Privacy & Governance

ICE Collecting DNA Samples

ICE collected nearly a million DNA samples last year.

Ninth Circuit Ruling Will Force Online Platforms That Host User Speech to Fight Lengthy and Costly Lawsuits Before They Are Dismissed Under Section 230

A federal appeals court just made it harder for online services, big and small, to get lawsuits over user speech dismissed early.…

ZKP’s Aren’t Age Verification Silver Bullets

Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online…

LLMs and Contextual Integrity

I have been thinking a lot about AI and integrity. Part of that is contextual integrity. I recently found two papers on the topic.…

Hacking Public Wi-Fi DNS to Steal Credentials

Criminals are hacking into public Wi-Fi devices—at hotels, conference centers, and so on—around the world and changing their DNS s…

Friday Squid Blogging: Searching for the Colossal Squid

Fascinating video about searching for life undersea. The video basically makes the point that our bright white searchlights are sc…

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking, signing books, and participating in panel discussi…

If the Markets Reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US Should Nationalize Them

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian. OpenAI, and then Anthropic, were each form…

Too Little, Too Late: Flock Admits Their Technology Needs Reforms

Flock Safety, the embattled vendor of mass surveillance technology, has rolled out a handful of new reforms intended to appease th…

Cybercriminals Turn to Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks

Separating AI’s Technological Problems from Its Capitalism Problems

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in Tech Policy Press. AI represents the first time we human…

Prompt Injections for Defense

This seems to work: Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, crypto…

AI Genie in the Wild

When I give talks about AI genies, I use this sort of example as a hypothetical. It’s happened. The story is from Australia. Someo…

AI for Military Support

Interesting empirical research: “Black Box Warfare: Human Judgment and Military Decision-Making in the Age of AI.” Abstract: How i…

Dismiss Church’s Trademark Lawsuit Against “Mormon Stories” Podcast, EFF Urges Court

Imagine if McDonald’s could use trademark law to control how you use the term “fast food.” Or if the Canadian government could sto…

Meta Must Stop Silencing Reproductive Health Information

Access to accurate information about reproductive and maternal health can be critical. But on Meta's platforms, simply talking abo…

Python Now Has a Post-Quantum Encryption Library

This is good: Post-quantum cryptography is now one pip-install away for the entire Python ecosystem. With funding from the Soverei…

Friday Squid Blogging: Arctic Bobtail Squid Video

Nice video of the Arctic bobtail squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news…

Russian hackers can steal emails without a click

ICE Is Buying Access to Credit Card Records

Through data brokers, ICE is buying the information you provided to open a credit card.

Adversarial Clothing Designed to Fool Facial Recognition Systems

There are many companies manufacturing adversarial clothing designed to confuse facial recognition systems. It’s a cool idea, but…

Vulnerabilities in Car Anti-Theft Device

This is disturbing: …a team of security researchers at UC San Diego, who found that a model of aftermarket car alarm known as the…

Tomorrow’s U.S. Senate Vote: Four Internet Bills, One Wrong Direction

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote this week on several censorious and privacy invasive bills: KOSA, the SCREEN Act, Youth AI…

Appeals Court Agrees with EFF that Building a Web Browser Doesn’t Violate the CFAA

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has endorsed a commonsense technical interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),…

Mobile Ad Software Encourages Location Data Sharing, EFF Report Finds

Developers Must Beware of Ad Libraries that Betray Users’ Privacy SAN FRANCISCO – Some software development kits (SDKs) provide…

Developers: Beware of Ad Libraries that Betray Your Users’ Location Privacy

Across mobile platforms, advertising companies provide developers with software development kits (SDKs) that make it easy to monet…

Iran Cyberattacks Against Minnesota Water Systems

Attribution is preliminary, and so far it seems no real damage. And it seems like this is a campaign that has targeted at least se…

Technology's Power in the Hands of the People

In the scorching heat of every Las Vegas summer, EFF joins thousands of hackers, makers, policy analysts, and activists for the wo…

Proofpoint Joins Google Unified Security Recommended Program to Help Organizations Defend Against Today’s Most Sophisticated Threats

Some Claude Chats Are Searchable on Google

And it’s personal information (alternate link): The exposed data includes an AI-powered therapy app that someone appears to have v…