 EFFector Volume 38, Issue 12🦅 Domestic Spying Takes an LWelcome to an all-new EFFector, your regular digest on everything digital rights from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In our 847th issue: A disastrous plan to overhaul the U.S. Copyright Office, why the UK's social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents, and the expiration of the mass surveillance authority known as 702. |
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Featured Story: Victory! 702 Has Expired!
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets US intelligence agencies collect communications from foreigners abroad without a warrant, and routinely sweeps in Americans’ emails, messages, and calls in the process. The authority for this program expired Friday, June 12th, 2026 at midnight. Congress has been kicking the ball down the road for months now—temporarily postponing the expiration of the mass surveillance authority Section 702 of FISA in hopes that some consensus on a longer reauthorization could be reached. EFF has said for decades, every time this program is up for renewal: Section 702 should require a warrant before the Federal Bureau of Investigation can look at digital communications collected from Americans. If not, we should let the whole thing expire. And this time, it has, at least for a little while. We hope to continue to see strong bipartisan opposition in Congress to renewing Section 702 without a warrant requirement for backdoor searches. Until then, the authority for this program should remain expired.
EFF Updates©️ COPYWRONG: In a voice vote this month, the House of Representatives rushed through legislation that would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The disastrous “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act" would overhaul the hugely influential U.S. Copyright Office, making it much more political. Copyright law exists to serve the public—not presidential administrations or industry lobbyists. The Senate should reject this bill. 🤐 ONLINE CENSORSHIP: A new Senate bill called the "JAWBONE Act" is taking aim at government pressure to silence lawful speech online. This bipartisan legislation creates a federal cause of action against government officials who coerce (or attempt to) coerce private companies into taking action against First-Amendment-protected speech. At EFF, we continue to fight back on behalf of those censored by government coercion. We look forward to working with Congress on this bill as it moves through the process. 🇬🇧 SOCIAL MEDIA BANS: Politicians in the UK are pushing forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet, announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 set to take effect in 2027. But there is still no widely available way to verify age online without compromising privacy—and even if there were, broad restrictions on social media will inevitably limit access to lawful speech and valuable online communities. Young people deserve better than a policy built on panic, and all internet users deserve a safe and free internet. 🦸 EVER ONWARD: After 26 years at EFF, June 16 marked former Executive Director Cindy Cohn's last day with the organization. "It's been a terrific and wild ride," wrote Cohn, "the organization has grown from a tiny band of fighty people trying to plant a flag for freedom and justice in the coming digital world into a large, established band of fighty people doing, well, much the same. The world around us has changed enormously. Our core values haven't budged." |
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"Finally the surveillance maximalists are going to have to compromise and they're going to have to consider some real reforms."EFF's Matthew Guariglia on what the expiration of Section 702 means for warrantless domestic spying. 
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Fresh EFF Gear Is Here
Show off your support for EFF with hot digital rights merch from our online store. Just in: emoji-inspired pins and stickers illustrating EFF activist Cory Doctorow’s concept of “enshittification.” In addition to EFF shirts and hoodies, we have a wide variety of freedom-supporting swag in stock, including (extremely popular) liquid core gaming dice, HTTP playing cards, and a tactile Lady Justice braille sticker. |
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