EFF’s 2024 In/Out List
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/effs-2024-inout-list
January 18, 2024, 3:41 PM
Since EFF was formed in 1990, we’ve been working hard to protect digital rights for all. And as each year passes, we’ve come to understand the challenges and opportunities a little better, as well as what we’re not willing to accept. 
Accordingly, here’s what we’d like to see a lot more of, and a lot less of, in 2024.IN1. Affordable and future-proof internet access for all
EFF has long advocated for affordable, accessible, and future-proof internet access for all. We cannot accept a f...
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FTC Bars X-Mode from Selling Sensitive Location Data
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/ftc-bars-x-mode-selling-sensitive-location-data
January 11, 2024, 9:54 PM
Phone app location data brokers are a growing menace to our privacy and safety. All you did was click a box while downloading an app. Now the app tracks your every move and sends it to a broker, which then sells your location data to the highest bidder, from advertisers to police.
So it is welcome news that the Federal Trade Commission has brought a successful enforcement action against X-Mode Social (and its successor Outlogic).
The FTC’s complaint illustrates the dangers created by this indu...
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EFF Unveils Its New Street Level Surveillance Hub
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-unveils-its-new-street-level-surveillance-hub
January 10, 2024, 6:56 PM
The Updated and Expanded Hub Sheds New Light on the Digital Surveillance Dragnet that Law Enforcement Deploys Against EveryoneSAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ privacy. 
The hub has new or updated pages on automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn...
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Privacy Badger Puts You in Control of Widgets
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-you-control-widgets
January 10, 2024, 2:34 PM
The latest version of Privacy Badger 1 replaces embedded tweets with click-to-activate placeholders. This is part of Privacy Badger's widget replacement feature, where certain potentially useful widgets are blocked and then replaced with placeholders. This protects privacy by default while letting you restore the original widget whenever you want it or need it for the page to function.
Websites often include external elements such as social media buttons, comments sections, and video players. ...
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UAE Confirms Trial Against 84 Detainees; Ahmed Mansoor Suspected Among Them
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/uae-confirms-trial-against-84-detainees-ahmed-mansoor-suspected-among-them
January 10, 2024, 10:51 AM
The UAE confirmed this week that it has placed 84 detainees on trial, on charges of “establishing another secret organization for the purpose of committing acts of violence and terrorism on state territory.” Suspected to be among those facing trial is award-winning human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, also known as the “the million dollar dissident,” as he was once the target of exploits that exposed major security flaws in Apple’s iOS operating system—the kind of “zero-day” vuln...
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Craig Newmark Philanthropies – Celebrating 30 Years of Support for Digital Rights
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/craig-newmark-philanthropies-celebrating-30-years-support-digital-rights
January 9, 2024, 12:16 AM
EFF has been awarded a new $200,000 grant from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to strengthen our cybersecurity work in 2024. We are especially grateful this year, as it marks 30 years of donations from Craig Newmark, who joined as an EFF member just three years after our founding and four years before he launched the popular website craigslist.  
Over the past several years, grants from Craig Newmark Philanthropies have focused on supporting trustworthy journalism to defend our democracy and hold...
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EFF Urges Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Find Keyword Search Warrant Unconstitutional
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-urges-pennsylvania-supreme-court-find-keyword-search-warrant-unconstitutional
January 5, 2024, 7:21 PM
These Dragnet Searches Violate the Privacy of Millions of Americans SAN FRANCISCO—Keyword warrants that let police indiscriminately sift through search engine databases are unconstitutional dragnets that target free speech, lack particularity and probable cause, and violate the privacy of countless innocent people, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other organizations argued in a brief filed today to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. 
Everyone deserves to search online without pol...
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AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/ai-watermarking-wont-curb-disinformation
January 5, 2024, 6:46 PM
Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly arguing with bots online, or believing what a fake image purports to show. One common proposal is that big companies should incorporate watermarks into the outputs of their AIs. For instance, this could involve taking an image and subtly changing many pixels...
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EFF Asks Court to Uphold Federal Law That Protects Online Video Viewers’ Privacy and Free Expression
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/eff-asks-court-uphold-federal-law-protects-online-video-viewers-privacy-and-free
January 4, 2024, 6:41 PM
As millions of internet users watch videos online for news and entertainment, it is essential to uphold a federal privacy law that protects against the disclosure of everyone’s viewing history, EFF argued in court last month.
