How to Secure Your Kid's Android Device
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/how-secure-your-kids-android-device
December 4, 2023, 9:40 PM
After finding risky software on an Android (Google’s mobile operating system) device marketed for kids, we wanted to put together some tips to help better secure your kid's Android device (and even your own). Despite the dangers that exist, there are many things that can be done to at least mitigate harm and assist parents and children. There are also safety tools that your child can use at their own discretion.
There's a handful of different tools, settings, and apps that can help better secu...
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Tor University Challenge: First Semester Report Card
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/tor-university-challenge-first-semester-report-card
December 4, 2023, 6:29 PM
In August of 2023 EFF announced the Tor University Challenge, a campaign to get more universities around the world to operate Tor relays. The primary goal of this campaign is to strengthen the Tor network by creating more high bandwidth and reliable Tor nodes. We hope this will also make the Tor network more resilient to censorship since any country or smaller network cutting off access to Tor means it would be also cutting itself off from a large swath of universities, academic knowledge, and c...
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Victory! Montana’s Unprecedented TikTok Ban is Unconstitutional
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/victory-montanas-unprecedented-tiktok-ban-unconstitutional
December 1, 2023, 10:33 PM
A federal court on Thursday blocked Montana’s effort to ban TikTok from the state, ruling that the law violated users’ First Amendment rights to speak and to access information online, and the company’s First Amendment rights to select and curate users’ content. 
Montana passed a law in May that prohibited TikTok from operating anywhere within the state and imposed $10,000 penalties on TikTok or any mobile application store that allowed users to access TikTok. The law was scheduled to t...
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Latest Draft of UN Cybercrime Treaty Is A Big Step Backward
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/latest-draft-un-cybercrime-treaty-big-step-backward
December 1, 2023, 9:49 PM
A new draft of the controversial United Nations Cybercrime Treaty has only heightened concerns that the treaty will criminalize expression and dissent, create extensive surveillance powers, and facilitate cross-border repression. 
The proposed treaty, originally aimed at combating cybercrime, has morphed into an expansive surveillance treaty, raising the risk of overreach in both national and international investigations. The new draft retains a controversial provision allowing states to compel...
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U.S. Senator: What Do Our Cars Know? And Who Do They Share that Information With?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/us-senator-what-do-our-cars-know-and-who-do-they-share-information
December 1, 2023, 6:44 PM
U.S. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has sent a much-needed letter to car manufacturers asking them to clarify a surprisingly hard question to answer: what data cars collect? Who has the ability to access that data? Private companies can often be a black box of secrecy that obscure basic facts of the consumer electronics we use. This becomes a massive problem when the devices become more technologically sophisticated and capable of collecting audio, video, geolocation data, as well as biometr...
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The Intelligence Committees’ Proposals for a 702 Reauthorization Bill are Beyond Bad
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/intelligence-committees-proposals-702-reauthorization-bill-are-beyond-bad
November 30, 2023, 10:36 PM
Both congressional intelligence committees have now released proposals for reauthorizing the government's Section 702 spying powers, largely as-is, and in the face of repeated abuse. 
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in the U.S. House of Representatives released a Nov. 16 report calling for reauthorization, which includes an outline of the legislation to do so. According to the report, the bill would renew the mass surveillance authority Section 702 and, in the proc...
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The Government Shouldn’t Prosecute People With Unreliable “Black Box” Technology
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/government-shouldnt-prosecute-people-unreliable-black-box-technology
November 30, 2023, 6:50 PM
On Tuesday, EFF urged the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in that state, to affirm that a witness who has no knowledge of the proprietary algorithm used in black box technology is not qualified to testify to its reliability. We filed this amicus brief in Commonwealth v. Arrington together with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Massachusetts Association of C...
