Kids Online Safety Shouldn’t Require Massive Online Censorship and Surveillance: 2023 Year in Review

There’s been plenty of bad news regarding federal legislation in 2023. For starters, Congress has failed to pass meaningful comprehensive data privacy reforms. Instead, legislators have spent an enormous amount of energy pushing dangerous legislation that’s intended to limit young people’s use of some of the most popular sites and apps, all under the guise […]

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Protecting Students from Faulty Software and Legislation: 2023 Year in Review

Lawmakers, schools districts, educational technology companies and others keep rolling out legislation and software that threatens students’ privacy, free speech, and access to social media, in the name of “protecting” children. At EFF, we fought back against this overreach and demand accountability and transparency. Bad bills and invasive monitoring systems, though sometimes well-meaning, hurt students rather than […]

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Equitable Access to the Law Got Stronger: 2023 Year in Review

It seems like a no-brainer that everyone should be able to read, copy, and share the laws we all must follow, but few things are simple in the internet age. Public.Resource.Org’s victory at the D.C. Circuit appeals court in September, in which the court ruled that non-commercial copying of codes and standards that have been […]

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International Threats to Freedom of Expression: 2023 Year in Review

2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They surfaced in bills and laws around the world that explicitly restrict LGBTQ+ […]

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Surveillance Self-Defense: 2023 Year in Review

It’s been a big year for Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD), our repository of self-help resources for helping better protect you and your friends from online spying. We’ve done a number of updates and tackled a few new emerging topics with blog posts. Fighting for digital security and privacy rights is important, but sometimes we all just need […]

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The Last Mile of Encrypting the Web: 2023 Year in Review

At the start of 2023, we sunsetted the HTTPS Everywhere web extension. It encrypted browser communications with websites and made sure users benefited from the protection of HTTPS wherever possible. HTTPS Everywhere ended because all major browsers now offer the functionality to make HTTPS the default. This is due to the grand efforts of the […]

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Recent Surveillance Revelations, Enduring Latin American Issues: 2023 Year in Review

 The challenges in ensuring strong privacy safeguards, proper oversight of surveillance powers, and effective remedy for those arbitrarily affected continued during 2023 in Latin America. Let’s take a few, non-exhaustive, examples. We saw a scandal unveiling that Brazilian Intelligence agents monitored movements of politicians, journalists, lawyers, police officers, and judges. In Perú, leaked documents indicated […]

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Electronic Frontier Alliance Comes Back Strong: 2023 in Review

The Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) is a loose network of local groups fighting for digital rights in the United States, chaired by EFF. Members’ efforts have been recovering from the limitations put on local organizing caused by the pandemic. More EFA members have been holding in-person workshops and meet-ups that help cement the relationships needed […]

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