Celebrating the 2017 Pioneer Awards
Pioneer Award honorees and presenters
EFF's annual Pioneer Awards ceremony gives the digital civil liberties community a chance to honor the work of those who fight for online freedom through remarkable innovation, activism, journalism, or leadership. This year, EFF recognized the accomplishments of free...
National Security Agencies Are Evading Congressional Oversight
Last week, federal officials from several spy agencies engaged in a full court press in Washington, spinning facts before media outlets, flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists, and bringing lawmakers to the National Security Agency's (NSA) Ft. Meade headquarters to feed them selective information about their unconstitutional mass...
LinkNYC Improves Privacy Policy, Yet Problems Remain
Since first appearing on the streets of New York City in 2016, LinkNYC’s free public Wi-Fi kiosks have prompted controversy. The initial version of the kiosks’ privacy policy was particularly invasive: it allowed for LinkNYC to store personal browser history, time spent on a particular website, and lacked clarity...
iOS 11’s Misleading “Off-ish” Setting for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is Bad for User Security
Turning off your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios when you’re not using them is good security practice (not to mention good for your battery usage). When you consider Bluetooth’s known vulnerabilities, it’s especially important to make sure your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings are doing what...
Defending Users in NAFTA 2.0: Who Are We Up Against?
After three rounds of negotiations, with a fourth coming up fast, we are still in the early days of NAFTA 2.0. In particular, the fight over copyright in NAFTA is just beginning, with the United States submitting its opening bid for the Intellectual Property chapter just last week.
What...
3 Bills Gov. Jerry Brown Should Sign Right Now
Oct. 11, 2017 Update: Gov. Brown vetoed A.B. 811, regarding Internet access for youth in detention and foster care. Read our statement here.
Each day, California Gov. Jerry Brown releases a list of 30-40 bills that he's signed—and those that he’s vetoed. When all is said and...
No Airport Biometric Surveillance
Facial recognition, fingerprinting, and retina scans—all of these and more could be extracted from travelers by the government at checkpoints throughout domestic airports. Please join EFF in opposing the dangerous new bill, sponsored by Senator Thune (R-SD), which would authorize this expanded biometric surveillance.
The TSA Modernization...
Sex Trafficking Experts Say SESTA Is the Wrong Solution
As Congress considers passing an Internet censorship bill in the name of fighting sex trafficking, groups that work closely with trafficking victims have been warning Congress that the bill could put trafficking victims in even more danger. It’s essential that lawmakers listen to those groups before passing a law that...
Europe's Courts Decide: Does U.S. Spying Violate Europe's Privacy?
In a long-awaited decision on whether and how Europeans' private data can be protected from the roving eyes of the NSA, the Irish Commercial High Court this morning declared that "standard contractual clauses" —the procedure that tech companies like Facebook use to try to satisfy European privacy laws—should...