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Speaking Freely: Ron Deibert
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/speaking-freely-ron-deibert
November 29, 2023, 7:06 PM
Ron Deibert is a Canadian professor of political science, a philosopher, an author, and the founder of the renowned Citizen Lab, situated in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He is perhaps best known to readers for his research on targeted surveillance, which won the Citizen Lab a 2015 EFF Award. I had the pleasure of working with Ron early on in my career on another project he co-founded, the OpenNet Initiative, a project that documented internet filtering (blockin...
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Let Them Know It’s Time to Power Up
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/let-them-know-its-time-power
November 28, 2023, 4:30 PM
Power Up Your Donation Week is here! Right now, your contribution will have double the impact on digital privacy, security, and free speech rights for everyone.
Power Up!
Donate to EFF for an instant 2X match
Thanks to a fund made by a group of dedicated EFF supporters, now through December 5th every online donation gets an instant match up to $304,200! This means every dollar you give becomes two dollars toward fighting surveillance, defending encryption, promoting open access to information, a...
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Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.15
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/digital-rights-updates-effector-3515
November 27, 2023, 5:50 PM
With the holiday season upon us, it can be difficult to keep track of the latest digital rights news. Lucky for you, EFF's EFFector newsletter has you covered with the latest happenings, from a breakdown of our latest Privacy Badger update, an investigation into Android TV set-top boxes infected with malware, and a report on how to better address online harms by focusing on user privacy.
EFFector 35.15 is out now—you can read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to get the next issue in you...
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How We Fundraise
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/how-we-fundraise
November 27, 2023, 5:39 PM
Hello from the fundraising team at EFF!
If you are reading this, you are probably already a donor to EFF (thank you!) or are considering supporting us and want to do your due diligence. We’d like to share some information with you about how EFF raises money for digital rights and (perhaps more importantly) how we don’t.
EFF is Member Supported.
Part of our team’s mandate is to not only raise money to support EFF’s work defending your rights in a digital world, but to bring as many people...
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Alaa Abd El-Fattah: Letter to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/alaa-abd-el-fattah-letter-united-nations-working-group-arbitrary-detention
November 24, 2023, 3:41 PM
EFF has signed on to the following letter alongside 33 other organizations in support of a submission to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), first published here by English PEN. To learn more about Alaa's case, visit Offline.
23 November 2023
Dear Members of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,
We, the undersigned 34 freedom of expression and human rights organisations, are writing regarding the recent submission to the United Nations Working Gro...
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The Eyes on the Board Act Is Yet Another Misguided Attempt to Limit Social Media for Teens
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/eyes-board-act-yet-another-misguided-attempt-limit-social-media-teens
November 21, 2023, 6:37 PM
Young people’s access to social media continues to be under attack by overreaching politicians. The latest effort, Senator Ted Cruz’s blunt “Eyes on the Board” Act, aims to end social media’s use entirely in schools. This heavy-handed plan to cut federal funding to any school that doesn’t block all social media platforms may have good intentions—like ensuring kids are able to focus on school work when they’re behind a desk—but the ramifications of such a bill would be bleak, an...
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Protecting Kids on Social Media Act: Amended and Still Problematic
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/protecting-kids-social-media-act-amended-and-still-problematic
November 20, 2023, 10:18 PM
Senators who believe that children and teens must be shielded from social media have updated the problematic Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, though it remains an unconstitutional bill that replaces parents’ choices about what their children can do online with a government-mandated prohibition.  
As we wrote in August, the original bill (S. 1291) contained a host of problems. A recent draft of the amended bill gets rid of some of the most flagrantly unconstitutional provisions: It no lon...
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On His 42nd Birthday, Alaa Abd El Fattah’s Family Files UN Petition for His Release
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/his-42nd-birthday-alaa-abd-el-fattahs-family-files-un-petition-his-release
November 18, 2023, 11:00 PM
Today is the birthday of Alaa Abd El Fattah, a prominent Egyptian-British coder, blogger, activist, and one of the most high-profile political prisoners in the entire Arab world. This will be the tenth birthday that he will spend in prison. But we are newly optimistic for his release: This week, Alaa's family and International Counsel acting on his behalf filed an urgent appeal with the United Nations requesting urgent action over his continuing and unjust imprisonment in Egypt. 
