, Feb. 21, and Twitter v. Taamneh on Wednesday, Feb. 22 — that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online. Nearly everyone who speaks online relies…
EFF Backs California Bill to Protect People Seeking Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care from Dragnet Digital Surveillance
EFF proudly joins ACLU California Action and If/When/How to co-sponsor new California legislation to protect people seeking abortion and gender-affirming care from dragnet-style digital surveillance. A coalition of more than 25 reproductive justice, civil liberties, and privacy groups are supporting…
Why is New York City Removing Free Broadband In Favor of Charter?
In January 2020, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan, setting a path to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure. The plan was a clear response…
Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.2
Have no fear, EFF is here to keep you updated on your digital rights! Version 35, issue 2 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our newsletter or listening to the…
Uncle Sow: Dark Caracal in Latin America
In 2018, EFF along with researchers from Lookout Security published a report describing the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) we dubbed “Dark Caracal.” Now we have uncovered a new Dark Caracal campaign operating since March of 2022, with hundreds of infections…
Podcast Episode: When Tech Comes to Town
When a tech company moves to your city, the effects ripple far beyond just the people it employs. It can impact thousands of ancillary jobs – from teachers to nurses to construction workers – as well as the community’s housing,…
Stalkerware Maker Fined $410k and Compelled to Notify Victims
Last week, the New York Attorney General secured a $410,000 fine from Patrick Hinchy and 16 companies that he runs which produce and sell spyware and stalkerware. In addition, he and his companies must modify their stalkerware to alert victims…
Participation in the Fediverse
Parts of the fediverse have been in something of an uproar recently over an experimental search service that was under development called (appropriately enough) Searchtodon. The project aimed to enable people to search their own home timeline and worked by…
Podcast Episode: When Tech Comes to Town
When a tech company moves to your city, the effects ripple far beyond just the people it employs. It can impact thousands of ancillary jobs – from teachers to nurses to construction workers – as well as the community’s housing,…
Courts Must Not Allow Litigants to Plead Around The First Amendment’s Speech Protections
Meritless defamation lawsuits can deter legal speech by forcing people to spend time and money fighting them. That is why courts must diligently protect people’s First Amendment rights by quickly dismissing claims that target people’s protected opinions. That did not…
Civil Society Organizations Call on the House Of Lords to Protect Private Messaging in the Online Safety Bill
As the UK’s Online Safety Bill enters its Second Reading in the House of Lords, EFF, Liberty, Article 19, and Big Brother Watch are calling on Peers to protect end-to-end encryption and the right to private messaging online. As we’ve said before, undermining protections for…
The Breadth of the Fediverse
The Washington Post recently published an op-ed by Megan McArdle titled “Twitter might be replaced, but not by Mastodon or other imitators.” The article argues that Mastodon is falling into a common trap for open source projects: building a look-alike…
EFF, ACLU Seek to Protect the Public’s Right to Access Judicial Records
Amicus Brief Urges the Court to Increase Transparency of SCA Warrant Requests ST. LOUIS — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an appeal filed by the…
ACLU, EFF Seek to Protect the Public’s Right to Access Judicial Records
Amicus Brief Urges the Court to Increase Transparency of SCA Warrant Requests ST. LOUIS — The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation today filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an appeal filed by the Reporters Committee…
Civil Society Organizations Call on the House Of Lords to Protect Private Messaging in the Online Safety Bill
As the UK’s Online Safety Bill enters its Second Reading in the House of Lords, EFF, Liberty, Article 19, and Big Brother Watch are calling on Peers to protect end-to-end encryption and the right to private messaging online. As we’ve said before, undermining protections for…
The FCC Broadband Maps: Meet the New Maps, Same as the Old Maps
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released their new broadband map in November 2022, many hoped the chronic inaccuracies of past FCC maps would be resolved. Previous maps of high-speed broadband access in the United States painted inaccurate pictures partly…
EFF Files Amicus Briefs in Two Important Geofence Search Warrant Cases
Should the police be able to identify everyone who was in a busy metropolitan area, just because a crime occurred there? In two amicus briefs just filed in appellate courts, we argue that’s a clearly unconstitutional search.[1] The two cases…
Setting the Record Straight: EFF Statement in Support of FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn
In the last week, a number of dangerous and conspiracy-driven attacks were made against EFF board member Gigi Sohn, an eminently qualified nominee to the Federal Communications Commission. These attacks attempt to twist EFF’s long-held positions and commitments into dog…
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back on Vaccine Privacy in New York
EFF was proud to support New York’s A. 7326/S. 6541, which the legislature passed to protect the confidentiality of medical immunity information. It limits what data can be collected or shared, who it can be shared with, and how long it…
Stupid Patent of the Month: Digital Verification Systems Patents E-Signatures
Patent trolls make patents, and argue over them. They don’t have to ever make the thing described in their patents, if it’s even possible to determine what those things are. Instead, they generate legal threats and waste the time and…
California Law Says Electronic Search Data Must Be Posted Online. So Where Is It?
