Third Annual “Awards” Recognize the Worst in Government Transparency
Government transparency shouldn’t be a battle, but too often when the public wants to see what their officials are up to they’re met with resistance, hostility, obfuscation, and even retaliation.
For the third year in a row, the Electronic...

An Updated Transparency Law Means New Language For Your Records Requests
As the sun sets on the Obama presidency, let’s make sure the light shines brightly anew on the incoming administration.
In 2016, Congress passed the biggest update to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the nation’s...

This year was one of the busiest in recent memory when it comes to cryptography law in the United States and around the world. But for all the Sturm und Drang, surprisingly little actually changed in the U.S. In this post, we’ll run down the list of things that happened,...

Throughout 2016, EFF and our civil society partners have been closely following digital rights developments throughout Latin America. You can see some of the results in Unblinking Eyes, our exhaustive survey of surveillance law and practice across the Americas, as well as multiple countries’ localized versions of Who Has...

A decade ago, DRM seemed like it was on the ropes: it had disappeared from music, most video was being served DRM-free by YouTube and its competitors, and gamers were united in their hatred of the technology. But by 2016, DRM had come roaring back, finding its way into voting...

While the presidential election has thrown the federal government into a cloud of uncertainty, one thing is clear: EFF has never been in a better position to protect our rights on the state level in California. In 2016, we built off our previous victories around surveillance transparency, passed new laws...

Over the past few years, Internet users have found their voice in the halls of power. Through legal challenges, speaking to legislators, and effective online organizing, we've beat back many attempts to create mechanisms of censorship and strip speakers of their privacy. We defeated the SOPA/PIPA Internet blacklist bills,...

Since the Electronic Frontier Alliance launched this spring, dozens of grassroots groups across the country have found common cause. United by digital rights principles including freedom of expression, access to knowledge, and privacy, they independently pursue a vast array of activities from public education and policy advocacy to hackathons...

When Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act in 2015 as part of the country’s reckoning with the post-9/11 surveillance state, comparably little attention was paid to amendments the law made to national security letters (NSLs). At the time, EFF said that these changes stopped far short of the NSL...

It's been twenty years since John Perry Barlow declared cyberspace independent, but there continues to be a long line of not-so-weary giants aiming to expand their territory over the electronic frontier. Here is 2016's roll call of national governments and courts who either presumed that their own local law...