The petitio...
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EFF to Supreme Court: Fifth Amendment Protects People from Being Forced to Enter or Hand Over Cell Phone Passcodes to the Police
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-supreme-court-fifth-amendment-protects-people-being-forced-enter-or-hand-over
November 16, 2023, 9:16 PM
Lower Court Ruling Undermining Protections Against Self Incrimination Should Be Reversed WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling undermining Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination and find that constitutional safeguards prevent police from forcing people to provide or use passcodes for their cell phones so officers can access the tremendous amount of private information on phones.At stake is the fundamental pr...
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To Best Serve Students, Schools Shouldn’t Try to Block Generative AI, or Use Faulty AI Detection Tools
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/best-serve-students-schools-shouldnt-try-block-generative-ai-or-use-faulty-ai
November 16, 2023, 8:20 PM
Generative AI gained widespread attention earlier this year, but one group has had to reckon with it more quickly than most: educators. Teachers and school administrators have struggled with two big questions: should the use of generative AI be banned? And should a school implement new tools to detect when students have used generative AI? EFF believes the answer to both of these questions is no.
AI Detection Tools Harm Students
For decades, students have had to defend themselves from an increas...
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Speaking Freely: Agustina Del Campo
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/speaking-freely-agustina-del-campo
November 16, 2023, 6:09 PM
Agustina Del Campo is the Director at the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She holds a law degree from Universidad Catolica Argentina and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from American University Washington College of Law.
Agustina has extensive experience in human rights training, particularly as it relates to freedom of expression and the press in the Inter-American human rights system....
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Low Budget Should Not Mean High Risk: Kids' Tablet Came Preloaded with Sketchyware
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/low-budget-should-not-mean-high-risk-kids-tablet-came-preloaded-sketchyware
November 14, 2023, 10:04 PM
It’s easy to get Android devices from online vendors like Amazon at different price points. Unfortunately, it is also easy to end up with an Android device with malware at these lower budgets. There are several factors that contribute to this: multiple devices manufactured in the same facility, lack of standards on security when choosing components, and lack of quality assurance and scrutiny by the vendors that sell these devices. We investigated a tablet that had potential malware on it bough...
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EFF Urges FTC to Address American Resellers of Malware on Android TV Set-Top Boxes
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-urges-ftc-address-american-resellers-malware-android-tv-set-top-boxes
November 14, 2023, 6:02 PM
Regulators must step in to halt the sale to consumers of devices that are known to be compromised by malware. SAN FRANCISCO—The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must act to halt sales by Amazon, AliExpress, and other resellers of Android television set-top boxes and mobile devices manufactured by AllWinner and RockChip that have been pre-infected with malware before ever reaching consumers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged Tuesday in a letter to FTC commissioners. 
“We believe t...
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To Address Online Harms, We Must Consider Privacy First
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/address-online-harms-we-must-first-do-privacy
November 14, 2023, 4:27 PM
Every year, we encounter new, often ill-conceived, bills written by state, federal, and international regulators to tackle a broad set of digital topics ranging from child safety to artificial intelligence. These scattershot proposals to correct online harm are often based on censorship and news cycles. Instead of this chaotic approach that rarely leads to the passage of good laws, we propose another solution in a new report: Privacy First: A Better Way to Address Online Harms.
In this report, w...
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Reauthorizing Mass Surveillance Shouldn’t be Tied to Funding the Government
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/reauthorizing-mass-surveillance-shouldnt-be-tied-funding-government
November 13, 2023, 6:04 PM
Section 702 is the controversial and much-abused mass surveillance authority that expires in December unless Congress renews it. EFF and others have been working hard to get real reforms into the law and have opposed a renewal, and now, we’re hearing about a rushed attempt to tie renewal to funding the government. We need to stop it.
