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EFF Launches Searchable Database of Police Agencies and the Tech Tools They Use to Spy on Communities

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in partnership with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, today launched the largest-ever collection of searchable data on police use of surveillance technologies, created as a tool for the public to learn about facial recognition, drones, license plate readers,...

EFF To Supreme Court: Violating Terms of Service Isn’t a Crime Under the CFAA

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and leading cybersecurity experts today urged the Supreme Court to rein in the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—and protect the security research we all rely on to keep us safe—by holding that accessing computers in ways that violate terms...

Hundreds of Police Departments with Deadly Histories Partner with Amazon’s Ring Surveillance Cameras

San Francisco – Research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) shows that hundreds of U.S. police departments with deadly histories have official partnerships with Amazon’s Ring—a home-surveillance company that makes it easy to send video footage to law enforcement.Ring sells networked cameras, often bundled with doorbells or lighting, that...

EFF and Durie Tangri Join Forces to Defend Internet Archive’s Digital Library

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is joining forces with the law firm of Durie Tangri to defend the Internet Archive against a lawsuit that threatens their Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, which helps people all over the world check out digital copies of books owned by the...

Groundbreaking Community-Building Technologists Join EFF’s Board of Directors

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce the two newest members of its Board of Directors: tech executive and advocate Anil Dash and free and open source software advocate James Vasile. Both Dash and Vasile have spent their careers blending technology and community,...

Victory! French High Court Rules That Most of Hate Speech Bill Would Undermine Free Expression

Paris, France—In a victory for the free speech rights of French citizens, France’s highest court today struck down core provisions of a bill meant to curb hate speech, holding they would unconstitutionally sweep up legal speech.The decision comes as some governments across the globe, in seeking to stop hateful,...

EFF, ACLU File Lawsuit to Stop Los Angeles From Collecting Real-Time Tracking Data on Citizens’ Rental Scooters

Los Angeles—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today joined the ACLU of northern and southern California in filing a lawsuit against Los Angeles for collecting detailed trip data and real-time locations and routes of the electric scooters thousands of residents use each day.EFF, ACLU-Northern California, ACLU-Southern California, and Greenberg Glusker...

Hearing Tuesday: EFF Urges California Lawmakers to Pass Fiber Broadband for All Bill To Ensure Full Internet Access For Everyone During the Pandemic and Beyond

Sacramento, California—On Tuesday, May 26, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will ask California senators to approve a measure that will transition the state’s outdated communications network to fiber, bringing affordable high-speed broadband service, essential during the pandemic and beyond, to all residents.EFF Senior Legislative Counsel Ernesto Falcon will testify Tuesday...

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California Prisons Block AI Researchers from Examining Parole Denials

San Francisco - A team of researchers who want to develop a machine learning platform to help analyze and detect any patterns of bias in California parole-suitability decisions has been blocked for years by the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In a lawsuit filed today by the Electronic...

.ORG Domain Registry Sale to Ethos Capital Rejected in Stunning Victory for Public Interest Internet

San Francisco—In an important victory for thousands of public interest groups around the world, a proposal to sell the .ORG domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital and convert it to a for-profit entity was rejected late yesterday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).The...

Teleconference About .ORG Sale: Thursday, April 30, 9 am PT/12 pm ET: EFF and Partners Discuss Future of .ORG as ICANN Decision Nears

San Francisco—The sale of the .ORG domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital threatens to bring censorship and higher operating costs to nonprofit organizations and international NGOs working in the public interest around the globe. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may decide as early as...

Hearing Tuesday: EFF, ACLU, and Cybersecurity Expert Ask Court to Unseal Ruling Denying DOJ Effort to Break Encryption

Seattle, Washington—On Tuesday, April 28, at 9 am, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Stanford cybersecurity scholar Riana Pfefferkorn will ask a federal appeals court to embrace the public’s First Amendment right to access judicial records and unseal a lower court’s ruling denying a...

EFF Seeks Public Comment About Expanding and Improving Santa Clara Principles

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced today a call for feedback and recommendations from organizations and individuals around the world to update the landmark 2018 Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability, which established due process standards for moderating users’ online speech.Parties interested in strengthening and expanding the standards...

EFF Joins Locast Defense Team to Fight for TV Viewers’ Right to Use Free, Legal Streaming Service

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today joined the legal team defending Sports Fans Coalition NY, Inc. (SFCNY), the nonprofit organization that runs Locast, a free, local TV streaming service facing bogus copyright infringement claims by broadcast giants ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.Locast enables TV viewers to receive local over-the-air...

Public’s Right to Access Court Proceedings Calls For Livestreaming Hearing in Notorious Patent Troll Case

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today urged a panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to take a stand for open access to judicial proceedings and allow the public to watch by video an upcoming hearing in a patent case involving Apple.EFF is...

