EFFector Volume 37, Issue 11

🤐 This Censorship Law Turns Parents Into Content Cops

Welcome to an all-new EFFector, your regular digest on everything digital rights from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In our 828th issue: Why Wyoming's new internet law is a free speech disaster. Also, a victory for the public's right to know about police surveillance and a welcome outcome in a landmark human rights case.

When you lose your rights online, you lose them in real life. Become an EFF member today!

‌Featured Story: WHY-oming? The Equality State Leads the Next Wave of Internet Censorship

Picture this: A parent stumbles across a website that contains a single image or post they believe is "obscene." If that parent lives in Wyoming, a new age verification law now lets them sue the site, potentially forcing it to restrict access across the entire state in order to avoid litigation. As a so-called "bounty" law, Wyoming's recently enacted HB 34 deputizes every parent in the state as a content cop. For the time being, this effectively allows them to control the whole state's access to the internet.

The new law expands on the flawed logic from last month’s troubling Supreme Court decision, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which gave Texas the green light to require age verification for sites where at least one-third of the content is sexual material deemed “harmful to minors.” Wyoming seems to interpret this decision to give them license to require age verification—and potential legal liability—for any website that contains ANY image, video, or post that contains sexual content that could be interpreted as harmful to minors. Platforms or websites may be able to comply by implementing an “age gate” within certain sections of their sites where, for example, user-generated content is allowed, or at the point of entry to the entire site.

Although this law is in effect, we do not believe the Supreme Court’s decision in FSC v. Paxton gives this law any constitutional legitimacy. You do not need a law degree to see the difference between the Texas law—which targets sites where a substantial portion of content is “sexual material harmful to minors”—and this law, which applies to any site that contains even a single instance of such material. In practice, it is the difference between burdening adults with age gates for websites that host “adult” content, and burdening the entire internet, including sites that allow user-generated content or published content.

This law will likely be challenged, and eventually halted, by the courts. But given that the state cannot enforce it, those challenges will not come until a parent sues a website. Until then, its mere existence poses a serious threat to free speech online. Risk-averse platforms may over-correct, over-censor, or even restrict access to the state entirely just to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit, as Pornhub has already done. And should sites impose age-verification schemes to comply, they will be a speech and privacy disaster for all state residents.

Let’s be clear: these state laws are not outliers. They are part of a growing political movement to redefine terms like “obscene,” “pornographic,” and “sexually explicit” as catchalls to restrict content for both adults and young people alike. And what starts in one state can quickly become a national blueprint. We need to push back now. If we don't, the open internet as we know it—the messy, diverse, and free—could disappear behind a wall of fear and censorship.

READ MORE…

‌EFF Updates

⚖️ HUMAN RIGHTS: A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Saudi human rights activist Loujain Alhathloul’s groundbreaking lawsuit against spyware maker DarkMatter Group, which EFF is co-counsel on, can proceed. This landmark lawsuit is the first filed by the victim of a foreign government’s human rights abuses, enabled by U.S. spyware used to hack the victim’s devices, to proceed this far in federal court.

🤖 AI BIAS: In July, the White House issued an executive order seeking to strong-arm AI companies into modifying their models to conform with the Trump Administration’s ideological agenda. On our blog, we explain why that order — titled “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” — is a civil liberties nightmare.

👁 WATCHING THE WATCHERS: In a victory for transparency, a surveillance tech company has agreed to disclose information on tools that it sold to California cops. Last year, EFF submitted a California public records request to the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office for information about its work with Pen-Link and a subsidiary. Pen-Link sued to block the public disclosure of this information, claiming prices and descriptions of its surveillance tech were “trade secrets.”

🎧 ON THE POD: How do you separate AI hope from AI hype? On this episode of EFF's "How to Fix the Internet" podcast, AI Snake Oil’s Arvind Narayanan discusses why he thinks AI is never going to become much better than human professionals in the vast majority of tasks.

Get in the Fight

What the future will look like is being decided today. Join the movement to protect our digital rights.

Whether it’s governments trying to censor the internet, private companies exploiting our data for profit, or police using advanced technologies to track our every move, EFF is resisting the forces threatening our digital freedom.

Technology should serve all people, not just the powerful. With your support, we can take back control.

"Every person listening here can push back against these laws that expand censorship. We like to say that if you care about internet freedom, this fight is yours."

EFF's Rin Alajaji in this week's EFFector audio companion on why we need to speak out against age verification laws like Wyoming's. Hear our discussion with Rin here.

MiniLinks

🗣️ Free Speech

• "Online age checks are proliferating, but so are concerns they curtail internet freedom" (Associated Press)

🔒 Privacy

• "D.C. Takeover Shows How Cities Can Lose Control of Surveillance" (Government Technology)

• "Cohn: Trump is building ‘one interface to rule them all.’ It’s terrifying." (Mercury News)

• "RFK Jr. Wants a Wearable on Every American Body" (American Prospect)

🔎 Transparency

• "How the Atlas of Surveillance built a platform to track law enforcement surveillance across the country" (MuckRock)

🌎 International

• "U.K. drops ‘back door’ demand for Apple user data, U.S. intel chief says" (Washington Post)

🗝️ Security

• "TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers" (404 Media)

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