In September, President Biden signed a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government preventing a full shutdown. This week Congress must pass another bi...
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S.T.O.P.: Putting a Check on Unchecked Local N.Y. Government Surveillance
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/stop-putting-check-unchecked-local-ny-government-surveillance
November 10, 2023, 3:49 PM
Recently I got the chance to speak with longtime Electronic Frontier Alliance member Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). They’ve got a new Advocacy Manager, Kat Phan, and exciting projects are coming down the pike! Kat took some time to share with EFF how things are looking for STOP, their many successes, education & advocacy work, and how people from across the country can plug-in and support.
Can you share how S.T.O.P. came to be, got started, and its mission?   
S...
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Debunking the Myth of “Anonymous” Data
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/debunking-myth-anonymous-data
November 10, 2023, 1:49 PM
Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere. Each credit card purchase, personal medical diagnosis, and preference about music and books is recorded and then used to predict what we like and dislike, and—ultimately—who we are. 
This often happens without our knowledge or consent. Personal information that corporations collect from our online behaviors sells for astonishing profits and incentivizes online actors to collect as much as possible. Every mo...
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It’s Time to Oppose the New San Francisco Policing Ballot Measure
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/its-time-oppose-new-san-francisco-policing-ballot-measure
November 10, 2023, 2:34 AM
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has filed a ballot initiative on surveillance and policing that, if approved, would greatly erode our privacy rights, endanger marginalized communities, and roll back the incredible progress the city has made in creating democratic oversight of police’s use of surveillance technologies. The measure will be up for a vote during the March 5, 2024 election.
Specifically, the ballot measure would erode San Francisco’s landmark 2019 surveillance ordinance which r...
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Speaking Freely: David Kaye
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/speaking-freely-david-kaye
November 8, 2023, 7:04 PM
David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, the co-director of the university’s Fair Elections and Free Speech Center, and the independent board chair of the Global Network Initiative. He also served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression from 2014-2020. It is in that capacity that I had the good fortune of meeting and working with him; he is someone that I consider both a role model and ...
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Platforms Must Stop Unjustified Takedowns of Posts By and About Palestinians
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/platforms-must-stop-unjustified-takedowns-posts-and-about-palestinians
November 8, 2023, 6:50 PM
Legal intern Muhammad Essa Fasih contributed to this post.Social media is a crucial means of communication in times of conflict—it’s where communities connect to share updates, find help, locate loved ones, and reach out to express grief, pain, and solidarity. Unjustified takedowns during crises like the war in Gaza deprives people of their right to freedom of expression and can exacerbate humanitarian suffering.In the weeks since war between Hamas and Israel began, social media platforms ha...
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Introducing Badger Swarm: New Project Helps Privacy Badger Block Ever More Trackers
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/privacy-badger-learns-block-ever-more-trackers
November 7, 2023, 8:25 PM
Today we are introducing Badger Swarm, a new tool for Privacy Badger that runs distributed Badger Sett scans in the cloud. Badger Swarm helps us continue updating and growing Privacy Badger’s tracker knowledge, as well as continue adding new ways of catching trackers. Thanks to continually expanding Badger Swarm-powered training, Privacy Badger comes packed with its largest blocklist yet.
We continue to update and grow Privacy Badger’s pre-trained list. Privacy Badger now comes with the larg...
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This Month, The EU Parliament Can Take Action To Stop The Attack On Encryption
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/month-eu-parliament-can-take-action-stop-attack-encryption
November 7, 2023, 8:10 PM
Update 11/14/2023: The LIBE committee adopted the compromise amendments by a large majority. Once the committee's version of the law becomes the official position of the European Parliament, attention will shift to the Council of the EU. Along with our allies, EFF will continue to advocate that the EU reject proposals to require mass scanning and compromise of end-to-end encryption.
A key European parliamentary committee has taken an important step to defend user privacy, including end-to-end en...
