BREAKING: a federal judge has ruled that suspicionless searches of travelers’ cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices when we cross the U.S. border are unconstitutional.
This is an enormous victory for privacy.
"Normalizing the surveillance is like normalizing a violation of our rights,” EFF’s
@Maassive
told KRNV’s
@RenoKimBurrows
. Instead, EFF and
@RSJNevada
are normalizing transparency through FOIA requests and the Atlas of Surveillance project.
BREAKING: ICANN has voted to REJECT the sale of the .ORG registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital. This is a major victory for the millions of nonprofits, civil society organizations, and individuals who make .ORG their home online.
#SaveDotOrg
The FCC's decision to abandon its traditional role in protecting an open and free Internet will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in Internet policy history.
We will fight in the courts, in the states, and in Congress to restore
#NetNeutrality
.
BREAKING: In a huge victory, the European Parliament has voted 318-278 against
#Article13
and
#Article11
—the disastrous
#CensorshipMachine
and
#LinkTax
copyright proposals.
That means we’re close to stopping these terrible proposals—and we’re gaining momentum.
EFF is deeply concerned that the U.S. Treasury Department has included an open source computer project, Tornado Cash, on its list of sanctioned individuals. Tornado Cash is an open source software project and website that published a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer.
BREAKING: We’ve confirmed that the Ring doorbell app on Android covertly shares personally identifiable information on its users with third-party companies, including Facebook.
Youtube-dl is a legitimate tool with a world of a lawful uses. Demanding its removal from Github is a disappointing and counterproductive move by the RIAA.
We've received documents that confirm:
- Best Buy gave the FBI a tour of their repair facility
- The FBI paid Geek Squad employees as informants
- FBI agents have a process for investigating & prosecuting people who sent their devices to the Geek Squad
A switch has silently been flipped in millions of instances of Google Chrome: those browsers will begin sorting their users into groups based on behavior, then sharing group labels with third-party trackers and advertisers around the web.
Without notice, X has opted all users into training its "Grok" AI Model. To turn off this setting and stop your "posts, interactions, inputs, and results" from being used for training and fine-tuning Grok, visit and uncheck the checkbox.
Victory! The Senate agreed with millions of Americans and voted to keep
#NetNeutrality
protections. Now we need to get the House to do the same. Visit now to call your Representatives.
BREAKING: The House just approved the disastrous NSA surveillance
extension bill that will allow for continued, unconstitutional
surveillance that hurts the American people and violates our Fourth
Amendment rights. The vote was 256-164.
Police used DNA and probability software to invent a likely face for a subject and then put that fake face through face recognition software. This is policing done by pure chance and it's beyond dangerous.
Facebook has been using contact information that users explicitly provided for two-factor authentication—or that users never provided at all—for targeted advertising.
This weekend,
@STARZ
used a bogus copyright notice to take down our tweet about THEIR bogus copyright notice to
@torrentfreak
, who had the audacity to report on leaked episodes of TV shows.
Say it with us: It's Not Infringement To Report On Infringement.
EFF is disappointed by the latest draft of the American Data Privacy Protection Act, or the ADPPA, a federal comprehensive data privacy bill. While we are still digesting the 132-page version released yesterday, we have three initial objections.
BREAKING: Europe’s MEPs cave to lobbyists, ignore five million online petitioners, hundreds of thousands of protesters, and approve
#article13
and
#article11
. Find out what happens to the disastrous Copyright Directive next:
A judge has granted the first known warrant for law enforcement to conduct a dragnet search through the DNA of 1.3 million people in the GEDmatch genetic genealogy database.
86% of those users did not explicitly consent to law enforcement searches.
To put it simply: the FCC is not serving the public interest, but rather is serving the interests of the very few but massive vertically integrated ISPs that support the current agency’s agenda.
Apple's filtering of iMessage and iCloud is not a slippery slope to backdoors that suppress speech and make our communications less secure. We’re already there: this is a fully-built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.
Code has long been recognized as speech, so there are clear First Amendment implications whenever the government inhibits the publication of computer code on a public website.
@EFF
This is a crucial moment for those in the EU to stop
#Article13
and
#Article11
—votes in the coming weeks will determine whether huge swaths of online expression will be subject to mass, arbitrary control.
Here's what you can do today to help:
Yet again our worst fears are confirmed. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court doesn’t grapple with U.S. privacy in any meaningful way. It's a machine that creates loosely supported legal justifications for mass surveillance.
REVEALED: Trump’s election campaign wanted to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016.
The ‘Deterrence’ project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump's digital campaign team.
#DeterringDemocracy
A Washington, D.C. decision confirms it isn't a crime to access publicly available information in a way that the website doesn’t like, such as via the use of automated web browsing (aka web 'scraping')
Everyone needs to know just how wildly dangerous the European Union’s vote this week could be for the global Internet, and the undecided members of the European Parliament must consider the massive worldwide ramifications of their votes. (1/24)
Facebook has allowed third parties like Cambridge Analytica to violate user privacy on an unprecedented scale. For now, here's one way you can take control of your privacy settings.
NEW REPORT: A company with 46 shopping centers in California is tracking customers with automated license plate readers. The data goes to ICE contractor Vigilant Solutions.
