The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely. Granicus is a third-party contractor that builds communication tools to help...
At EFF, we review court dockets to monitor the conduct of the most active patent trolls. But when court records are redacted or sealed, it can be impossible for EFF and other members of the public to know what is going on. Today we filed a motion to intervene...
Back in late November, the New York Times revealed that Facebook had paid a corporate PR firm called Definers Public Affairs to develop and peddle a smear campaign aimed at some of its Open Society Foundations-funded critics, including members of the Freedom From Facebook coalition. In response,...
EFF Tech Projects Director Jeremy Gillula will be speaking at ShmooCon 2019.In 2009, the EFF set out on a long-term mission to encrypt the Web. Our aim was to switch hypertext from insecure HTTP to secure HTTPS. HTTPS is essential in order to defend Internet users against surveillance...
It is not enough for government to pass laws that protect consumers from corporations that harvest and monetize their personal data. It is also necessary for these laws to have bite, to ensure companies do not ignore them. The best way to do so is to empower ordinary consumers to...
This article was first published on Just Security.Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s counterpart to the National Security Agency (NSA), has fired the latest shot in the crypto wars. In a post to Lawfare titled Principles for a More Informed Exceptional...
Fair use provides breathing space in copyright law, making sure that control of the right to copy and distribute doesn’t become control of the right to create and innovate. New technologies and services depend on the creation of multiple copies as a matter of course. At the same time, copyright...
EFF is in it for the long run, especially in the important, hard fights for your rights. One of the longest running fights in online civil liberties is over your right to have a private conversation over a digital network. Whether it’s for our intimate relationships, our healthcare, our associations...
This year has brought numerous stories of large Internet companies using their dominance of key Internet functions in ways that harm users and shut out competitors. From Google’s treatment of competing search companies in its results, to Facebook’s playing favorites with its developer APIs, to AT&T and Comcast’s ...
Throughout 2018, new surveillance practices continued to erode the privacy of people in Latin America. Yet local and regional digital rights organizations continue to push back with strategic litigation, journalists and security researchers investigate to shed light on government use of malware, and local activists work tirelessly to fight overarching...
One of the most important principles underpinning the Internet is that if you say something illegal, you should be held responsible for it—not the owners of the site or service where you said it. That principle has seen many threats this year—not just in federal legislation, but also in...
We saw 2017 tip the scales for HTTPS. In 2018, web encryption continues to improve. EFF has begun to shift its focus towards email security, and the security community is shifting its focus towards further hardening TLS, the protocol that drives encryption on the Internet.By default, all Internet traffic...