For decades, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) has safeguarded people’s viewing habits by generally requiring services that offer videos to the public to get their customers’ written consent before disclosing that information to the government or a private party...
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Victory! Police Drone Footage is Not Categorically Exempt From California’s Public Records Law
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/victory-police-drone-footage-not-categorically-exempt-californias-public-records
January 3, 2024, 6:20 PM
Video footage captured by police drones sent in response to 911 calls cannot be kept entirely secret from the public, a California appellate court ruled last week.
The decision by the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District came after a journalist sought access to videos created by Chula Vista Police Department’s “Drones as First Responders” (DFR) program. The police department is the first law enforcement agency in the country to use drones to respond to emergency calls, and se...
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Digital Rights for LGBTQ+ People: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/digital-rights-lgbtq-people-2023-review
January 1, 2024, 1:16 PM
An increase in anti-LGBTQ+ intolerance is impacting individuals and communities both online and offline across the globe. Throughout 2023, several countries sought to pass explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives restricting freedom of expression and privacy. This fuels offline intolerance against LGBTQ+ people, and forces them to self-censor their online expression to avoid being profiled, harassed, doxxed, or criminally prosecuted. 
One growing threat to LGBTQ+ people is data surveillance. Across t...
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Year In Review: Google’s Corporate Paternalism in The Browser
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-googles-corporate-paternalism-browser
January 1, 2024, 1:15 PM
It’s a big year for the oozing creep of corporate paternalism and ad-tracking technology online. Google and its subsidiary companies have tightened their grips on the throat of internet innovation, all while employing the now familiar tactic of marketing these things as beneficial for users. Here we’ll review the most significant changes this year, all emphasizing the point that browser privacy tools (like Privacy Badger) are more important than ever.
Manifest V2 to Manifest V3: Final Death ...
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How To Fight Bad Patents: 2023 Year In Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/how-fight-bad-patents-2023-year-review
December 31, 2023, 2:14 PM
At EFF, we believe that all the rights we have in the offline world–to speak freely, create culture, play games, build things and do business–must hold up in the digital world, as well. 
EFF’s longstanding project of fighting for a more balanced, just patent system has always borne free expression in mind. And patent trolls, who simply use intellectual property (IP) rights to extract money from others, continue to be a barrier to people who want to freely innovate, or even just use techno...
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Taking Back the Web with Decentralization: 2023 in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/taking-back-web-decentralization-2023-review
December 31, 2023, 2:12 PM
When a system becomes too tightly-controlled and centralized, the people being squeezed tend to push back to reclaim their lost autonomy. The internet is no exception. While the internet began as a loose affiliation of universities and government bodies, that emergent digital commons has been increasingly privatized and consolidated into a handful of walled gardens. Their names are too often made synonymous with the internet, as they fight for the data and eyeballs of their users.
In the past fe...
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States Attack Young People’s Constitutional Right to Use Social Media: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/states-attack-young-peoples-constitutional-right-use-social-media-2023-year-review
December 30, 2023, 3:58 PM
Legislatures in more than half of the country targeted young people’s use of social media this year, with many of the proposals blocking adults’ ability to access the same sites. State representatives introduced dozens of bills that would limit young people’s use of some of the most popular sites and apps, either by requiring the companies to introduce or amend their features or data usage for young users, or by forcing those users to get permission from parents, and in some cases, share t...
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Fighting European Threats to Encryption: 2023 Year in Review 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/fighting-european-threats-encryption-2023-year-review
December 30, 2023, 2:42 PM
Private communication is a fundamental human right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. Yet throughout 2023, politicians across Europe attempted to undermine encryption, seeking to access and scan our private messages and pictures. 
But we pushed back in the EU, and so far, we’ve succeeded. EFF spent this year fighting hard against an EU proposal (text) that, if it became law, would have been a disaster for online privacy in the EU and thr...
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First, Let’s Talk About Consumer Privacy: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/first-lets-talk-about-consumer-privacy-2023-year-review
December 29, 2023, 7:53 PM
Whatever online harms you want to alleviate on the internet today, you can do it better—with a broader impact—if you enact strong consumer data privacy legislation first. That is a grounding principle that has informed much of EFF’s consumer protection work in 2023.
While consumer privacy will not solve every problem, it is superior to many other proposals that attempt to address issues like child mental health or foreign government surveillance. That is true for two reasons: well written ...
