EFFector Volume 38, Issue 18

🗣 A Victory for Freedom of Speech Online

Welcome to an all-new EFFector, your regular digest on everything digital rights from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In our 853rd issue: Celebrating Opt Out October, pushing back against anti-VPN laws, and a social media surveillance lawsuit against the Trump Administration moves forward.

When you lose your rights online, you lose them in real life. Become an EFF member today!

Featured Story: Victory! Court Rejects Government Effort to Dismiss Social Media Surveillance Lawsuit

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 earlier this month.

On October 1, 2026, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The case was filed in October 2025 on behalf of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Muslim Advocates (MA), and the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic (MFIA) represent the labor unions.

This decision is a victory: The Court held that claims that the government’s social media surveillance program is harming the unions’ members, as well as hampering the ability of the unions to associate with their members and potential members, can move forward.

The Court ruled that: "This threat of adverse immigration consequences, under a government whose harsh immigration crackdowns has been heavily publicized and reported on, is certainly enough to 'deter a person of ordinary firmness from the exercise of First Amendment rights.' It is objectively reasonable that noncitizens would limit their expression of disfavored viewpoints under the [Challenged Surveillance Program] given the credible threat of adverse immigration action from the Government."

Since taking power, the Trump administration has created a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. Using AI and other automated technologies, the program surveils the social media accounts of visa and green card holders with the goal of identifying and punishing those who express viewpoints the government disfavors. The surveillance program has been paired with a public intimidation campaign—silencing not just noncitizens with immigration status, but also the families, coworkers, and friends with whom their lives are integrated.

In October 2025, UAW, CWA, and AFT sued the Departments of State and Homeland Security, alleging that this viewpoint-based surveillance program violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

"Our plaintiff-unions have members that have wholly changed the way they interact with social media—including limiting their engagement with union content—because of the government's social media surveillance program," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lisa Femia. "Many have stopped posting online together, and have even stopped engaging in offline activities, for fear of being scrutinized or targeted related to immigration benefits. We are pleased that the Court has agreed to let the case proceed, and allow unions and their members to seek justice for infringement of their rights."

READ MORE…

‌EFF Updates

🎃 OPT OUT OCTOBER: Big tech companies are hell-bent on taking away our agency and forcing us to use their surveillance-based services, apps, and devices. But with a little work, we can stand our ground and take control over what happens with our data. This month—Opt Out October—we’re walking through some of the steps to do just that. Begin your Opt Out October journey today with our guides for opting out of social media, software, and AI tools made by Big Tech.

😎 VPN VICTORY: When lawmakers try 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 73, the state’s draconian anti-VPN age verification law. The decision comes as EFF submitted our comments to the Utah Department of Commerce, detailing how forcing platforms to detect and block privacy-preserving tools undermines user privacy and security worldwide while demanding the impossible.

🪪 NO ID, NO INTERNET?: Online age verification proposals are often presented as a simple tradeoff: sacrifice a little privacy to better safeguard children on the internet. But that framing overlooks a more fundamental question. What happens to people who cannot verify their age at all? Age verification laws that are predicated on users possessing identity documents exclude critical sections of populations. And this problem is global in nature: Millions of people lack government-issued identification or encounter regular challenges to obtaining or updating it.

🤐 COPYRIGHT TROLLS: Whether Congress calls it SOPA, PIPA, ACPA, or the DEFEND IP Act, every site-blocking bill has the same rotten idea at their core: That enforcing copyrights requires building a censorship machine for websites into the architecture of the internet. This is, of course, a disaster for a free and open web. These proposals keep coming, but there is still no way to create a mechanism for blocking access to an entire website that does not invite both deliberate abuse and lots of collateral harm to free and lawful speech.

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