2019 in Review
In November’s landmark opinion in Alasaad v. McAleenan, a federal judge ruled that suspicionless electronic device searches at U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The Alasaad opinion was the perfect way to end 2019—the culmination of two years of hard work by EFF, ACLU, and our 11 clients....
Seizing Products for Design Patent Owners Isn't CBP's Job
Uh oh, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have teamed up again to introduce legislation that would promote the interests of patent owners at the public’s expense. This is the same duo that earlier this year sought to dismantle the protections against patents on human genes...
Victory: Brookline Votes to Ban Face Surveillance
With the passage of Article 25 on December 11, the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, became the fifth municipality in the nation to ban its government agencies from using face surveillance. Brookline joins nearby Somerville as the two Massachusetts municipalities to have banned face surveillance. The two Metro-Boston area...
More Than Thirty Human Rights Groups Protest the Targeting of Digital Rights Defenders in Ecuador, Argentina, and Beyond
Protecting human rights comes in many forms. Some human rights defenders are lawyers, defending clients against violations of their basic humanity. Some are journalists, exposing corruption and the secret injustices that might otherwise hide behind power. Some are activists, working in politics and in their communities to give support to...
Ring Throws Customers Under the Bus After Data Breach
Just a week after hackers broke into a Ring camera in a child’s bedroom, taunting the child and sparking serious concerns about the company’s security practices, Buzzfeed News is reporting that over 3,600 Ring owners’ email addresses, passwords, camera locations, and camera names were dumped online. This...
No More Dystopias: Support EFF This Year
Donate before 2020 and help the Electronic Frontier Foundation unlock eight challenge grants that increase in size from $200 to $20,000. Every supporter counts! We love the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk aesthetic around these parts, but we don’t have to live that way. EFF is working to ensure technology users have respect...
Global NGO Community Demands a Stop to the Sale of .ORG
Over 500 organizations and 18,000 individuals have signed a letter urging the Internet Society to stop the private equity takeover of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the organization that manages the .ORG top-level domain. It’s rare that EFF, Greenpeace, Consumer Reports, Oxfam, the YMCA of the USA, and...
California DOJ Cuts Off ICE Deportation Officers from State Law Enforcement Database
Marking a big win for privacy and immigrant rights, the California Department of Justice (CADOJ) has cut off deportation agents from access to the state’s law enforcement network. Earlier this year, the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was required to sign an...
Speaking Freely: An Interview With Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir
Surveillance Court to the FBI: You Have Some Explaining to Do
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the normally-secretive federal court based in Washington, D.C. that oversees much of the nation’s foreign intelligence surveillance programs, took an unusual step yesterday: it issued a public order chastising the FBI for its handling of the applications submitted to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, a...