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Observation Mission Stresses Key Elements of Ola Bini's Case for Upholding Digital Rights
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/observation-mission-stresses-key-elements-ola-binis-case-upholding-digital-rights
November 7, 2023, 6:41 PM
Despite an Ecuadorian court’s unanimous acquittal of security expert Ola Bini in January this year due to complete lack of evidence, Ecuador’s attorney general's office has moved to appeal the decision, perpetuating several years of unjust attacks on Bini’s rights. 
In the context of the Internet Governance Forum 2023 (IGF) held in Japan, the Observation Mission on the Bini case, which includes EFF and various digital and human rights groups, analyzed how advocates can utilize key element...
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Article 45 Will Roll Back Web Security by 12 Years
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-back-web-security-12-years
November 7, 2023, 6:02 PM
The EU is poised to pass a sweeping new regulation, eIDAS 2.0. Buried deep in the text is Article 45, which returns us to the dark ages of 2011, when certificate authorities (CAs) could collaborate with governments to spy on encrypted traffic—and get away with it. Article 45 forbids browsers from enforcing modern security requirements on certain CAs without the approval of an EU member government. Which CAs? Specifically the CAs that were appointed by the government, which in some cases will b...
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The Government Surveillance Reform Act Would Rein in Some of the Worst Abuses of Section 702
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/government-surveillance-reform-act-would-rein-some-worst-abuses-section-702
November 7, 2023, 5:00 PM
With Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) set to expire at the end of the year, Congress is considering whether to reauthorize the law and if so, whether to make any necessary amendments to the invasive surveillance authority. 
While Section 702 was first sold as a tool necessary to stop foreign terrorists, it has since become clear that the government uses the communications it collects under this law as a domestic intelligence source. The program was intended to col...
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EFF to Ninth Circuit: Activists’ Personal Information Unconstitutionally Collected by DHS Must Be Expunged
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/eff-ninth-circuit-activists-personal-information-unconstitutionally-collected-dhs
November 6, 2023, 11:32 PM
EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a case that has serious implications for people’s First Amendment rights to engage in cross-border journalism and advocacy.
In 2019, the local San Diego affiliate for NBC News broke a shocking story: components of the federal government were conducting surveillance of journalists, lawyers, and activists thought to be associated with the so-called “migrant caravan” coming through Central America and Mexico.
The ...
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Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.14
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/digital-rights-updates-effector-3514
November 6, 2023, 8:36 PM
There's been lots of news and updates recently in the realm of digital rights, from EFF's recent investigation (and quiz!) into the student monitoring tool GoGuardian, to a recent victory in California regarding law enforcement's sharing of ALPR data outside of the state. It can feel overwhelming to stay up to date, but we've got you covered with our EFFector newsletter!
Version 35, issue 14 is out now — you can read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to get the next issues in your inbox ...
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Congress Shouldn't Limit The Public's Right To Fight Bad Patents
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/publics-right-fight-bad-patents-must-be-protected
November 6, 2023, 7:41 PM
The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property will debate a bill this week that would dramatically limit the public’s right to challenge bad granted patents. The PREVAIL Act, S. 2220 would bar most people from petitioning the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to revoke patents that never should have been granted in the first place. 
If the bill passes, it would be a giant gift to patent trolls, who will be able to greatly increase the extortionate toll they demand from small bu...
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EFF to Supreme Court: Reverse Dangerous Prior Restraint Ruling Upholding FBI Gag on X’s Surveillance Transparency Report
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-supreme-court-dangerous-prior-restraint-ruling-upholding-fbi-gag-xs-surveillance
November 1, 2023, 6:48 PM
Ninth Circuit Ruling Gives Government Unilateral Power to Suppress SpeechWASHINGTON, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the Supreme Court today to review and reverse a dangerous ruling allowing the Justice Department to censor X’s ability to publish information about government requests for the platform’s private user data, a decision that undermines at least a hundred years of First Amendment case law on when the government can bar private speech before it is published.
