Virginia Needs a Strong Anti-SLAPP Law to Stop Bogus Lawsuits
Update March 31: Earlier this month, the Virginia Legislature closed down without passing any version of an anti-SLAPP bill. We hope Virginia lawmakers will protect free speech in their state by passing such a bill in the next legislative session.Sometimes lawsuits get filed to chill speech or harass people, rather...
EFF Asks Supreme Court To Reverse Dangerous Rulings About API Copyrightability and Fair Use
Washington D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that functional aspects of Oracle’s Java programming language are not copyrightable, and even if they were, employing them to create new computer code falls under fair use protections.The court is reviewing a long-running lawsuit...
Ten Questions—And Answers—About the California Consumer Privacy Act
You may have heard from a lot of businesses telling you that they’ve updated their privacy policies because of a new law called the California Consumer Privacy Act. But what’s actually changed for you?EFF has spent the past year defending this law in the California legislature, but we realize...
No Digital Surveillance of Iranians at the U.S. Border—Or Within the U.S.
Consumer Privacy: Year in Review 2019
2019 has been an eventful year for consumer privacy, both in a few key courts and state legislatures as well as in Silicon Valley. An important decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August defended the ability of Illinois citizens to protect their biometric data. Meanwhile, a flurry...
Surveillance Self-Defense: Year in Review 2019
Here at EFF, we maintain a repository of self-help resources on circumventing surveillance across a variety of different platforms, devices, and threat models. We call it Surveillance Self-Defense, or SSD for short.SSD covers myriad topics, and is broken up into four main sections:Basics: Overviews on what digital surveillance...
The Fight Against Government Face Surveillance: 2019 Year in Review
Vendors woo law enforcement with a seemingly inexhaustible flow of new spy tech. This places concerned community members, civil society, and lawmakers in a seemingly Sisyphean struggle of trying to keep up with new technological threats to privacy, and to shepard the adoption of enforceable policy to protect essential civil...
Consumer Data Privacy in California: 2019 Year in Review
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted in 2018 and goes into effect in 2020. Throughout 2019, EFF and our privacy coalition allies beat back numerous attempts by big business to block this important law before it goes into effect. We did so in the California Legislature,...
Protecting the Legal Foundation of the Internet: 2019 in Review
When someone says something unlawful online, they should be the one held responsible for it, not the website or platform where they said it. Section 230—the most important law protecting free speech online—reflects that common-sense principle. This year, EFF defended Section 230 in Congress, the courts, and on the...
Activists Worldwide Face Off Against Face Recognition: 2019 Year in Review
We’ve all heard the expression, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” We might hope that what we do and where we go will only be known to those who were there in person. Yet maintaining such anonymity and privacy in public spaces is becoming ever more difficult. 2019 has...









