Privacy & Governance

Why AI Needs a “Genie Coefficient”

This essay was written with Barath Raghavan, and originally appeared in The Guardian. Major benchmarks measure what AI can do. Non…

Hundreds of Drone-as-First-Responder Programs Could Soon Be Launched Across the Country

Police departments across the country are lining up to launch drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs, and hundreds have cleared a…

New warnings that Russian operatives are targeting the emails of US nuclear scientists and defense contractors

Russian Espionage Group Exploited Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal Mail and 2FA Codes

US and allies say Russian hackers stole emails without social engineering

End-to-End Encryption and “Going Dark”

New paper: “Encryption and Globalization 15 Years Later: End-to-End Encryption and the Third Round of the ‘Going Dark’ Debate“: Ab…

The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

Legal intern Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this post. The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v.…

If you pay a hacker’s ransom, chances are that they’ll come back for more

First-Person Identity Theft Story

Harrowing story of an identity theft victim. Yes, the person made a mistake—they gave the scammer a two-factor authentication code…

New EU Court of Justice Ruling on Platform Liability Could Cause Collateral Damage to Freedom of Expression

Intermediary liability laws around the world recognize that social media platforms, search engines, and other online service provi…

Proofpoint Research Finds 65% of Organizations Affected by Ransomware Say AI Made Attacks More Effective

MIT to Become Hotbed of AI Video Surveillance

It’s a lot: According to information obtained by The Tech, MIT is spending over $3 million on more than 500 AI surveillance camera…

Protect Your Privacy with California's DROP Tool

Are you a California resident? Then we've got exciting news for you: there's a tool just for you that lets you take a single, rela…

An Explosion of Surveillance Towers is Coming to U.S. Borders, Costing Over $1 Billion

A new report from the Government Accounting Office reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to nearly triple t…

On Flock License Plate Tracking Cameras

A recent story of a writer who was mistakenly identified, tracked, and arrested using data from Flock cameras has gone viral. The…

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Washing Up on Cape Cod Beach

Lots of articles about this. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I have…

Victory! Flock Ends Rollout of Audio “Distress Detection” of Human Voices

Reversing course, Flock Safety—the surveillance technology vendor most known for its extensive network of automated license plate…

Your Vision. Your Legacy. Your Future.

This month, we celebrate 36 years of EFF and a mission that is bigger than any one of us. Thanks to EFF, communities around the wo…

How the Watch Dogs Video Game Series Mirrored and Predicted Real-World Digital Rights Issues

When Ubisoft's Watch Dogs 2 was released in 2016, it was a headtrip for those of us working on digital-rights issues in the Bay Ar…

Details of Alan Turing’s Voice Encryption System

Really interesting piece of cryptographic history: In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the “Bayley pap…

“Stealth crawlers” are not a threat to the open web. Bills targeting them would be.

There’s a new boogeyman in the battles over AI: so-called “stealth crawlers.” We’ll admit it—the term “stealth crawlers” sound qui…

Protecting Privacy in an AI Era

Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effec…

EFF and ARTICLE 19 Submission to the European Commission on the DSA Trusted Flagger Guidelines

EFF and ARTICLE 19 have submitted joint comments to the European Commission on draft guidelines for the Digital Services Act’s tru…

California Steps Back From Dangerous Expansion of its Age-Gating Law

The California legislature has stepped back from a plan that would have expanded its age-gating law, removing language that could…

Most Smart Watches, Rings, and Bands Lack Basic Transparency Reports and Key Privacy Features

Oura Rings, Garmin GPS fitness watches, Apple Watches, Whoop bands—every year, more and more tech devices are promising to monitor…

🚫 Don't Let Congress Age-Gate the Internet | EFFector 38.13

The effort to age gate the internet is back in Washington—and now it has a new name. Recently passed by the House of Representativ…

A Video Screen That Is Also a Camera

Amazing: Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, however, managed to create a new type of pixel that can simultaneously do bot…

European Court: Apple Can Not Shirk Off its Interoperability Requirements

One of the best bulwarks against monopoly is interoperability—that is making a new product or service work with an existing produc…

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking (virtually) at the Policy-Relevant Privacy Research…

Don’t Repeat NY’s 3D Printing Blunder

This year the state of New York had the dubious honor of being the first to pass a controversial provision to mandate all 3D print…