Proctoring Tools and Dragnet Investigations Rob Students of Due Process

Update, April 16, 2021: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) points out that Dartmouth has publicly expressed a commitment to upholding free speech and dissent on campus.  The medical school should strive to uphold these policies, and as FIRE argues, they may even be considered contracts that the school has breached with its social...

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EFF Partners with DuckDuckGo to Enhance Secure Browsing and Protect User Information on the Web

DuckDuckGo Smarter Encryption Will Be Incorporated Into HTTPS Everywhere San Francisco, California—Boosting protection of Internet users’ personal data from snooping advertisers and third-party trackers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced it has enhanced its groundbreaking HTTPS Everywhere browser extension by incorporating rulesets...

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HTTPS Everywhere Now Uses DuckDuckGo’s Smarter Encryption

Over the last few months the HTTPS Everywhere project has been deciding what to do with the new landscape of HTTPS in major browsers. Encrypted web traffic has increased in the last few years and major browsers have made strides in seeing that HTTPS becomes the default. This project has shepherded a decade of encrypted web traffic and we look onward...

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Congress, Don’t Let ISP Lobbyists Sabotage Fiber for All

For the first time, an American president has proposed a plan that wouldn’t just make a dent in the digital divide, it will end it. By deploying federal resources at the level and scale this country has not seen since electrification nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. will again connect every resident to a necessary service. Like with water and electricity,...

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Forced Arbitration Thwarts Legal Challenge to AT&T’s Disclosure of Customer Location Data

Location data generated from our cell phones paint an incredibly detailed picture of our movements and private lives. Despite the sensitive nature of this data and a federal law prohibiting cellphone carriers from disclosing it, repeated unauthorized disclosures over the last several years show that carriers will sell this sensitive information to almost...

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California: Demand Broadband for All

From the pandemic to the Frontier bankruptcy to the ongoing failures in remote learning, we’ve seen now more than ever how current broadband infrastructure fails to meet the needs of the people. This pain is particularly felt in already under-served communities—urban and rural—where poverty and lack of choice leaves millions at the mercy of monopolistic...

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Why EFF Supports Repeal of Qualified Immunity

Our digital rights are only as strong as our power to enforce them. But when we sue government officials for violating our digital rights, they often get away with it because of a dangerous legal doctrine called “qualified immunity.” Do you think you have a First Amendment right to use your cell phone to record on-duty police officers, or to use your...

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After Cookies, Ad Tech Wants to Use Your Email to Track You Everywhere

Cookies are dying, and the tracking industry is scrambling to replace them. Google has proposed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), TURTLEDOVE, and other bird-themed tech that would have browsers do some of the behavioral profiling that third-party trackers do today. But a coalition of independent surveillance advertisers has a different plan. Instead...

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Deceptive Checkboxes Should Not Open Our Checkbooks

Last week, the New York Times highlighted the Trump 2020 campaign’s use of deceptive web designs to deceive supporters into donating far more money than they had intended. The campaign’s digital donation portal hid an unassuming but unfair method for siphoning funds: a pre-checked box to “make a monthly recurring donation.” This caused weekly withdrawals...

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EFF Challenges Surreptitious Collection of DNA at Iowa Supreme Court

Last week, EFF, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Iowa, filed an amicus brief in the Iowa Supreme Court challenging the surreptitious collection of DNA without a warrant. We argued this practice violates the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 8 of the Iowa state constitution. This is the first case to reach a state supreme court involving such...

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