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Fighting For Your Digital Rights Across the Country: Year in Review 2023
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/fighting-your-digital-rights-across-country-year-review-2023
December 29, 2023, 7:42 PM
EFF works every year to improve policy in ways that protect your digital rights in states across the country. Thanks to the messages of hundreds of EFF members across the country, we've spoken up for digital rights this year from Sacramento to Augusta.
Much of EFF's state legislative work has, historically, been in our home state of California—also often the most active state on digital civil liberties issues. This year, the Golden State passed several laws that strengthen consumer digital rig...
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In the Trenches of Broadband Policy: 2023 Year In Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/trenches-broadband-policy-2023-year-review
December 29, 2023, 7:31 PM
EFF has long advocated for affordable, accessible, future-proof internet access for all. Nearly 80% of Americans already consider internet access to be as essential as water and electricity, so as our work, health services, education, entertainment, social lives, etc. increasingly have an online component, we cannot accept a future where the quality of your internet access—and so the quality of your connection to these crucial facets of your life—is determined by geographic, socioeconomic, o...
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Protecting Students from Faulty Software and Legislation: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/protecting-students-faulty-software-and-legislation-2023-year-review
December 28, 2023, 4:25 PM
Lawmakers, schools districts, educational technology companies and others keep rolling out legislation and software that threatens students’ privacy, free speech, and access to social media, in the name of “protecting” children. At EFF, we fought back against this overreach and demand accountability and transparency.
Bad bills and invasive monitoring systems, though sometimes well-meaning, hurt students rather than protect them from the perceived dangers of the internet and social media....
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Kids Online Safety Shouldn’t Require Massive Online Censorship and Surveillance: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/kids-online-safety-shouldnt-require-massive-online-censorship-and-surveillance
December 28, 2023, 4:25 PM
There’s been plenty of bad news regarding federal legislation in 2023. For starters, Congress has failed to pass meaningful comprehensive data privacy reforms. Instead, legislators have spent an enormous amount of energy pushing dangerous legislation that’s intended to limit young people’s use of some of the most popular sites and apps, all under the guise of protecting kids. Unfortunately, many of these bills would run roughshod over the rights of young people and adults in the process. W...
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The Atlas of Surveillance Hits Major Milestones: 2023 in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/atlas-surveillance-hits-major-milestones-2023-review
December 28, 2023, 4:24 PM
"The EFF are relentless."
That's what a New York Police Department lieutenant wrote on LinkedIn after someone sent him a link to the Atlas of Surveillance, EFF's moonshot effort to document which U.S. law enforcement agencies are using which technologies, including drones, automated license plate readers and face recognition. Of course, the lieutenant then went on to attack us with unsubstantiated accusations of misinformation — but we take it all as a compliment.
If you haven't checked out ...
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International Threats to Freedom of Expression: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/international-threats-freedom-expression-2023-year-review
December 27, 2023, 6:36 PM
2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They surfaced in bills and laws around the world that explicitly restrict LGBTQ+ freedom of expression and privacy. And past threats—and acts—were ignored by the United Nations, as the UN’s Secretary-General announced it would grant Saudi Arabia host ...
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Equitable Access to the Law Got Stronger: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/equitable-access-law-got-stronger-year
December 27, 2023, 6:32 PM
It seems like a no-brainer that everyone should be able to read, copy, and share the laws we all must follow, but few things are simple in the internet age. Public.Resource.Org’s victory at the D.C. Circuit appeals court in September, in which the court ruled that non-commercial copying of codes and standards that have been incorporated into the law is not copyright infringement, was ten years in the making.The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), National Fire Protection Associa...
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Just a Little Does a Whole Lot
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/just-little-does-whole-lot
December 27, 2023, 5:51 PM
You might’ve heard that most of EFF’s funding comes from regular people’s modest donations—we’re proud of that. But did you know that EFF members who donate $10 or less each month raised over $400,000 for digital rights this year?
That covers multiple staff members who work in the courts, run advocacy campaigns, and build privacy-enhancing free tech. It might seem like a small gift from you, but it's a huge help to EFF. Truly, just a little does a whole lot. You can be a Sustaining Don...
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Busy Year of Free Speech and Tech Cases: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/2023-year-review-us-supreme-courts-busy-year-free-speech-and-tech-cases" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/2023-year-review-us-supreme-courts-busy-year-free-speech-and-tech-cases
December 27, 2023, 1:40 PM
The U.S. Supreme Court has taken an unusually active interest in internet free speech issues. EFF participated as amicus in a whopping nine cases before the court this year. The court decided four of those cases, and decisions in the remaining five cases will be published in 2024.   
