Transparency

Emerging technologies have the potential to create a more democratic relationship between public institutions and the citizens they serve. Today, a broad range of new tools are allowing the public to more closely examine government and corporate entities, and to hold them accountable for deception, censorship and corruption. Part of EFF's mission is to foster and promote the creation and use of these tools.

EFF works to these ends through both legal and technological channels. In the legal world, the FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) project uses the Freedom Of Information Act to expose the government's expanding use of new technologies that invade Americans' privacy. On the technical side, we've created projects like Test Your ISP, which holds internet service providers accountable for covert traffic filtering. Total Election Awareness (TEA), which provides information to voters and rigorously tracks problems in United States elections, and TOSBack, which monitors changes to corporate Terms Of Service documents.