EFF Calls For Disclosure of Secret Financing Details Behind $1.1 Billion .ORG Sale, Asks FTC To Scrutinize Deal

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) Education Fund today called on ICANN and private equity firm Ethos Capital to make public secret details—hidden costs, loan servicing fees, and inducements to insiders—about financing the $1.1 billion sale of the .ORG domain registry.EFF and...

EFF, Internet Society, and Professors To Discuss Controversial Sale of the .ORG Registry

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and advocates for public interest organizations will participate tomorrow in an open discussion about a controversial plan by the nonprofit Internet Society to sell the .ORG domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital.EFF and hundreds of .ORGs oppose the $1.1 billion transaction, which...

Appeals Court Win for Open Source Advocate Speaking Out on Licensing Restrictions

San Francisco – An Open Source advocate and blogger criticizing a company, Open Source Security Inc. (OSS), has successfully defended a defamation lawsuit after an appeals court found that the company’s accusations against the blogger were baseless.The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represented Bruce Perens, a founder of the...

EFF Activists To Demonstrate Against Sell Out of .ORG to Private Equity at Los Angeles Protest

Los Angeles—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activists will join advocates for other public interest nonprofits to protest a plan to sell out the Internet .ORG domain registry at a demonstration tomorrow outside ICANN’s board of directors meeting in Los Angeles.EFF, nonprofit advocacy group NTEN, digital rights groups Fight for the...

Hearing Wednesday: EFF Urges Court To Rule That Blogger’s Opinion of Open Source Licensing Agreement is Protected by the First Amendment

San Francisco, California—On Wednesday, January 22, at 9 am, EFF Staff Attorney Jamie Williams will tell a federal appeals court that a lower court correctly dismissed a defamation lawsuit against a blogger, finding that his criticisms of a company’s business practices were opinions about an unsettled legal issue protected by...

Tuesday Hearing: EFF Argues in New Jersey Supreme Court That Defendant Can’t Be Forced to Turn Over Password to Encrypted iPhone

Trenton, New Jersey—On Tuesday, January 21, at 1 pm, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker will ask the New Jersey Supreme Court to rule that the state can’t force a defendant to turn over the passcode for his encrypted iPhone under the Fifth Amendment, which protects American’s rights against self-incrimination.The...

EFF Asks Supreme Court To Reverse Dangerous Rulings About API Copyrightability and Fair Use

Washington D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that functional aspects of Oracle’s Java programming language are not copyrightable, and even if they were, employing them to create new computer code falls under fair use protections.The court is reviewing a long-running lawsuit...

EFF Bolsters European Policy Work with Important New Staffers

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has bolstered its European policy work with the hiring of two important new staffers: Icelandic poet, artist, and free expression activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and European Internet policy expert Christoph Schmon.Birgitta Jonsdottir, EFF’s first Internet Archive Fellow, will be working across...

EFF to ICANN: Stop .ORG Domain Registry Sale To Private Equity Firm

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today said a private equity firm newly created by domain name industry insiders should be stopped from acquiring the .ORG domain registry, which provides a home on the Internet to thousands of public interest nonprofits organizations.EFF joins groups ranging from the Girl Scouts and...

EFF Releases Certbot 1.0 to Help More Websites Encrypt Their Traffic

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released Certbot 1.0: a free, open source software tool to help websites encrypt their traffic and keep their sites secure.Certbot was first released in 2015, and since then it has helped more than two million website administrators enable HTTPS by...

EFF Report Exposes, Explains Big Tech’s Personal Data Trackers Lurking on Social Media, Websites, and Apps

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a comprehensive report that identifies and explains the hidden technical methods and business practices companies use to collect and track our personal information from the minute we turn on our devices each day.Published on Cyber Monday, when millions of consumers are shopping...

EFF, Antivirus Companies, and Human Rights Groups Launch Coalition to Combat Stalkerware

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Kaspersky, Operation Safe Escape and seven other organizations today launched the Coalition Against Stalkerware to unite and mobilize security software companies and advocates for domestic abuse victims in actions to combat and shut down malicious stalkerware apps.Stalkerware, a type of commercially-available surveillance software,...

EFF Sues DHS to Obtain Information About the Agency’s Use of Rapid DNA Testing on Migrant Families at the Border

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today to obtain information that will shine a light on the agency’s use of Rapid DNA technology on migrant families at the border to verify biological parent-child relationships.In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaint filed...

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Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

BOSTON—In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by...

Hearing Thursday: EFF Urges Appeals Court to Curb Police Access to ALPR Databases

San Francisco – On Thursday, Oct. 23, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge the California Court of Appeal to reverse a lower court and hold that law enforcement use of data gathered from automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems is a search that requires a warrant.ALPRs are computer-controlled camera...