Of the four cases decided this year, the results are a mixed bag. The court showed restraint and respect for free speech rights when considering whether social media platforms should be liable for ISIS content, ...
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EFF Membership: 2023 Year In Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/eff-membership-2023-year-review
December 26, 2023, 3:25 PM
Throughout the many years that EFF has been around, our goal has remained consistent: creating a future where you have your rights when you go online, and one where they are enhanced by new technologies. But our goal isn't the only part of EFF that has remained consistent: for decades, the digital freedom supporters that lift our organization have been stalwart allies that help ensure we can continue fighting for privacy, free expression, and innovation online.
It's because of these supporters t...
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Surveillance Self-Defense: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/surveillance-self-defense-2023-year-review
December 26, 2023, 3:20 PM
It's been a big year for Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD), our repository of self-help resources for helping better protect you and your friends from online spying. We've done a number of updates and tackled a few new emerging topics with blog posts.
Fighting for digital security and privacy rights is important, but sometimes we all just need to know what steps we can take to minimize spying, and when steps aren't possible, explaining how things work to help keep you safe. To do this, we break S...
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Recent Surveillance Revelations, Enduring Latin American Issues: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/recent-surveillance-revelations-enduring-latin-american-issues-2023-year-review
December 25, 2023, 5:39 PM
 The challenges in ensuring strong privacy safeguards, proper oversight of surveillance powers, and effective remedy for those arbitrarily affected continued during 2023 in Latin America. Let’s take a few, non-exhaustive, examples.
We saw a scandal unveiling that Brazilian Intelligence agents monitored movements of politicians, journalists, lawyers, police officers, and judges. In Perú, leaked documents indicated negotiations between the government and an U.S. vendor of spying technologies. ...
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The Last Mile of Encrypting the Web: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-last-mile-encrypting-web
December 25, 2023, 5:21 PM
At the start of 2023, we sunsetted the HTTPS Everywhere web extension. It encrypted browser communications with websites and made sure users benefited from the protection of HTTPS wherever possible. HTTPS Everywhere ended because all major browsers now offer the functionality to make HTTPS the default. This is due to the grand efforts of the many technologists and advocates involved with Let’s Encrypt, HTTPS Everywhere, and Certbot over the last 10 years.
The immense impact of this “Encrypt ...
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Protecting Encryption And Privacy In The US: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/protecting-encryption-and-privacy-us-2023-year-review
December 24, 2023, 5:30 PM
EFF believes you have the right to have a private conversation–in the physical world, and in the digital world. The best technology to protect that right is end-to-end encryption. 
Governments around the world are working hard to monitor online conversations, far beyond the bounds of traditional targeted law enforcement. 2023 has been a year of unprecedented threats to encryption and privacy. 
In the US, three Senate bills were introduced that, in our view, would discourage, weaken, or creat...
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Corporate Spy Tech and Inequality: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/corporate-spy-tech-and-inequality-2023-year-review
December 24, 2023, 5:30 PM
Our personal data and the ways private companies harvest and monetize it plays an increasingly powerful role in modern life. Throughout 2023, corporations have continued to collect our personal data, sell it to governments, use it to reach inferences about us, and exacerbate existing structural inequalities across society. 
EFF is fighting back. Earlier this year, we filed comments with the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration addressing the ways that corporate data s...
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Sketchy and Dangerous Android Children’s Tablets and TV Set-Top Boxes: 2023 in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/sketchy-and-dangerous-android-childrens-tablets-and-tv-set-top-boxes-2023-review
December 23, 2023, 9:29 PM
You may want to save your receipts if you gifted any low-end Android TV set-top boxes or children's tablets to a friend or loved one this holiday season. In a series of investigations this year, EFF researchers confirmed the existence of dangerous malware on set-top boxes manufactured by AllWinner and RockChip, and discovered sketchyware on a tablet marketed for kids from the manufacturer Dragon Touch. 
Though more reputable Android devices are available for watching TV and keeping the little o...
