Victory! Tenth Circuit Finds Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Support Broad Search of Protesters’ Devices and Digital Data
In a big win for protesters’ rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to sweeping warrants to search a…
How to Pick Your Password Manager
Phishing and data breaches are a constant on the internet. The single best defense against both is to use a password manager to generate and automatically fill a unique password…
Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Bullied Into Doing Surveillance
The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S.…
☺️ Trust Us With Your Face | EFFector 38.4
Do you remember the last time you were carded at a bar or restaurant? It was probably such a quick and normal experience, that you barely remember it. But have you ever been…
EFF to California Appeals Court: First Amendment Protects Journalist from Tech Executive’s Meritless Lawsuit
EFF asked a California appeals court to uphold a lower court’s decision to strike a tech CEO’s lawsuit against a journalist that sought to silence reporting the CEO, Maury…
How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE
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…
Introducing Encrypt It Already
Today, we’re launching Encrypt It Already , our push to get companies to offer stronger privacy protections to our data and communications by implementing end-to-end encryption.…
EFF Condemns FBI Search of Washington Post Reporter’s Home
Government invasion of a reporter’s home, and seizure of journalistic materials, is exactly the kind of abuse of power the First Amendment is designed to prevent. It represents…
EFF Statement on ICE and CBP Violence
Dangerously unchecked surveillance and rights violations have been a throughline of the Department of Homeland Security since the agency’s creation in the wake of the September…
EFFecting Change: The Human Cost of Online Age Verification
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…
Google Settlement May Bring New Privacy Controls for Real-Time Bidding
EFF has long warned about the dangers of the “real-time bidding” (RTB) system powering nearly every ad you see online. A proposed class-action settlement with Google over their…
Report: ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data
EFF last summer asked a federal judge to block the federal government from using Medicaid data to identify and deport immigrants. We also warned about the danger of the Trump…
EFF to Close Friday in Solidarity with National Shutdown
The Electronic Frontier Foundation stands with the people of Minneapolis and with all of the communities impacted by the ongoing campaign of ICE and CBP violence. EFF will be…
Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach
Update February 25, 2026: Discord announced yesterday that it will delay the global rollout of its age verification system to the "second half of 2026", instead of March. The…
ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree
Read more about how enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter surveillance against ICE, and learn how to follow the Homeland Security spending trail . U.S.…
Yes to the “ICE Out of Our Faces Act”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness , most recently in Minnesota . The violence is shocking. So…
New Report Helps Journalists Dig Deeper Into Police Surveillance Technology
Report from EFF, Center for Just Journalism, and IPVM Helps Cut Through Sales Hype SAN FRANCISCO — A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales…
Baton Rouge Acquires a Straight-Up Military Surveillance Drone
The Baton Rouge Police Department announced this week that it will begin using a drone designed by military equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin and Edge Autonomy, making it one…
“Free” Surveillance Tech Still Comes at a High and Dangerous Cost
Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses…
EFFecting Change: Get the Flock Out of Our City
Flock contracts have quietly spread to cities across the country. But Flock ALPR (Automated License Plate Readers) erode civil liberties from the moment they're installed. While…
DSA Human Rights Alliance Publishes Principles Calling for DSA Enforcement to Incorporate Global Perspectives
The Digital Services Act (DSA) Human Rights Alliance has, since its founding by EFF and Access Now in 2021, worked to ensure that the European Union follows a human rights-based…
EFF to Wisconsin Legislature: VPN Bans Are Still a Terrible Idea
Update, February 25, 2026: In response to widespread pushback, Wisconsin lawmakers have removed the provision banning VPN services from S.B. 130 / A.B. 105. The bill now awaits…
Protecting Our Right to Sue Federal Agents Who Violate the Constitution
Federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness , most recently in Minnesota . The…
Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans
The New York Times reported that Meta is considering adding face recognition technology to its smart glasses. According to an internal Meta document, the company may launch the…
The Internet Still Works: Wikipedia Defends Its Editors
