Category: Technology

There’s a new boogeyman in the battles over AI: so-called “stealth crawlers.” We’ll admit it—the term “stealth crawlers” sound quite nefarious. In reality, they’re anything but. “Stealth crawlers” are simply automated tools to access and collect public web data—without disclosing the user’s identity. Private crawlers like these facilitate all kinds of important work that benefits […]

Pro-science protesters at the second annual Portland March for Science, Oregon 2018. Png Studio Photography/Shutterstock In a world where trust in institutions is mostly in decline, levels of trust in science remain relatively high. Yet at the same time, belief in scientific conspiracy theories, such as hushed-up effects of vaccines or aeroplane “chemtrails”, is also […]

The 12-month study will gather the first real-world evidence on whether underground farming can be run at commercial scale, using a facility built largely for particle physics rather than agriculture. The study is supported by a UK Research and Innovation Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) STFC Facility Access Fund award for bioscience partnerships. […]

Some of the most extraordinary gems ever found belong to a rare class of diamonds known as CLIPPIRs (Cullinan-like, Large, Inclusion-Poor, Pure, Irregular, Resorbed). They make up less than 1% of all diamonds on Earth, and include three of the largest diamonds ever recovered, the Cullinan, at 3,106 carats, found at the Premier mine in […]

Reversing course, Flock Safety—the surveillance technology vendor most known for its extensive network of automated license plate readers—has announced that it will end a pilot for its acoustic gunshot detection devices to identify signs of “human distress.” In October 2025, EFF warned the public that Flock was rolling out a new feature called “Distress Detection” […]

This month, we celebrate 36 years of EFF and a mission that is bigger than any one of us. Thanks to EFF, communities around the world are demanding that technology protects their freedom, advances justice, and opens doors to opportunity. That’s not a small thing—it’s a life’s work worth continuing. If you are committed to […]

Spain will play Argentina in the Fifa World Cup final on Sunday. The highly anticipated match takes place in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, with the teams vying for the most coveted prize in football. Attacking flair and physicality will no doubt play a role. But we could also see an underappreciated element of football come […]

When Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2 was released in 2016, it was a headtrip for those of us working on digital-rights issues in the Bay Area. During the day, I’d fight tech-authoritarianism from EFF’s San Francisco offices and then, at night, I’d fight tech-authoritarianism in an uncanny simulation of San Francisco from my home gaming console.   […]

Deep beneath the French-Swiss border, the world’s largest scientific instrument has fallen silent. After years of smashing proton particles together at nearly the speed of light, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has stopped operations and entered a long shutdown. While no particle collisions are taking place at the LHC, thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians […]

Thousands of front gardens have been paved over. 1000 Words/Shutterstock Warm sticky nights are becoming more and more common in the UK. Climate change is raising temperatures, but one factor that adds to that is often ignored. Walk down a city street and you see what would have been front gardens a decade or so […]