In a disappointing and deeply divided opinion released today, the California Supreme Court upheld a state law law mandating DNA collection from arrestees. A lower court had held this law violated the privacy and search and seizure protections guaranteed under the California constitution. Today’s decision lets this flawed law...

It’s been a rough month for online journalism, as a pair of ill-advised copyright decisions from federal courts in New York chip away at the legal protections that allow it to operate. EFF and many others are joining forces to push back.First, in Goldman v Breitbart et al., a federal...

A recent federal appeals court decision shows that at least one judge thinks border agents should get a warrant before conducting forensic searches of travelers’ cell phones. Although the majority of the three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in U.S. v. Vergara found...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Molina-Isidoro recently issued an encouraging opinion related to the digital privacy of travelers crossing the U.S. border.EFF filed an amicus brief last year in the case, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has a new opportunity to strengthen personal privacy at the border. When courts recognize and strengthen our Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless, suspicionless border searches of our electronic devices, it’s an important check on the government’s power to search anyone, for...

Once-secret surveillance court orders obtained by EFF last week show that even when the court authorizes the government to spy on specific Americans for national security purposes, that authorization can be misused to potentially violate other people’s civil liberties.
These documents raise larger questions about whether the government...

Although a federal appeals court this week agreed to dismiss a case alleging that Twitter provided material support for terrorists in the form of accounts and direct messaging services, the court left the door open for similar lawsuits to proceed in the future. This is troubling because the threat of...

EFF has been working on multiple fronts to end a widespread violation of digital liberty—warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at the border. Government policies allow border agents to search and confiscate our cell phones, tablets, and laptops at airports and border crossings for no reason, without explanation or any...

Requiring public universities to ban access to anonymous online speech platforms would undermine activism occurring on those campuses and violate the First Amendment, EFF argued in a brief filed on Thursday.
Plaintiffs in the case, Feminist Majority Foundation et al. v. University of Mary Washington, claim that university...

Federal copyright law doesn’t give artists and labels the right to control most ways music recordings are played in public. That’s how FM and AM radio stations work. That’s how stores playing soothing “don’t you want to buy something?” music work. And that’s how restaurants playing music at an uncomfortably...