A Consumer Privacy Hearing With No One Representing Consumers
The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on consumer privacy this morning was exactly what we and other privacy advocates expected: a chorus of big tech industry voices, with no one representing smaller companies or consumers themselves.In his opening remarks, Senator Thune acknowledged the “angst” caused by the Committee's decisions to...
Don’t Make the Register of Copyrights into a Presidential Pawn
H.R. 1695 Would Turn an Essential, Non-political Job Into a Partisan AppointeeIf we’ve learned one thing from this year in American politics, it’s that presidential appointments can be a messy affair. Debates over appointees can become extremely polarized. It’s not surprising: it’s in the President’s best interests to choose a...
FOSTA Case Update: Court Dismisses Lawsuit Without Ruling on Whether the Statute is Unconstitutional
A federal court considering a challenge to the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, or FOSTA, dismissed the case on Monday.EFF and partner law firms filed a lawsuit in June against the Justice Department on behalf of two human rights organizations, a...
Remove the Drone Shoot-Down and Biometric Surveillance Sections From the FAA Act
Congress should not broadly authorize federal agencies to destroy and wiretap private drones, or give its implied endorsement to biometric screening of domestic travelers and U.S. citizens. Congress definitely should not sneak these invasive provisions into a last-minute, must-pass, thousand-page bill. Yet Congress is poised to do so. Please...
UK Surveillance Regime Violated Human Rights
On September 13, after a five-year legal battle, the European Court of Human Rights said that the UK government’s surveillance regime—which includes the country’s mass surveillance programs, methods, laws, and judges—violated the human rights to privacy and to freedom of expression. The court’s opinion is the culmination of lawsuits...
Australian Government Ignores Experts in Advancing Its Anti-Encryption Bill
The Australian government has ignored the expertise of researchers, developers, major tech companies, and civil liberties organizations by charging forward with a disastrous proposal to undermine trust and security for technology users around the world.On September 10, the Australian government closed the window for receiving feedback about its anti-encryption...
EFF Opposes Industry Efforts to Have Congress Roll Back State Privacy Protections
The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing on consumer privacy this week, but consumer privacy groups like EFF were not invited. Instead, only voices from big tech and Internet access corporations will have a seat at the table. In the lead-up to this hearing, two industry groups (the...
Facebook Warns Memphis Police: No More Fake “Bob Smith” Accounts
Facebook has a problem: an infestation of undercover cops. Despite the social platform’s explicit rules that the use of fake profiles by anyone—police included—is a violation of terms of service, the issue proliferates. While the scope is difficult to measure, EFF has identified scores of agencies who maintain policies that...
ESNI: A Privacy-Protecting Upgrade to HTTPS
Today, the content-delivery network Cloudflare is announcing an experimental deployment of a new web privacy technology called ESNI. We’re excited to see this development, and we look forward to a future where ESNI makes the web more private for all its users.Over the past several years, we at EFF...
EFF’s Katitza Rodríguez Named One of the Most Influential Latinos in Tech
In well-deserved recognition of her digital rights and privacy work around the globe, EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rodríguez was named by CNET as one of the most influential Latinos in technology this year.We’re delighted to see Katitza celebrated for her many years of advocacy on...
