Category: Technology

A man cycles in snowy weather in Stockholm, Sweden. Hans Christiansson/Shutterstock Across Scandinavia many people commute to work or school on their bikes during winter, despite snow and freezing temperatures. For example, in the Stockholm region of Sweden around 34% of people cycle at some point during the winter months. Oslo in Norway has seen […]

Getting children ready and on time for school can be stressful. In Finnish Lapland, where winters are long and snowy and some students travel long distances by bus, the challenge is even greater. In two Lapland communities, a school transport app developed through an EU-funded initiative called AURORAL has streamlined school bus pick-ups, reducing morning […]

The SAFE act, introduced by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), is the first of many likely proposals we will see to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008—and while imperfect, it does propose a litany of real and much-needed reforms of Big Brother’s favorite surveillance […]

Knowledge about eating wild mushrooms has been lost. Sandret/Shtterstock Wild garlic, oyster mushrooms and sea beet were once regularly gathered and eaten as part of meals across the UK. Today, some people have concerns about eating food growing in the woods or hedgerows, but are keen to discuss why – as our research shows. Our […]

We’re celebrating the launch of Privacy’s Defender, a new book by EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn on Thursday, March 12—and we want you to join us! Cindy has tangled with the feds, fought for your data security, and argued before judges to protect our access to science and knowledge on the internet. In Privacy’s Defender she asks: […]

Between the middle of the 18th and 19th centuries, the English parliament passed more than 4,000 Enclosure Acts. These laws allowed the fencing of common lands where villagers had grazed livestock and planted for generations, transferring them largely into private ownership of the aristocracy or the church. Similar dramatic changes to the landscape and society […]

Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Every week brings fresh claims about AI transforming the workplace. A CEO declares a revolution. A think piece predicts millions of jobs vanishing overnight. The noise is relentless. But strip away the hype and there is a simpler question. In developed economies, what has AI actually changed about work so far? The answer turns […]

“Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Hardly momentous words, but their implications were enormous. Spoken by Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell in his Boston laboratory on March 10 1876, they were the first intelligible words to be transmitted electrically through a wire from one place to another. With that, the telephone age began. […]

For the last hundred years, women have had pivotal and far too often unsung roles in building and shaping the technology that we now use every day. Many have heard of Ada Lovelace’s contributions to computer programming, but far fewer know Mary Allen Wilkes, a prominent modern programmer who wrote much of the software for […]

In honor of International Women’s Day, we asked five women at EFF about women in digital rights, freedom of expression, technology, and tech activism who have inspired us.   Anna Politkovskaya  Jillian York, Activist This International Women’s Day, I want to honor the memory of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian investigative journalist who relentlessly exposed political and social abuses, endured harassment and violence for her […]