When a technology can have a conversation with you, it’s natural to anthropomorphize that technology—to see it as a person. It’s tempting to see a chatbot as a thinking, speaking robot, but this gives the technology too much credit. This can also lead people—including judges in cases about AI chatbots—to...
It’s summer security week. EFF is a longtime supporter of the researchers, hackers, and creators who make the web more secure and resistant to human rights abuses. Help us protect them for the good of the internet.
The UK is having a moment. In late July, new rules took effect that require all online services available in the UK to assess whether they host content considered harmful to children, and if so, these services must introduce age checks to prevent children from accessing such content....
It’s time for EFF’s annual journey to Las Vegas for the summer security conferences: BSidesLV, Black Hat USA, and DEF CON. Our lawyers, activists, and technologists are always excited to support this community of security researchers and tinkerers—the folks who push computer security forward (and somehow survive the Vegas heat...
Companies large and small are doubling down on digital rights, and we’re excited to see more and more of them join EFF. We’re first and always an organization who fights for users, so you might be asking: Why does EFF work with corporate donors, and why do they want...
Of the many principles EFF fights for in consumer data privacy legislation, one of the most basic is a right to access the data companies have about you. It’s only fair. So many companies collect information about us without our knowledge or consent. We at least should have a...
Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible. But in one of the latest misguided attempts to protect children online, internet users of all ages...
Earlier this year, EFF welcomed Technology Education Collaborative (TEC) into the Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA). TEC empowers everyday people to become informed users of today's extraordinary technology, and helps people better understand the tech that surrounds them on a daily basis. TEC does this by hosting in-person, hands-on...
Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) Videoconferences are an opportunity for local grassroots groups to share their work, offer mutual support, and participate in exclusive talks and workshops on digital rights issues. These events are only open to EFA member groups, but membership is open to applications for qualifying...
EFF is gearing up to beat the heat in Las Vegas for the summer security conferences! Before we make our journey to the Strip, we figured let's get y'all up-to-speed with a new edition of EFFector.This time we're covering an illegal mass surveillance scheme by the Sacramento Municipal...
Many of the internet’s thorniest problems can be attributed to the concentration of power in a few corporate hands: the surveillance capitalism that makes it profitable to invade our privacy, the lack of algorithmic transparency that turns artificial intelligence and other tech into impenetrable black boxes, the rent-seeking behavior that...
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is supposed to be about attacks on computer systems. It is not, as a federal district court suggested in Ryanair v. Booking.com, applicable when someone uses valid login credentials to access information to which those credentials provide access. Now that the case is...
EFF has long warned about this kind of mission creep: where a law or policy supposedly aimed at public safety is turned into a tool for political retaliation or mass surveillance. Going to a drag show should not mean you forfeit your anonymity. It should not open you up to...
By publishing its guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act, the European Commission has taken a major step towards social media bans that will undermine privacy, expression, and participation rights for young people that are already enshrined in international human rights law. EFF recently submitted feedback...
In the past few years, governments across the world have rolled out digital identification options, and now there are efforts encouraging online companies to implement identity and age verification requirements with digital ID in mind. This blog is the first in this short series that will...
