Category: Business

At the end of every year, we look back at the last 12 months and evaluate what has changed for the better (and worse) for digital rights.  While we can be frustrated—hello ongoing attacks on encryption—overall it’s always an exhilarating reminder of just how far we’ve come since EFF was founded over 33 years ago. […]

Video footage captured by police drones sent in response to 911 calls cannot be kept entirely secret from the public, a California appellate court ruled last week. The decision by the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District came after a journalist sought access to videos created by Chula Vista Police Department’s “Drones as […]

EFF continues to fight back against high-tech general warrants that compel companies to search broad swaths of users’ personal data. In 2023, we saw victory and setbacks in a pair of criminal cases that challenged the constitutionality of geofence and keyword searches.  These types of warrants—mostly directed at Google—cast a dragnet that require a provider […]

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken an unusually active interest in internet free speech issues. EFF participated as amicus in a whopping nine cases before the court this year. The court decided four of those cases, and decisions in the remaining five cases will be published in 2024.    Of the four cases decided this year, […]

“The EFF are relentless.” That’s what a New York Police Department lieutenant wrote on LinkedIn after someone sent him a link to the Atlas of Surveillance, EFF’s moonshot effort to document which U.S. law enforcement agencies are using which technologies, including drones, automated license plate readers and face recognition. Of course, the lieutenant then went […]

It’s a big year for the oozing creep of corporate paternalism and ad-tracking technology online. Google and its subsidiary companies have tightened their grips on the throat of internet innovation, all while employing the now familiar tactic of marketing these things as beneficial for users. Here we’ll review the most significant changes this year, all […]

An increase in anti-LGBTQ+ intolerance is impacting individuals and communities both online and offline across the globe. Throughout 2023, several countries sought to pass explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives restricting freedom of expression and privacy. This fuels offline intolerance against LGBTQ+ people, and forces them to self-censor their online expression to avoid being profiled, harassed, doxxed, or […]

EFF has long advocated for affordable, accessible, future-proof internet access for all. Nearly 80% of Americans already consider internet access to be as essential as water and electricity, so as our work, health services, education, entertainment, social lives, etc. increasingly have an online component, we cannot accept a future where the quality of your internet […]

When a system becomes too tightly-controlled and centralized, the people being squeezed tend to push back to reclaim their lost autonomy. The internet is no exception. While the internet began as a loose affiliation of universities and government bodies, that emergent digital commons has been increasingly privatized and consolidated into a handful of walled gardens. […]

At EFF, we believe that all the rights we have in the offline world–to speak freely, create culture, play games, build things and do business–must hold up in the digital world, as well.  EFF’s longstanding project of fighting for a more balanced, just patent system has always borne free expression in mind. And patent trolls, […]