Deeplinks

Barry Steinhardt, a lifelong privacy champion and an early leader in the battle for digital civil liberties who served as EFF’s president in 1998-99, died last week at age 73.   A Connecticut native, Steinhardt led the Vermont and Pennsylvania affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming associate director of the national ACLU. There, he helped spearhead the fight to overturn m...

No one should have to choose between speaking freely and protecting their immigration status. Yet that’s precisely the choice the Trump administration’s mass surveillance of online speech forces on noncitizens living in the U.S.     Last fall, we sued on behalf of three major labor unions to stop this surveillance program. And just this month, we won our first major ruling: A federal district cour...

Today, EFF joined the ACLU of Wisconsin in filing a petition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, asking it to rule that the state’s constitution requires a warrant for retrospective searches of ALPR databases used by law enforcement in four cities: Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay. We represent a religious organization, the Wisconsin Council of Churches, as well as an individual pastor in Gre...

EFF legal intern Gabrielle Ladun was the principal author of this post.   The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) has published a summary of findings from its audit of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) facial recognition technology. While the detailed findings are classified, the summary states that the OIG’s audit uncovered a “significant weaknes...

No one should have to think twice before criticizing the government online. But a mass surveillance program known as "Catch and Revoke" was created to make millions do just that. EFF and other defenders of free speech are fighting back. In our latest EFFector newsletter , we're talking about a key court win for our lawsuit challenging this unconstitutional surveillance program . JOIN OUR NEWSLETTE...

In an extremely disappointing ruling , a California trial court dismissed SIREN v. San Jose , our case challenging the city of San Jose’s warrantless searches of its vast stores of automated license plate reader (ALPR) data. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California represent SIREN and CAIR California, two non-profits that serve San Jose residents, in this case. Make no mistake: We believe this ruli...

When we communicate online today – from your personal emails and DMs to secure international commerce – we usually do so with encryption. Encryption converts readable data into unreadable gibberish to protect our privacy and security. This didn’t just happen organically. Three decades ago, the U.S government treated encryption like a weapon, and it took some unlikely heroes to set it free: a grad...

In the past two years, the federal government has unlawfully consolidated data exposing our private information.  This consolidation has been chaotic but generally came in three rolling waves: It started with DOGE, moved to agency-to-agency data sharing with ICE, and then attempted data-driven purges of state voter rolls. We all deserve to live in a world where the data we use to pay our taxes, re...

EFF was thrilled to join organizers, advocates, and activists in the East Bay for the second annual Oakland Tech Week last week. We are grateful to our friends at MediaJustice and Upturn for inviting us co-present this all-day event, “Building Beyond Big Tech: Organizing Oakland’s Future” , on Sept. 30.  The event, hosted by the Kapor Center in downtown Oakland, offered a unique chance to spend ti...

EFF strongly condemns Turkey’s state-led discriminatory, oppressive attacks on feminist and LGBTQ+ organisations, media platforms, student groups, and rights defenders and activists within the country. Since mid-September, access to the websites and social media accounts of a dozen organizations have been blocked by court order , while over 60 members and activists have been detained, their office...

This post was co-authored by Sheila B. Lalwani , a doctorate student and recent  COMPASS Fellow hosted by EFF. Age verification proposals are often presented as a simple tradeoff: sacrifice a little privacy to better safeguard children online. But that framing overlooks a more fundamental question. What happens to people who cannot verify their age at all? This is particularly a problem when users...

Today is DAF Day! This event highlights the millions of donor-advised funds (DAFs) people have set up to make charitable donations and change the world.   If you have a DAF, consider supporting EFF today. Decisions about your privacy, encryption, artificial intelligence, online speech, and digital security will determine whether technology empowers people or concentrates power in the hands of a fe...

There has been a raft of site-blocking bills in the latest Congress, and the latest is called the “Deterring Extraterritorial Foreign Exploitation of Networks Damaging Intellectual Property” aka the “ DEFEND IP Act .” The problem is that instead of “defending IP,” this bill will incentivize censorship, overblocking, and bad faith attempts to block access to a website. DEFEND IP Act, and all of the...

Congress is taking another run at site-blocking, a deeply flawed concept that would undermine basic internet infrastructure. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA), H.R. 10364 , a bill that would give copyright owners a new legal tool to block Americans’ access to foreign websites accused of copyright infringement.  The basic idea is all too familiar ,...

Judge Allows Social Media Surveillance Lawsuit Against Trump Administration to Move Forward NEW YORK — A lawsuit filed by three labor unions against the Departments of State and Homeland Security for their viewpoint-based surveillance and suppression of protected expression online can move forward, a federal judge ruled yesterday. On October 1, 2026, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District...

In a new blow to Ola Bini’s legal guarantees, Ecuadorean authorities retained the free software developer and security expert yesterday in Quito and ordered his immediate deportation from the country. He is barred from returning to Ecuador for 10 years.   According to information released by his lawyer, Bini was intercepted by a car with four people who identified themselves as immigration agents....

The Marin County Sheriff’s Office is the latest California law enforcement agency to get caught sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data from their Flock Safety system with out-of-state and federal agencies. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California are calling them out for this direct violation of California law, which has put every driver in the county at risk and is especially dangerous...

If you are an Android user, you may have noticed it already: Google has begun allowing rival, third-party app stores to be distributed through the Google Play Store. And if you are a developer, you may have noticed new options for billing and distributing your apps.  For years, Epic Games, maker of games such as Fortnite, has been suing Google, alleging violations of antitrust law. Specifically at...

When state lawmakers attempt to rewrite how the internet works, users rely on courts to recognize that laws can’t make technical impossibilities a reality. That’s why we were happy to see that a court has blocked Utah’s attempt to outlaw the privacy protections of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).   In a win for digital rights, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking Utah’s SB...

Over the years, the major tech companies have found all sorts of ways to embed themselves into our lives. We often use their software, their AI tools, their social media, and their operating systems by default without even thinking about potential alternatives. It’s time to rethink that relationship.  Last year, we created Opt Out October to help remind ourselves of the variety of ways we can take...

When the rich and powerful try to use the court to silence negative reporting about themselves, it’s worth calling out that behavior for what it is: an attack on free speech. This is why EFF is happy to stand up for reporters who find themselves in that situation. The California Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to strike a former Premise Data CEO’s meritless lawsuit against a journ...

With the launch of iOS 27, Apple is rolling out a variety of new AI features to its familiar voice assistant, Siri. But how are AI tools like these handling our data? In our latest EFFector newsletter , we're talking about the privacy complications of AI phone features. JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER For over 35 years,  EFFector  has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil libe...

San Francisco's decision to retain its use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) surveillance cameras  belies what we know about this spying technology tool: it endangers residents and threatens the privacy and civil liberties of our community.  Based on what's in the city's press release and announcement, this policy will do nothing to stop actual harms. We know innocent drivers will be stoppe...

People are increasingly concerned about the ways in which mass surveillance is tracking our every move: from Flock license plate readers to face recognition to creepy ads that – based on what we see and do online – seem to know everything we’re thinking and planning. It didn’t have to be this way, and since the early days of the internet, a dedicated band of activists, lawyers and technologists ha...

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) began regularly deploying drones two years ago and has since expanded their use in a way that has outpaced its documented policy and evaded existing local and state oversight of these devices.  The department has a new proposed policy, which continues to be grossly inadequate in protecting privacy and civil liberties. At best, the draft policy continues t...