New Surveillance Transparency Report Documents an Urgent Need for Change
The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has released its Annual Statistical Transparency Report disclosing the use of national security surveillance laws for the year 2021—and to no one’s surprise it documents the wide-ranging overreach of intelligence agencies and the continued misuse of surveillance authorities to spy on millions of Americans....
EFF to Supreme Court: Put Texas Social Media Law Back on Hold
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to halt enforcement of Texas’ constitutionally questionable social media law, which allows the state to dictate what speech platforms must publish and may lead to more, not less, censorship of user expression as platforms face a storm of...
Podcast Episode: An AI Hammer in Search of a Nail
It often feels like machine learning experts are running around with a hammer, looking at everything as a potential nail - they have a system that does cool things and is fun to work on, and they go in search of things to use it for. But what if we...
British Citizen Alaa Abd El Fattah Demands An End to Mistreatment in Egyptian Prison
Egyptian blogger, coder, and free speech activist Alaa Abd El Fattah is on day 45 of a hunger strike in protest of his mistreatment in an Egyptian prison. Alaa was sentenced, without due process, late last year, after spending two years at a maximum-security prison in Tora, 12 miles...
EFF, Al Sur Launch Guide to Raise Awareness About Deficiencies in Cross-Border Surveillance Treaty and Strategies to Mitigate Human Rights Risks
Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants are So Invasive, Even Big Tech Wants to Ban Them
Geofence and reverse keyword warrants are some of the most dangerous, civil-liberties-infringing and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies’ digital toolbox. It turns out that these warrants are so invasive of user privacy that big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are willing to support banning...
California Law Enforcement Now Needs Approval for Military-Grade Surveillance Equipment. We'll Be Watching.
California residents finally have a law designed to dismantle some of the secrecy around domestic acquisitions of warzone surveillance equipment.The weapons of the United States military—drones, mobile command centers, sound cannons, and more—have been handed off to local law enforcement for years. The transfers have equipped police departments with the...
In a Blow to Free Speech, Texas’ Social Media Law Allowed to Proceed Pending Appeal
A constitutionally problematic Texas law limiting social media companies exercising their First Amendment rights to curate the content they carry can go into effect after a federal appeals court lifted a lower court’s injunction blocking it. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,...
The EU Commission’s New Proposal Would Undermine Encryption And Scan Our Messages
EFF to Court: Fair Use is a Right Congress Cannot Cast Aside
Copyright law and free expression have always been in tension, with the courts protecting speech from overzealous copyright claims using legal doctrines such as fair use. But in 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and since then courts have interpreted its “anti-circumvention” provision to give rightsholders the unprecedented...