T...
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EFF to Copyright Office: Copyright Is Indeed a Hammer, But Don’t Be Too Hasty to Nail Generative AI
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/eff-copyright-office-copyright-indeed-hammer-dont-be-too-hasty-nail-generative-ai
October 31, 2023, 10:13 PM
Generative AI has sparked a great deal of hype, fear, and speculation. Courts are just beginning to analyze how traditional copyright laws apply to the creation and use of these technologies. Into this breach has stepped the United States Copyright Office with a call for comments on the interplay between copyright law and generative AI. 
Because copyright law carries draconian penalties and grants the power to swiftly take speech offline without judicial review, it is particularly important no...
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VICTORY! California Department of Justice Declares Out-of-State Sharing of License Plate Data Unlawful
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/victory-california-department-justice-declares-out-state-sharing-license-plate
October 31, 2023, 8:53 PM
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued a legal interpretation and guidance for law enforcement agencies around the state that confirms what privacy advocates have been saying for years: It is against the law for police to share data collected from license plate readers with out-of-state or federal agencies. This is an important victory for immigrants, abortion seekers, protesters, and everyone else who drives a car, as our movements expose intimate details about where we’ve been and ...
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You Wanna Break Up With Your Bank? The CFPB Wants to Help You Do It.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/you-wanna-break-your-bank-cfpb-wants-help-you-do-it
October 31, 2023, 1:14 PM
The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has proposed a new “Personal Financial Data Rights” rule that will force your bank to make it easy for you to extract your financial data so that you can use it to comparison shop for a better offer, and switch to another bank with just a few clicks.
This is a very good idea, provided it’s done right. Done wrong, it could be a nightmare. Below, we explain what the Bureau should do to avoid the nightmare and realize the dream.
We’ve all heard that �...
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Young People May Be The Biggest Target for Online Censorship and Surveillance—and the Strongest Weapon Against Them
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/young-people-may-be-biggest-target-online-censorship-and-surveillance-and
October 30, 2023, 7:54 PM
Over the last year, state and federal legislatures have tried to pass—and in some cases succeeded in passing—legislation that bars young people from digital spaces, censors what they are allowed to see and share online, and monitors and controls when and how they can do it. 
EFF and many other digital rights and civil liberties organizations have fought back against these bills, but the sheer number is alarming. At times it can be nearly overwhelming: there are bills in Texas, Utah, Arkansa...
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How GoGuardian Invades Student Privacy
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/how-goguardian-invades-student-privacy
October 30, 2023, 7:54 PM
This post was co-authored by legal intern Kate Prince.Jump to our detailed report about GoGuardian and student monitoring tools.
GoGuardian is a student monitoring tool that watches over twenty-seven million students across ten thousand schools, but what it does exactly, and how well it works, isn’t easy for students to know. To learn more about its functionality, accuracy, and impact on students, we filed dozens of public records requests and analyzed tens of thousands of results from the s...
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Passkeys and Privacy
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/passkeys-and-privacy
October 26, 2023, 8:48 PM
This is part 2 of our series on passkeys. See part 1 here.
In our previous article we described what a passkey is: a few hundred bytes of data stored in your password manager, security key, or elsewhere, which allows you to log in to a specific website without a password. The good news is that passkeys are quite well designed from a privacy point of view, even though they give a little more information to websites than a plain old password.
Cross-site Tracking
One of the most important attribute...
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What the !#@% is a Passkey?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/what-passkey
October 26, 2023, 8:03 PM
This is part 1 of our series on passkeys. Part 2, on privacy, is here.
A new login technique is becoming available in 2023: the passkey. The passkey promises to solve phishing and prevent password reuse. But lots of smart and security-oriented folks are confused about what exactly a passkey is. There’s a good reason for that. A passkey is in some sense one of two (or three) different things, depending on how it’s stored.
First off: is a passkey one of those little plastic things you stick in...
