Category: Business

Defending encryption has long been a bedrock of our work. Without encryption, it’s impossible to have private conversations or private data storage. This year, we’ve seen attacks on these rights from all around the world.  Europe Goes All in On Breaking Encryption, Mostly Fails (For Now) The European Union Council has repeatedly tried to pass a […]

EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists don’t just do the hard, endless work of defending our digital civil liberties — they also spend a lot of time and effort explaining that work to the public via media interviews.  EFF had thousands of media mentions in 2025, from the smallest hyperlocal outlets to international news behemoths. Our work […]

It’s no secret that digital surveillance and other tech-enabled oppressions are acute dangers for liberation movement workers. The rising tides of tech-fueled authoritarianism and hyper-surveillance are universal themes across the various threat models we consider. EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense project is a vital antidote to these threats, but it’s not all we do to help others […]

This year, we fought back against the return of a terrible idea that hasn’t improved with age: site blocking laws.  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 […]

Lawmakers in at least a dozen states believe that they can pass laws blocking  young people from social media or require them to get their parents’ permission before logging on. Fortunately, nearly every trial court to review these laws has ruled that they are unconstitutional. It’s not just courts telling these lawmakers they are wrong. […]

In the name of ‘protecting kids online,’ Congress pushed forward legislation this year that could have severely undermined our privacy and stifled free speech. These bills would have mandated invasive age-verification checks for everyone online—adults and kids alike—handing unprecedented control to tech companies and government authorities. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle introduced bill […]

Our Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) guides, which provide practical advice and explainers for how to deal with government and corporate surveillance, had a big year. We published several large updates to existing guides and released three all new guides. And with frequent massive protests across the U.S., our guide to attending a protest remained one of […]

2025 was the year age verification went from a fringe policy experiment to a sweeping reality across the United States. Half of the U.S. now mandates age verification for accessing adult content or social media platforms. Nine states saw their laws take effect this year alone, with more coming in 2026. The good news is […]

Age verification mandates are spreading fast, and they’re ushering in a new age of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion for everyone—not just young people. Age-gating laws generally require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “estimation” methods, before granting them […]

Read more about how ICE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on surveillance technology to spy on anyone—and potentially everyone—in the United States, and how to follow the Homeland Security Spending Trail.. ICE has been invading U.S. cities, targeting, surveilling, harassing, assaulting, detaining, and torturing people who are undocumented immigrants. They also have targeted […]