The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.
FEATURED UPDATE
John Oliver wants you to contact the FCC about net neutrality . Our new tool makes it easy to contact the FCC and helps you craft unique comments with just a few clicks. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has made a dangerous proposal to destroy the FCC’s net neutrality rules—the very same rules that keep Internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from choosing which websites you can and can’t access and how fast those websites will load. But before he...
FEATURED UPDATE
The FBI is the country’s top law enforcement agency and serves the public, not the president. As defenders of the rule of law, we have deep concerns about President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. We disagreed with the director on many issues, including his consistent push for backdoors into our electronic communications and devices and a general weakening of encryption, which is crucial to protecting Americans' privacy and security. But we are deeply troubled about Director Comey’s termination...
FEATURED UPDATE
All surveillance is political. Nowhere is this more evident than on the local level when law enforcement acquires new surveillance technology. Too often, the political process advantages police over the public interest. In California, a new bill— S.B. 21 —offers the rare opportunity to shift the balance in favor of privacy. Take Action Californians: tell your state senator to vote in favor of S.B. 21. Police know that once they acquire a new spy gadget or system, it’s difficult for...
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Five EFF Tools to Help You Protect Yourself Online
Do you get creeped out when an ad eerily related to your recent Internet activity seems to follow you around the web? Do you ever wonder why you sometimes see a green lock with “https”...
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Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
Updates
European Publishing Lobby Forces Compromise on Marrakesh Treaty
The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was one of the most fiercely contested treaty negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ). Representatives of publishers and other copyright holder groups spent...
Oakland City Council Committee Advances Measure to Require Transparency and Public Process for Surveillance Tech
On May 9, the Public Safety Committee of the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to approve a proposed “Surveillance and Community Safety Ordinance .” The measure, passed on to the Council by the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission, is modeled on a law enacted in spring 2016...
California Assembly Considers Bill to Protect Data from ICE
Local and state governments regularly collect personal information about us and store it in databases–often without our knowledge and consent. Even when government has a seemingly benevolent purpose for doing so, government all too often reuses that data in a manner that hurts us. Given Pres. Donald Trump’s promise...
In Providence, Policymakers Delay Visionary Local Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Reforms
Recent events in Providence, RI demonstrate both how a sustained grassroots campaign can create opportunities for civil rights and civil liberties, and also how quickly those opportunities can be derailed by institutional actors. While the latest City Council decision delayed reform efforts and ...
EFF Statement on the Troubling Firing of FBI Director Comey
The FBI is the country’s top law enforcement agency and serves the public, not the president. As defenders of the rule of law, we have deep concerns about President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. We disagreed with the director on many issues, including his consistent push for backdoors...
The Fight Against General Warrants to Hack Rages On
The federal government thinks it should be able to use one warrant to hack into an untold number of computers located anywhere in the world. But EFF and others continue to make the case that the Fourth Amendment prohibits this type of blanket warrant. And courts are starting to listen...
The FCC Pretends to Support Net Neutrality and Privacy While Moving to Gut Both
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has proposed a plan to eliminate net neutrality and privacy for broadband subscribers. Of course, those protections are tremendously popular, so Chairman Pai and his allies have been forced to pay lip service to preserving them in “some form.” How...
Danger Ahead: The Government’s Plan for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Threatens Privacy, Security, and Common Sense
Imagine if your car could send messages about its speed and movements to other cars on the road around it. That’s the dream of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which thinks of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication technology as the leading solution for reducing accident rates in the United States...
Intel's Management Engine is a security hazard, and users need a way to disable it
Intel’s CPUs have another Intel inside. Since 2008, most of Intel’s chipsets have contained a tiny homunculus computer called the “Management Engine” (ME). The ME is a largely undocumented master controller for your CPU: it works with system firmware during boot and has direct access to system memory,...