When it was passed in 2015, the California Electronic Communications Act (CalECPA) was heralded as a major achievement for digital privacy, because it required law enforcement to obtain a warrant in most cases before searching a suspect’s data, be it…
Brazil’s Telecom Operators Made Strides and Had Shortcomings in Internet Lab’s New Report on User Privacy Practices
Brazil’s biggest internet connection providers made moderate advances in protecting customer data and being transparent about their privacy practices, but fell short on meeting certain requirements for upholding users’ rights under Brazil’s data protection law, according to InternetLab’s 2022 Quem…
Podcast Episode: Don’t Be Afraid to Poke the Tigers
What can a bustling electronic components bazaar in Shenzhen, China, tell us about building a better technology future? To researcher and hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, it symbolizes the boundless motivation, excitement, and innovation that can be unlocked if people have…
EFF Tells Supreme Court: User Speech Must Be Protected
The Supreme Court is about to hear a case that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online. EFF has filed a brief explaining what’s at stake, and urging the court to preserve the key law protecting user expression, 47 U.S.C…
The Next Stage in Security Expert’s Trial Set for January 31
Swedish computer security expert Ola Bini was arrested in April, 2019, in Ecuador, and a cloud has hung over his case ever since. Bini’s case has been impacted by numerous due process violations and human rights concerns, and there have…
Podcast Episode: Don’t Be Afraid to Poke the Tigers
What can a bustling electronic components bazaar in Shenzhen, China, tell us about building a better technology future? To researcher and hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, it symbolizes the boundless motivation, excitement, and innovation that can be unlocked if people have…
For Would-Be Censors and the Thin-Skinned, Copyright Law Offers Powerful Tools
Yesterday, we wrote about the importance of fair use as a safeguard for free expression. But all too often, fair use and other legal limits on copyright are not enough to stop copyright enforcement from serving as cover for silencing…
Right to Repair Advocates Have Had Good Victories. We Have To Keep Fighting.
It’s been a good year for right to repair advocates. Colorado passed an important law to allow wheelchair users access to resources they need to fix their own chairs. The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up enforcement of companies that…
Fair Use Creep Is A Feature, Not a Bug
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at…
Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.1
It’s a new year! There’s no better time to keep up with the latest updates on your digital rights. Version 35, issue 1 of our EFFector newsletter is out now. Catch up on the latest EFF news by reading our…
Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again: Rethinking Tech Regulation and Creative Labor
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at…
Open Data and the AI Black Box
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at…
US Copyright Term Extensions Have Stopped, But the Public Domain Still Faces Threats
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at…
It’s Copyright Week 2023: Join Us in the Fight for Better Copyright Law and Policy
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at…
Kurt Opsahl Moves to EFF Special Counsel
Longtime EFFer and Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Kurt Opsahl will be moving on from the Electronic Frontier Foundation after nearly 20 years, on February 1. But we aren’t going to let him go too far: Kurt will continue…
Beware the Gifts of Dragons: How D&D’s Open Gaming License May Have Become a Trap for Creators
According to leaks reported last week, the company that owns Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is planning to revoke the open license that has, since the year 2000, applied to a wide range of unofficial, commercial products that build on the…
EFF and Partners Call Out Threats to Free Expression in Draft Text as UN Cybersecurity Treaty Negotiations Resume
EFF is attending this week and next a new round of negotiations over the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty to raise concerns that draft provisions now on the table include a long list of content-related crimes that pose serious threats to…
Last Chance for U.S. Federal Employees to Make a Pledge for EFF!
Calling all U.S. federal employees and retirees: the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) pledge period is closing on January 14, 2023. Be sure to make a pledge for EFF now to support digital freedoms for every internet user. It’s easy to…
Global Cybercrime and Government Access to User Data Across Borders: 2022 in Review
Since the new UN cybercrime treaty began to take shape in 2022, EFF has been fighting on behalf of users to make sure robust human rights safeguards and rule of law standards are the basis of any final product. There’s…
A Year in Internet Surveillance and Resilience: 2022 in Review
This year, we have seen an array of different ways governments around the world have tried to alter basic security on the web for users. Much of this was attempted through legislation, direct network interference, or as a request directly…
Data Sanctuary for Abortion and Trans Health Care: 2022 in Review
In the wake of this year’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs overruling Roe v. Wade, sheriffs and bounty hunters in anti-abortion states will try to investigate and punish abortion seekers based on their internet browsing, private messaging, and phone app…
Seeing Patent Trolls Clearly: 2022 in Review
The internet can be a powerful tool for communicating, collaborating, and finding community. But lawsuits and threats from patent trolls have been an obstacle to the dream of a free and open internet. That’s why EFF has been fighting back…
Fighting for the Digital Future of Books: 2022 in Review
Informed citizens need comprehensive libraries that meet people where they are. Today, that means online spaces that welcome everyone to use their resources, invite them to create new and truthful works, and respect the interests of both authors and readers. …
Schools and EdTech Need to Study Up On Student Privacy: 2022 in Review
In 2022, student privacy gets a solid “C” grade. The trend of schools engaging in student surveillance did not let up in 2022. There were, however, some small wins indicative of a growing movement to push back against this encroachment.…
Reproductive Justice and Digital Rights: 2022 in Review
Reproductive justice and safe access to abortion, like so many other aspects of managing our healthcare, is fundamentally tied to our digital lives. And since it is part of our healthcare, we should have the ability to keep it private…