If 2016 was the year government hacking went mainstream, 2017 is the year government hacking played the Super Bowl halftime show. It's not Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear making headlines. This week, the Trump administration publicly attributed the WannaCry ransomware attack to the Lazarus Group, which allegedly works...

In 2017, major entertainment companies continued their quest for power to edit the Internet by blocking entire websites for copyright enforcement—and we’ve continued to push back.
Website blocking is a particularly worrisome form of enforcement because it’s a blunt instrument, always likely to censor more speech than necessary. Co-opting...

The Apollo 1201 project is dedicated to ending all the DRM in the world, in all its forms, in our lifetime. The DRM parade of horribles has been going strong since the Clinton administration stuck America with Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") in 1998. That law...

In the wake of the 2016 election, California lawmakers quickly adopted the posture of “The Resistance.” For the digital rights community, this presented an opportunity to pursue legislation that had not previously enjoyed much political momentum. As a result, EFF staff found themselves trekking back and forth between San Francisco...

The world is taking an increasingly dim view of the misuses of technology and those who made their names (and fortunes) from them. In 2017, Silicon Valley companies were caught up in a ongoing trainwreck of scandals: biased algorithms, propaganda botnets, and extremist online organizing have dominated the media's headlines.But...

In 2017, the federal government surged its high tech snooping on immigrants and foreign visitors, including expanded use of social media surveillance, biometric screening, and data mining. In response, EFF ramped up its advocacy for the digital rights of immigrants.
Social Media Surveillance
EFF resisted government...

If you care about maintaining privacy over medical records and prescriptions, this was not a good year.
Both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued disappointing decisions that declined to recognize a significant privacy interest in prescription records. In California, the state’s high...

From the time Donald Trump became president-elect in November 2016 and through 2017, EFF was flooded by requests for digital security workshops. They poured in from all over the country: educational nonprofits, legal groups, libraries, activist networks, newsrooms, scientist groups, religious organizations. There are a few reasons for this rise...

The fight between the Federal Communications Commission’s choice to abandon the principles of net neutrality and the majority of Americans started early in 2017 and continued into the very last month of the year. But even with the FCC’s bad vote coming so late, we fought all year to build...

In 2017, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of high-profile cases where law enforcement has deployed digital surveillance techniques against political activists. From the arrest and prosecution of hundreds of January 20, 2017 Inauguration Day (J20) protestors to the systematic targeting, surveilling and infiltration of Water...