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Artificial Intelligence and Policing: Year in Review 2023
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/artificial-intelligence-and-policing-year-review-2023
December 23, 2023, 5:33 PM
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision making–regardless of what you call it, and there is hot debate over that, this technology has been touted as a supposed threat to humanity, the future of work, as well as the hot new money-making doohickey. But one thing is for certain, with the amount of data required to input into these systems, law enforcement are seeing major opportunities, and our civil liberties will suffer the consequences. In one sense, all of the informat...
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Electronic Frontier Alliance Comes Back Strong: 2023 in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/electronic-frontier-alliance-comes-back-strong-2023-review
December 22, 2023, 7:03 PM
The Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) is a loose network of local groups fighting for digital rights in the United States, chaired by EFF. Members’ efforts have been recovering from the limitations put on local organizing caused by the pandemic. More EFA members have been holding in-person workshops and meet-ups that help cement the relationships needed to do their work.
If you’re a member of a local or state group in the United States that fights for digital rights and might want to join, ...
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EFF Continues Fight Against Unconstitutional Geofence and Keyword Search Warrants: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/eff-continues-fight-against-unconstitutional-geofence-and-keyword-search-warrants
December 22, 2023, 6:30 PM
EFF continues to fight back against high-tech general warrants that compel companies to search broad swaths of users’ personal data. In 2023, we saw victory and setbacks in a pair of criminal cases that challenged the constitutionality of geofence and keyword searches. 
These types of warrants—mostly directed at Google—cast a dragnet that require a provider to search its entire reserve of user data to either identify everyone in a particular area (geofence) or everyone who has searched f...
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Stupid Patent of the Month: Selfie Contests
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/stupid-patent-month-selfie-contests
December 21, 2023, 9:17 PM
Patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent. Too often, they end up being a way to try to claim “ownership” of what should be basic building blocks of human activity, culture, and knowledge. This is especially true of software patents, an area EFF has been speaking out about for more than 20 years now. 
This month’s Stupid Patent, No. 8,655,715, continues the tradition of trying to use software language to capture a monopoly on a basic human cultural activity–in this case, contest...
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EFF Urges Supreme Court to Set Standard for How Government Can and Can’t Talk to Social Media Sites About Censoring Users’ Posts
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-urges-supreme-court-set-standard-how-government-can-and-cant-talk-social-media
December 21, 2023, 5:01 PM
First Amendment Bars Coercive Censorship Demands But Some Communications Are PermissibleWASHINGTON, DC—The Supreme Court should clarify standards for determining if the government permissibly advised or convinced social media companies to censor content from 2020 to 2022, or impermissibly coerced or threatened sites in violation of the First Amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a brief filed today. 
“Government co-option of content moderation systems is a serious thre...
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EFF Has a Guiding Star 🌠
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/yec23
December 21, 2023, 4:14 PM
Do you ever look at something once and then get targeted ads? Have you ever been exposed in some company’s data breach? Have you ever heard a lawmaker push restrictions on technology that they don’t even understand?
To live in the modern world is to interact with technology in ways that are wonderful—and others that are an absolute pain in the butt. It's not fair to trade in your dignity or safety, and that’s why people like you stand with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Will you kee...
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The Great Interoperability Convergence: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/great-interoperability-convergence-2023-year-review
December 21, 2023, 4:08 PM
It’s easy to feel hopeless about the collapse of the tech sector into a group 0f monopolistic silos that harvest and exploit our data, hold our communities hostage, gouge us on prices, and steal our wages.
But all over the world and across different government departments, policymakers are converging on a set of muscular, effective solutions to Big Tech dominance.
This convergence spans financial regulators and consumer protection agencies; it’s emerging in Europe, the USA, and the UK. It�...
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Surveillance and the U.S.-Mexico Border: 2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/surveillance-and-us-mexico-border-2023-year-review
December 21, 2023, 4:06 PM
The U.S.-Mexico border continues to be one of the most politicized spaces in the country, with leaders in both political parties supporting massive spending on border security, including technological solutions such as the so-called "virtual wall." We spent the year documenting surveillance technologies at the border and the impacts on civil liberties and human rights of those who live in the borderlands.
In early 2023, EFF staff completed the last of three trips to the U.S.-Mexico border, where...
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2023 Year in Review
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/2023-year-review
December 21, 2023, 4:00 PM
At the end of every year, we look back at the last 12 months and evaluate what has changed for the better (and worse) for digital rights.  While we can be frustrated—hello ongoing attacks on encryption—overall it's always an exhilarating reminder of just how far we've come since EFF was founded over 33 years ago. Just the scale alone it's breathtaking. Digital rights started as a niche, future-focused issue that we would struggle to explain to nontechnical people; now it's deeply embedded i...
