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Black Lives Matter, Online and in the Streets: Statement from EFF in the Wake of the Police Killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd Black lives matter on the streets. Black lives matter on the Internet.  EFF stands with the communities mourning the victims of police homicide. We stand with the protesters who are plowed down by patrol cars. We stand with the journalists placed in handcuffs or fired upon while reporting these atrocities. And we stand with all those using their cameras, phones and digital tools to make sure we cannot turn away from the truth. There is no doubt that we are in deeply troubled times. From lockdown in our homes, many of us are watching with heart-stopping horror as the cellphone footage of extreme police violence washes down our feeds. Others feel compelled to join the protests in person and to bear witness and document it for the rest of us over the digital networks that connect us all. The president is sowing chaos through incendiary, authoritaria

Immunity Passports Are a Threat to Our Privacy and Information Security With states beginning to ease shelter-in-place restrictions, the conversation on COVID-19 has turned to questions of when and how we can return to work, take kids to school, or plan air travel. Several countries and U.S. states, including the UK, Italy, Chile, Germany, and California , have expressed interest in so-called “immunity passports”—a system of requiring people to present supposed proof of immunity to COVID-19 in order to access public spaces, work sites, airports, schools, or other venues. In many proposed schemes, this proof would be stored in a digital token on a phone. Immunity passports would threaten our privacy and information security, and would be a significant step toward a system of national digital identification that can be used to collect and store our personal information and track our location. Immunity passports are purportedly intended to help combat the spread of COVID-19. But

Watch EFF Cybersecurity Director Eva Galperin's TED Talk About Stalkerware Stalkers and abusive partners want access to your device for the same reason governments and advertisers do: because “f ull access to a person's phone is the next best thing to full access to a person's mind,” as EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin explains in her TED talk on “stalkerware” and her efforts to end the abuse this malicious software enables. %3Ciframe%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FxzWFrHHTrs8%3Fautoplay%3D1%26mute%3D1%22%20allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B%20autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%3B%20gyroscope%3B%20picture-in-picture%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20width%3D%22560%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy info. This embed will serve content from youtube.com After years of studying how nation-state actors use advanced malware to spy on journalists, activists, lawyers, scientists, and others who practice dissent a

Trump Executive Order Misreads Key Law Promoting Free Expression Online and Violates the First Amendment This post based its initial analysis on a draft Executive Order. It has been updated to reflect the final order, available here . President Trump’s Executive Order targeting social media companies is an assault on free expression online and a transparent attempt to retaliate against Twitter for its decision to curate (well, really just to fact-check) his posts and deter everyone else from taking similar steps.  The good news is that, assuming the final order looks like the draft we reviewed on Wednesday, it won’t survive judicial scrutiny. To see why, let’s take a deeper look at its incorrect reading of Section 230  ( 47 U.S.C. § 230 ) and how the order violates the First Amendment. The Executive Order’s Error-Filled Reading of Section 230 The main thrust of the order is to attack Section 230, the law that underlies the structure of our modern Internet and allows online ser

EFF to Court: Broadband Privacy Law Passes First Amendment Muster When it comes to surveillance of our online lives, Internet service providers (ISPs) are some of the worst offenders. Last year, the state of Maine passed a law targeted at the harms ISPs do to their customers when they use and sell their personal information. Now that law is under attack from a group of ISPs who claim it violates their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit raises a number of issues—including free speech and data privacy—that are crucial to maintaining an open Internet. So EFF filed an amicus brief arguing that Maine’s law does not violate the First Amendment. The brief explains that the law’s requirement that ISPs obtain their customers’ opt-in consent before using or disclosing their personal information is narrowly tailored to the state’s substantial interests in protecting ISP customers’ data privacy, free speech, and information security. The case is called ACA Connects v. Frey . We were join

How Big Tech Monopolies Distort Our Public Discourse Long before the pandemic crisis, there was widespread concern over the impact that tech was having on the quality of our discourse, from disinformation campaigns to influence campaigns to polarization. It's true that the way we talk to each other and about the world has changed, both in form (thanks to the migration of discourse to online platforms) and in kind, whether that's the rise of nonverbal elements in our written discourse (emojis, memes, ASCII art and emoticons) or the kinds of online harassment and brigading campaigns that have grown with the Internet . A common explanation for the change in our discourse is that the biggest tech platforms use surveillance, data-collection, and machine learning to manipulate us, either to increase "engagement" (and thus pageviews and thus advertising revenues) or to persuade us of things that aren't true, for example, to convince us to buy something we don'

Two Federal COVID-19 Privacy Bills: A Good Start and a Misstep COVID-19, and containment efforts that rely on personal data, are shining a spotlight on a longstanding problem: our nation’s lack of sufficient laws to protect data privacy. Two bills before Congress attempt to solve this problem as to COVID-19 data. One is a good start that needs improvements. The other is a misstep that EFF strongly opposes. The Public Health Emergency Privacy Act (PHEPA) was introduced by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Mark Warner, and U.S. Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Suzan DelBene. It has some major elements that privacy advocates have called for. It requires opt-in consent and data minimization, and limits data disclosures to government. It has a strong private right of action and does not preempt state laws. And it bars denial of voting rights to people who decline to opt-in to tracking programs. But it does not protect such people from discrimination in access to employment, publ

A Plan to Pay Artists, Encourage Competition, and Promote Free Expression As Congress gets ready for yet another hearing on copyright and music, we’d like to suggest that rather than more “fact-finding,” where the facts are inevitably skewed toward the views of the finder, our legislators start focusing on a concrete solution that builds on and learns from decades of copyright policy: blanket licensing. It will need an update to make it work for the Internet age, but as complicated as that will be, it has the profound benefit of adhering to copyright’s real purpose: spurring creativity and innovation. And it's far better than the status quo, where audiences and musicians alike are collateral damage in an endless war between giant tech companies and giant entertainment companies. We all have lots of experience with blanket licensing, though we may not realize it. Nightclubs, restaurants, cafes, and radio stations all have their own soundtracks: the music that helps define the e

The House Is Voting on Section 215, Again. The Bill Still Needs More Reform Later this week, the House of Representatives is once again voting on whether or not to extend the authorities in Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act—a surveillance law  with a rich history of government overreach and abuse , along with two other PATRIOT Act provisions, and possibly, an amendment. Congress considered several bills to reauthorize and reform Section 215 earlier this year, but the law expired on March 15 without renewal. In the days before that deadline, the House of Representatives passed the  USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act , without committee markup or floor amendments, which would have extended Section 215 for three more years, along with some modest reforms. However, the Senate failed to reach an agreement on the bill, allowing the authorities to expire. As we have written before , if Congress can’t agree on real reforms to these problematic laws, they should  remain expire d . A savings cla