The US government has been trying to punish publication of government misconduct for years. With this indictment, the government uses the thinnest of covers—attempted assistance with figuring out a password—as a cover for criminalizing journalism.
While we continue the fight for rights online, we remember Aaron Swartz, who we lost 5 years ago today, and who taught us that we can win in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
The CIA has been engaging in mass surveillance of Americans' communications, violating everyone's privacy without any oversight from courts or Congress.
#Breaking
The draft Executive Order disregards the 1st Amendment & improperly attempts to circumvent Congress by rewriting the law that underlies much of our modern Internet. It mischaracterizes existing law to punish platforms whose ability to curate content is constitutionally protected.
Much of this indictment appears to cover ordinary journalistic activity, like protecting sources. The indictment even casts the use of common free software tools like Linux and Jabber as evidence of a criminal conspiracy.
This is an alarming day for friends of press freedom.
BREAKING: The EU JURI committee has passed
#Article13
. This requires sites to filter all submissions against a database of copyrighted works—creating a
#CensorshipMachine
that puts thousands of daily activities and millions of Internet users at the mercy of algorithmic filters.
It’s a threat to democracy when authorities like the Brazilian government use computer crime laws to threaten critics like
@ggreenwald
, and it discourages all journalists from using technology to best serve the public.
Does the news about Cambridge Analytica make you want to protect your data and privacy more than ever before?
This weekend is a great time to take these ten steps to be safer and more secure online. 1/
In one of the most contentious decisions in the European Union’s history, the European Parliament today voted to approve a directive that undermines Internet users' ability to share their work and creates new limits on their ability to link, quote, and critique the news.
BREAKING: San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-1 to ban government use of face recognition and to require a public oversight process for the purchase of surveillance technology.
We join the international coalition of human rights and civil liberties organizations demanding both Alaa Abd El Fattah and Sanaa Seif be released, and asking Egypt’s government to immediately halt its assault on free speech and free expression
15 years ago, EFF's
@doctorow
told Microsoft:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move
He was right.
Infrastructure providers are rarely well-placed to evaluate the real-world harms resulting from online actions. So instead of policing content, they should focus on their core mission: providing and improving reliable services.
Facebook has just released a tool that lets you turn off some third-party tracking. But changing the new setting requires 9 different clicks, in a corner of the site that most users will never see.
Here’s how to go turn it off now. (1/6)
What we’ve warned about is finally here. Police in Jackson, Mississippi are asking residents to allow live-stream access to their Ring doorbell camera.
A recent poll has found that 77 percent of Americans support retaining the current Network Neutrality rules (the poll broke it down to 73 percent of Republican voters, 80 percent of Democratic voters, and 76 percent of independents).
BREAKING: Worst possible outcome in the European Parliament copyright vote: MEPs vote for
#uploadfilters
,
#linktax
, a narrow
#TDM
exception for data-mining, no
#freedomofpanorama
—plus a new IP right for sports organizers.
Facebook's deactivation of accounts of journalists and activists, while allowing similar content from politicians, is clear and continuing evidence that it dangerously privileges and creates exemptions for those already in positions of power
Are you planning to attend a protest? Protecting your electronic devices and digital assets before, during, and after a protest is vital to keeping yourself and your information safe, as well as getting your message out.
Police are investigating the associations of protestors, and calling it “contact tracing.” We disagree. Contact tracing is a public health tool used to contain COVID-19. Police surveillance must be limited to prevent 1st and 4th Amendment violations.
Red alert: On Wednesday, the EU votes on
#Article13
—a disastrous proposal that would require websites to filter and censor uploaded content.
These
#CensorshipMachines
would break the Internet as we know it, and we have to stop them. <Thread>
Researchers discovered a flaw in Ring doorbells—which used HTTP instead of HTTPS—that made it possible to access a user's Wi-Fi network.
Do you really want this company's devices blanketing your neighborhood and collecting videos of your community?
In a big win for ethical AI principles, Google will back away from military AI contracting.
Congratulations to the Googlers and others who have worked hard to persuade the company to cancel its work on Project Maven.
"The problem is that the people who are deciding what constitutes exigent circumstances..are Ring and the police, both of whom don't have a great reputation when it comes to deciding when it's appropriate to acquire a person's data."
BREAKING: The Senate just approved (65-34) an appalling bill to extend Section 702—one of the NSA’s most powerful spying tools. While nominally directed at foreign intelligence surveillance, this bill actually violates Americans' 4th Amendment rights to privacy. (1/10)
Section 230 is the most important law protecting your free speech online. Without 230, platforms would become more restrictive overnight and the Internet as we know it would be mangled.
BREAKING: California’s
#NetNeutrality
bill,
#SB822
—the strongest in the nation—has enough votes to pass the Senate, and should be headed to the governor’s desk.
This week, we proved that ISP money can’t silence real people’s voices.
BREAKING: Reporters for Bloomberg and The Hill have said Chairman Devin Nunes is pulling his bill to expand NSA surveillance off the table for today. This moment is a victory for our movement. We're not done yet, but we're one day closer to stopping NSA spying.