25,000 EFF Supporters Have Told Apple Not To Scan Their Phones
Over the weekend, our petition to Apple asking the company not to install surveillance software in every iPhone hit an important milestone: 25,000 signatures. We plan to deliver this petition to Apple soon; and the more individuals who sign, the more impact it will have. We are deeply grateful...
Vaccine Passport Missteps We Should Not Repeat
Vaccine mandates are becoming increasingly urgent from public health officials and various governments. As they roll out, we must protect users of vaccine passports and those who do not want to use—or cannot use—a digitally scannable means to prove vaccination. We cannot let the tools used to fight for public...
Starve the Beast: Monopoly Power and Political Corruption
Docket of the Living DeadIn 2017, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai - a former Verizon lawyer appointed by Donald Trump - announced his intention to dismantle the Commission’s hard-won 2015 Network Neutrality regulation. The 2015 order owed its existence to people like you, millions of us who...
The Federal Circuit Has Another Chance to Get it Right on Software Copyright
When it comes to software, it seems that no matter how many times a company loses on a clearly wrong copyright claim, it will soldier on—especially if it can find a path to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit is supposed to be almost...
Victory! Lawsuit Proceeds Against Clearview’s Face Surveillance
Face surveillance is a growing menace to racial justice, privacy, and free speech. So EFF supports laws that ban government use of this dangerous technology, and laws requiring corporations to get written opt-in consent from a person before collecting their faceprint.One of the worst offenders is...
EFF to Council of Europe: Flawed Cross Border Police Surveillance Treaty Needs Fixing—Here Are Our Recommendations to Strengthen Privacy and Data Protections Across the World
EFF has joined European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and other civil society organizations in recommending 20 solid, comprehensive steps to strengthen human rights protections in the new cross border surveillance draft treaty that is under review by the Parliamentary Assembly...
Apple’s Plan to Scan Photos in Messages Turns Young People Into Privacy Pawns
This month, Apple announced several new features under the auspices of expanding its protections for young people, at least two of which seriously walk back the company’s longstanding commitment to protecting user privacy. One of the plans—scanning photos sent to and from child accounts in Messages—breaks Apple’s promise to...
Facebook’s Secret War on Switching Costs
Update, October 1, 2021: The original version of this essay incorrectly stated that Metcalfe's Law dictated that the number of connections in a network doubled with each new user; that has been corrected, below.When the FTC filed its amended antitrust complaint against Facebook in mid-August, we read it with...
Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 33.5
Want the latest news on your digital rights? Then you're in luck! Version 33, issue 5 of EFFector, our monthly-ish email newsletter, is out now! Catch up on rising issues in online security, privacy, and free expression with EFF by reading our newsletter or listening to the new audio...
When It Comes to Antitrust, It’s All Connected
A knife was stuck in antitrust in the 1980s and it bled out for the next 40 years. By the 1990s, the orthodox view of antitrust went like this: horizontal monopolies are bad, but vertical monopolies are efficient. In other words, it was bad for consumers when one company...
