For months now, Congress has been kicking the ball down the road—temporarily postponing the expiration of the mass surveillance authority Section 702 of FISA in hopes that some consensus could be reached. Now, with the deadline looming, the stakes have never been higher. Nearly every time the statute has come up for renewal, the people […]
Continue Reading
Speaker Johnson has introduced a new fig leaf over the American surveillance state, the Foreign Intelligence Accountability Act. Introduced with only days to go before Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expires and the U.S. government loses one of its most invasive surveillance programs, the bill does nothing to make any of the substantial changes privacy […]
Continue Reading
In a dramatic middle-of-the-night stand off, a bipartisan set of lawmakers pushing for true reform and privacy protections for Americans bought us some more time to fight! They are holding out for, at a minimum, the requirement of an actual probable cause warrant for FBI access to information collected under the mass spying program known […]
Continue Reading
We go through this every couple of years: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which of Americans’ communications with foreign persons overseas is up for renewal. As always, Congress can reauthorize it with or without changes, or just let it expire. We know, we know, it’s a pain to have to do this every […]
Continue Reading
In 2024, EFF wrote our initial blog about what could go wrong when police let AI write police reports. Since then, the technology has proliferated at a disturbing rate. Why? The most popular generative AI tool for writing police reports is Axon’s Draft One, and Axon also happens to be the largest provider of body-worn […]
Continue Reading
When Congress eventually reopens, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will be moving toward a vote. This gives us a chance to see the priorities of the Secretary of Defense and his Congressional allies when it comes to the military—and one of those priorities is buying technology, especially AI, with less of an obligation […]
Continue Reading
California Governor Newsom has signed S.B. 524, a bill that begins the long process of regulating and imposing transparency on the growing problem of AI-written police reports. EFF supported this bill and has spent the last year vocally criticizing the companies pushing AI-generated police reports as a service. S.B.524 requires police to disclose, on the […]
Continue Reading
In a joint letter to the ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, EFF has joined with 20 other organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center, CDT, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Demand Progress, to express opposition to a rule change that would seriously weaken accountability in the intelligence community. Specifically, under the proposed […]
Continue Reading
Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has […]
Continue Reading
A San Francisco supervisor has proposed that police and other city agencies should have no financial consequences for breaking a landmark surveillance oversight law. In 2019, organizations from across the city worked together to help pass that law, which required law enforcement to get the approval of democratically elected officials before they bought and used […]
Continue Reading
