Author: Joe Mullin

EFF has joined more than 80 civil society organizations, companies, and cybersecurity experts in signing a letter urging the European Commission to change course on its recently announced “Technology Roadmap on Encryption.” The roadmap, part of the EU’s ProtectEU strategy, discusses new ways for law enforcement to access encrypted data. That framing is dangerously flawed.  […]

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is back in the Senate. Sponsors are claiming—again—that the latest version won’t censor online content. It isn’t true. This bill still sets up a censorship regime disguised as a “duty of care,” and it will do what previous versions threatened: suppress lawful, important speech online, especially for young people. […]

More than a decade ago, Congress tried to pass SOPA and PIPA—two sweeping bills that would have allowed the government and copyright holders to quickly shut down entire websites based on allegations of piracy. The backlash was immediate and massive. Internet users, free speech advocates, and tech companies flooded lawmakers with protests, culminating in an […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) just made a move that will protect bad patents at the expense of everyone else. In a memo released February 28, the USPTO further restricted access to inter partes review, or IPR—the process Congress created to let the public challenge invalid patents without having to wage million-dollar court […]

In a moment of clarity after initially moving forward a deeply flawed piece of legislation, the French National Assembly has done the right thing: it rejected a dangerous proposal that would have gutted end-to-end encryption in the name of fighting drug trafficking. Despite heavy pressure from the Interior Ministry, lawmakers voted Thursday night (article in […]

California legislators have begun debating a bill (A.B. 412) that would require AI developers to track and disclose every registered copyrighted work used in AI training. At first glance, this might sound like a reasonable step toward transparency. But it’s an impossible standard that could crush small AI startups and developers while giving big tech […]

Congress has begun debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146), a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of a troubling type of online content: non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. In recent years, concerns have also grown about the use of digital tools to alter or create such images, sometimes called deepfakes. While […]

The Texas legislature will soon be debating a bill that would seriously weaken the free speech protections of people in that state. If you live in Texas, it’s time to contact your state representatives and let them know you oppose this effort.  Texas Senate Bill 336 (SB 336) is an attack on the Texas Citizens […]

The rights we have in the offline world–to speak freely, create culture, play games, build new things and do business–must be available to us online, as well. This core belief drives EFF’s work to fight the misuse of the patent system.  Despite significant progress we’ve made over the last decade, patents, and in particular vague […]

EFF supporters get that strong encryption is tied to one of our most basic rights: the right to have a private conversation. In the digital world, privacy is impossible without strong encryption.  That’s why we’ve always got an eye out for attacks on encryption. This year, we pushed back—successfully—against anti-encryption laws proposed in the U.S., […]