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Celebrating the Internet Freedom Movement at the EFF Awards
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/celebrating-internet-freedom-movement-eff-awards
October 26, 2023, 6:10 PM
“It would be easy to see the world as all doom and gloom when you're tackling these issues… But we do this work because we CAN fix the internet. Our dream is that everyone in this room will not only stand up for their rights but find ten other friends to stand up with you.” - EFF’s Executive Director, Cindy Cohn.
The reason EFF hosts our annual celebration, now known as the EFF Awards, is to celebrate those in the digital rights community who are pushing for privacy and innovation online...
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Access to Law Should Be Fully Open: Tell Congress Not to Be Fooled by the Pro Codes Act
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/access-law-should-be-fully-open-tell-congress-not-be-fooled-pro-codes-act
October 25, 2023, 5:07 PM
It’s Open Access Week in the United States, which means it’s a chance to celebrate the accomplishments of the Open Access movement—and reinforce the need to keep fighting. We’ve come a long way, with governments, universities, and research funders all successfully pressuring publishers to improve access to knowledge and finding ways to do it themselves. 
TAKE ACTION
Tell Congress: Access To Laws Should Be Fully Open
At EFF, we are especially proud of the work we have done helping our cl...
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What’s the Goal and How Do We Get There? Crucial Issues in Brazil’s Take on Saving the News from Big Tech
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/whats-goal-and-how-do-we-get-there-crucial-issues-brazils-take-saving-news-big
October 24, 2023, 2:57 PM
Amidst the global wave of countries looking at Big Tech revenues and how they relate to the growing news media crisis, many are asking whether and how tech companies should  compensate publishers for the journalism that circulates on their platforms. This has become another flash point in Brazil’s heated agenda regarding platform regulation.
Draft proposals setting a “remuneration obligation” for digital platforms started to pop up in the Brazilian congress after Australia adopted its ow...
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Internet Access Shouldn't Be a Bargaining Chip In Geopolitical Battles
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/internet-access-shouldnt-be-bargaining-chip-geopolitical-battles
October 20, 2023, 11:16 PM
We at EFF are horrified by the events transpiring in the Middle East: Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel last weekend and Israel’s ongoing retributive military attack and siege on Gaza. While we are not experts in military strategy or international diplomacy, we do have expertise with how human rights and civil liberties should be protected on the internet—even in times of conflict and war. 
That is why we are deeply concerned that a key part of Israel’s response has been to target...
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What to Do If You're Concerned About the 23andMe Breach
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/what-do-if-youre-concerned-about-23andme-breach
October 20, 2023, 4:53 PM
In early October, a bad actor claimed they were selling account details from the genetic testing service, 23andMe, which included alleged data of one million users of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and another 100,000 users of Chinese descent. By mid-October this expanded out to another four million more general accounts. The data includes display name, birth year, sex, and some details about genetic ancestry results, but no genetic data. There's nothing you can do if your data was already accessed, b...
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Privacy Advocates to TSA: Slow Down Plans for mDLs
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/privacy-advocates-tsa-slow-down-plans-mdls
October 18, 2023, 9:08 PM
A digital form of identification should have the same privacy and security protections as physical ones. More so, because the standards governing them are so new and untested. This is at the heart of comments EFF and others submitted recently. Why now? Well, in 2021 the DHS submitted a call for comments for mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs). Since then the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken up a process of making mDLs an acceptable identification at airports, and more states ...
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Adtech Surveillance and Government Surveillance are Often the Same Surveillance
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/adtech-surveillance-and-government-surveillance-are-often-same-surveillance
October 18, 2023, 4:44 PM
In the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States, the targeted advertising industry, fueled by personal information harvested from our cell phone applications, has run roughshod over our privacy. Worse, the boundaries between corporate surveillance and government surveillance are eroding. Unless your data is fully encrypted or stored locally by you, the government often can get it from a communications or computing company.
Traditionally, that required a court or...
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