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FTC’s Rite Aid Ruling Rightly Renews Scrutiny of Face Recognition
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/ftcs-rite-aid-ruling-rightly-renews-scrutiny-face-recognition
December 20, 2023, 10:10 PM
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced action against the pharmacy chain Rite Aid for its use of face recognition technology in hundreds of stores. The regulator found that Rite Aid deployed a massive, error-riddled surveillance program, chose vendors that could not properly safeguard the personal data the chain hoarded, and attempted to keep it all under wraps. Under a proposed settlement, Rite Aid can't operate a face recognition system in any of its stores for five years.
EFF advoc...
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Victory: Utah Supreme Court Upholds Right to Refuse to Tell Cops Your Passcode
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/victory-utah-supreme-court-upholds-right-refuse-tell-cops-your-passcode
December 19, 2023, 12:44 AM
Last week, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors violated a defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination when they presented testimony about his refusal to give police the passcode to his cell phone. In State v. Valdez, the court found that verbally telling police a passcode is “testimonial” under the Fifth Amendment, and that the so-called foregone conclusion exception does not apply to “ordinary testimony” like this. This closely tracks arguments in the am...
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Does Less Consumer Tracking Lead to Less Fraud?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/does-less-consumer-tracking-lead-less-fraud
December 18, 2023, 7:59 PM
Here’s another reason to block digital surveillance: it might reduce financial fraud.  That’s the upshot of a small but promising study published as a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, “Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud. 
Authors Bo Bian, Michaela Pagel and Huan Tang investigated the relationship between the rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and reports of consumer financial fraud. Many apps can track users across apps or websites owned...
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Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.16
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/digital-rights-updates-effector-3516
December 18, 2023, 7:07 PM
Have no fear, it's the final EFFector of the year! Be the digital freedom expert for your family and friends during the holidays by catching up on the latest online rights issues with EFFector 35.16. This issue of our newsletter covers topics including: the surveillance one could be gifting another with smart speakers and other connected gadgets, how to use various Android safety tools to secure your kids Android device, and a victory announcement—Montana's TikTok ban was ruled unconstitutiona...
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EFF Joins Forces with 20+ Organizations in the Coalition #MigrarSinVigilancia
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/eff-joins-forces-20-organizations-coalition-migrarsinvigilancia
December 18, 2023, 3:12 PM
Today, EFF joins more than 25 civil society organizations to launch the Coalition #MigrarSinVigilancia ("To Migrate Without Surveillance"). The Latin American coalition’s aim is to oppose arbitrary and indiscriminate surveillance affecting migrants across the region, and to push for the protection of human rights by safeguarding migrants' privacy and personal data.
On this International Migrants Day (December 18), we join forces with a key group of digital rights and frontline humanitarian org...
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The Surveillance Showdown That Fizzled
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/surveillance-showdown-fizzled
December 15, 2023, 8:08 PM
Like the weather rapidly getting colder outside, the fight over renewing, reforming, or sunsetting the mass surveillance power of Section 702 has been put on ice until spring.
In the last week of legislative business before the winter break, Congress was scheduled to consider two very different proposals: H.R. 6570, the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act in House Judiciary Committee (HJC); and H.R. 6611, the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2023 in the House Permanent Se...
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Internet Archive Files Appeal Brief Defending Libraries and Digital Lending From Big Publishers’ Legal Attack
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-files-appeal-brief-defending-libraries-and-digital-lending-big
December 15, 2023, 5:30 PM
The Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Program is a Lawful Fair Use that Preserves Traditional Library Lending in the Digital WorldSAN FRANCISCO—A cartel of major publishing companies must not be allowed to criminalize fair-use library lending, the Internet Archive argued in an appellate brief filed today. 
The Internet Archive is a San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) non-profit library which preserves and provides access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form. The brief filed in...
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Is This the End of Geofence Warrants?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants
December 14, 2023, 12:46 AM
Google announced this week that it will be making several important changes to the way it handles users’ “Location History” data. These changes would appear to make it much more difficult—if not impossible—for Google to provide mass location data in response to a geofence warrant, a change we’ve been asking Google to implement for years.
Geofence warrants require a provider—almost always Google—to search its entire reserve of user location data to identify all users or devices ...
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