EFF to Amazon and Shaq: Stop Pushing Police Partnerships with Doorbell Camera Company

Chicago – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging Amazon, along with basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, to cancel an event promoting Ring home-surveillance cameras at a police chiefs’ conference in Chicago later this month. EFF and many other civil liberties and privacy organizations are growing increasingly concerned about privacy-invasive partnerships...

EFF and Partners Urge U.S. Lawmakers to Support New DoH Protocol for a More Secure Internet

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today called on Congress to support implementation of an Internet protocol that encrypts web traffic, a critical tool that will lead to dramatic improvements in user privacy and help impede the ability of governments to track and censor people.EFF, joined by Consumer Reports and...

Hearing Thursday: EFF’s Rainey Reitman Will Urge California Lawmakers to Balance Needs of Consumers In Developing Cryptocurrency Regulations

Whittier, California—On Thursday, Oct. 17, at 10 am, EFF Chief Program Officer Rainey Reitman will urge California lawmakers to prioritize consumer choice and privacy in developing cryptocurrency regulations.Reitman will testify at a hearing convened by the California Assembly Committee on Banking and Finance. The session, Virtual Currency Businesses: The Market...

Congressional Hearing Wednesday: EFF Will Urge Lawmakers to Protect Important Internet Free Speech Law

Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Oct. 16, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry will testify at a congressional hearing in support of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)—one of the most important laws protecting Internet speech.CDA 230 shields online platforms from liability for content posted...

EFF to Court: Parody Book Combining Dr. Seuss and Star Trek Themes Is Fair Use

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court today to rule that the creators of a parody book called “Oh The Places You’ll Boldly Go!”—a mash-up of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek themes—didn’t infringe copyrights in the Dr. Seuss classic “Oh The Places You’ll Go!”The illustrated, crowdsourced...

Victory! EFF Wins Access to License Plate Reader Data to Study How Law Enforcement Uses the Privacy Invasive Technology

San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) have reached an agreement with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies under which the police and sheriff’s departments will turn over license plate data they indiscriminately collected on millions of law-abiding drivers in Southern...

Hearing Friday: Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Ask Court to Reinstate Lawsuit Seeking To Block Its Enforcement

Washington D.C.—On Friday, Sept. 20, at 9:30 am, attorneys for five plaintiffs suing the government to block enforcement of FOSTA will ask a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s decision to dismiss the case.The plaintiffs—Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the Internet Archive, Human Rights Watch, and individuals Alex Andrews and...

New Report Finds Border Communities Inundated with Surveillance Technologies

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today published “The Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities,” the first report from a new research partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno’s Reynolds School of Journalism.EFF and a team of students compiled profiles of six counties along the U.S.-Mexico border,...

EFF Sues DHS To Uncover Information About Border Agents Using GPS Devices Without a Warrant To Track Vehicles

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component agencies today to obtain information about the agencies’ warrantless use of global positioning system (GPS) devices to track vehicles entering the U.S.In 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in a landmark decision...

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Trailblazing Tech Scholar danah boyd, Groundbreaking Cyberpunk Author William Gibson, and Influential Surveillance Fighters Oakland Privacy Win EFF’s Pioneer Awards

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce the winners of its 2019 Pioneer Awards: trailblazing tech scholar danah boyd, groundbreaking cyberpunk author William Gibson, and the influential surveillance-fighting group Oakland Privacy. The ceremony will be held September 12th in San Francisco.The keynote speaker for this...

EFF Delegation Returns from Ecuador, says Ola Bini’s Case is Political, Not Criminal

San Francisco – A team from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has returned from a fact-finding mission in Quito for the case of Ola Bini—a globally renowned Swedish programmer who is facing tenuous computer-crime charges in Ecuador.Bini was detained in April, as he left his home in Quito to take...

EFF Sues AT&T, Data Aggregators For Giving Bounty Hunters and Other Third Parties Access to Customers’ Real-Time Locations

SAN FRANCISCO — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP filed a class action lawsuit today on behalf of AT&T customers in California to stop the telecom giant and two data location aggregators from allowing numerous entities—including bounty hunters, car dealerships, landlords, and...

Hearing Thursday: EFF, ACLU Will Ask Court to Rule In Favor of Travelers Suing DHS Over Unconstitutional, Warrantless Searches of Cellphones, Laptops

Boston, Massachusetts—On Thursday, July 18, at 3:00 p.m., lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU will ask a federal judge to decide that the constitutional rights of 11 travelers were violated by the suspicionless, warrantless searches of their electronic devices at the border by the U.S....

Media Briefing Monday: EFF and Partners Will Discuss California Bills Aimed at Weakening State’s Consumer Privacy Law

San Francisco—On Monday, June 8, at 11 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, Common Sense Media, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and Consumer Reports will hold a conference call to brief reporters about five bills designed to weaken consumer privacy protections that are set for hearing in the California Senate.Members...

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