As the days wind down for the California legislature to pass bills, transparency advocates have seen landmark measures fall by the wayside. Without explanation, an Assembly committee shelved legislation that would have shined light on police use of surveillance technologies, including a requirement that police departments seek approval from...

Who controls your digital devices and media? If it's not you, why not? EFF has filed new petitions with the Copyright Office to give those in the United States protection against legal threats when you take control of your devices and media. We’re also seeking broader, better protection for security...

Provisions on digital trade are quietly being squared away in both of the two major trade negotiations currently underway—the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade talks. But due to the worst-ever standards of transparency in both of these negotiations, we don’t...

Since 1992, Fairytale Brownies has sold delicious brownies based on a secret family recipe. It’s a small business founded by two childhood friends who were quick to see the potential of the Internet and registered the domain www.brownies.com in 1995. Fairytale Brownies became an e-commerce website before the first...

The U.S. Department of Justice has come to the obvious conclusion that there’s no need to order Facebook to keep an investigation “secret” when it was never secret in the first place. While we applaud the government’s about-face, we question why they ever took such a ridiculous position in the...

Overreliance on Automated Filters Would Push Victims Off of the Internet
In all of the debate about the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693), there’s one question that’s received surprisingly little airplay: under SESTA, what would online platforms do in order to protect themselves from...

Now that California’s Broadband Privacy Bill, A.B. 375, is headed for a final vote in the California legislature, Comcast, Verizon, and all their allies are pulling out all the stops to try to convince state legislators to vote against the bill. Unfortunately, that includes telling legislators about made-up problems the...

Shortly after the November election, human rights groups joined California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León in introducing a comprehensive bill to protect data collected by the government from being used for mass deportations and religious registries. S.B. 54, known as the California Values Act, also included a...