Section 230 helps make it possible for online communities to host user speech: from restaurant reviews, to fan fiction, to collaborative encyclopedias. But recent debates about…
The Internet Still Works: Yelp Protects Consumer Reviews
Section 230 helps make it possible for online communities to host user speech: from restaurant reviews, to fan fiction, to collaborative encyclopedias. But recent debates about…
Statutory Damages: The Fuel of Copyright-based Censorship
We're taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are…
Copyright Should Not Enable Monopoly
We're taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are…
Op-ed: Weakening Section 230 Would Chill Online Speech
(This appeared as an op-ed published Friday, Feb. 6 in the Daily Journal , a California legal newspaper.) Section 230, “the 26 words that created the internet,” was enacted 30…
Coalition Urges California to Revoke Permits for Federal License Plate Reader Surveillance
Group led by EFF and Imperial Valley Equity & Justice Asks Gov. Newsom and Caltrans Director to Act Immediately SAN FRANCISCO – California must revoke permits allowing federal…
On Its 30th Birthday, Section 230 Remains The Lynchpin For Users’ Speech
For thirty years, internet users have benefited from a key federal law that allows everyone to express themselves, find community, organize politically, and participate in…
The Year States Chose Surveillance Over Safety: 2025 in Review
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…
San Jose Can Protect Immigrants by Ending Flock Surveillance System
(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight , written by Huy Tran (SIREN), Jeffrey Wang (CAIR-SFBA), and Jennifer Pinsof.) As ICE and other…
No One, Including Our Furry Friends, Will Be Safer in Ring's Surveillance Nightmare
Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad offered a vision of our streets that should leave every person unsettled about the company’s goals for disintegrating our privacy in public. In the ad,…
EFF’s Policy on LLM-Assisted Contributions to Our Open-Source Projects
We recently introduced a policy governing large language model (LLM) assisted contributions to EFF's open-source projects. At EFF, we strive to produce high quality software…
✍️ The Bill to Hand Parenting to Big Tech | EFFector 38.2
Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. We're diving…
So, You’ve Hit an Age Gate. What Now?
This blog also appears in our Age Verification Resource Hub : our one-stop shop for users seeking to understand what age-gating laws actually do, what’s at stake, how to protect…
Speaking Freely: Yazan Badran
Interviewer: Jillian York Yazan Badran is an assistant professor in international media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a researcher at the Echo…
Congress Wants To Hand Your Parenting to Big Tech
Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate…
Open Letter to Tech Companies: Protect Your Users From Lawless DHS Subpoenas
We are calling on technology companies like Meta and Google to stand up for their users by resisting the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) lawless administrative subpoenas…
💾 The Worst Data Breaches of 2025—And What You Can Do | EFFector 38.1
So many data breaches happen throughout the year that it can be pretty easy to gloss over not just if, but how many different breaches compromised your data. We're diving into…
Rent-Only Copyright Culture Makes Us All Worse Off
We're taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are…
Copyright Kills Competition
We're taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are…
Smart AI Policy Means Examining Its Real Harms and Benefits
The phrase "artificial intelligence" has been around for a long time, covering everything from computers with "brains"—think Data from Star Trek or Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space…
Search Engines, AI, And The Long Fight Over Fair Use
We're taking part in Copyright Week , a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are…
The Homeland Security Spending Trail: How to Follow the Money Through U.S. Government Databases
This guide was co-written by Andrew Zuker with support from the Heinrich Boell Foundation. The U.S. government publishes volumes of detailed data on the money it spends, but…
🗣 Homeland Security Wants Names | EFFector 38.3
Criticize the government online? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) might ask Google to cough up your name. By abusing an investigative tool called "administrative…
RIP Dave Farber, EFF Board Member and Friend
We are sad to report the passing of longtime EFF Board member, Dave Farber . Dave was 91 and lived in Tokyo from age 83, where he was the Distinguished Professor at Keio…
Beware: Government Using Image Manipulation for Propaganda
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week posted a photo of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three activists who had entered a St. Paul, Minn. church to…
EFF Joins Internet Advocates Calling on the Iranian Government to Restore Full Internet Connectivity
Earlier this month, Iran’s internet connectivity faced one of its most severe disruptions in recent years with a near-total shutdown from the global internet and major…