Governor Cuomo: Keep Police and ICE Away from Our Contact Tracing Data

New York State lawmakers unanimously passed legislation (A10500C/S8450C) to protect New Yorkers cooperating with contact tracing efforts from having their data used against them in court proceedings or administrative hearings. Once enacted, the law will also ban police and immigration authorities from serving as contact tracers or otherwise obtaining...

10h

Section 230 is Good, Actually

Even though it’s only 26 words long, Section 230 doesn’t say what many think it does.  So we’ve decided to take up a few kilobytes of the Internet to explain what, exactly, people are getting wrong about the primary law that defends the Internet. Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) is one of the most important laws protecting free speech online. While...

12h

Law Enforcement Purchasing Commercially-Available Geolocation Data is Unconstitutional

Many of the smartphone apps people use every day are collecting data on their users and, in order to make money, many of these apps sell that information. One of the customers for this data is the U.S. government, which regularly purchases commercially available geolocation data. This includes the Department of Defense, CBP, ICE, the IRS, and the Secret...

16h

Sen. Ron Wyden Joins EFF on December 10 for Fireside Chat About the Future of Free Speech

Coauthor of Section 230, Wyden Will Address Calls to Repeal the ProvisionSan Francisco—Sen. Ron Wyden, a fierce advocate for the rights of technology users, will join EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry on Thursday, December 10, for a livestream fireside chat about the fight to defend freedom of expression and innovation on the web.Wyden is an original...

1d

Action for Egyptian Human Rights Defenders

The undersigned organisations strongly condemn the persecution of employees of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and Egyptian civil society by the Egyptian government. We urge the global community and their respective governments to do the same and join us in calling for the release of detained human rights defenders and a stop to the...

1d

Podcast Episode: From Your Face to Their Database

Episode 005 of EFF’s How to Fix the Internet Abi Hassen joins EFF hosts Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they discuss the rise of facial recognition technology, how this increasingly powerful identification tool is ending up in the hands of law enforcement, and what that means for the future of public protest and the right to assemble and associate...

2d

Double the Impact of Every Donation

Power Up Your Donation Week has begun! EFF is calling on tech users everywhere to give today and instantly double their impact on Internet freedom while the world needs it most. Power Up DOnate today and get an automatic 2x match! For one week starting on #GivingTuesday, anyone who donates to EFF will have their gift automatically matched. That's...

2d

EFF Condemns Egypt's Latest Crackdown

We are quickly approaching the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, a powerfully hopeful time in history when—despite all odds—Egyptians rose up against an entrenched dictatorship and shook it from power, with the assistance of new technologies. Though the role of social media has been hotly debated and often overplayed, technology most certainly...

3d

EFF Urges Federal Appeals Court to Rehear Case Involving Unconstitutional Baltimore Aerial Surveillance Program

Last week, EFF urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reconsider a split three-judge panel’s ruling that the Baltimore Police Department’s aerial surveillance of the city’s more than half a million residents is constitutional. In a friend-of-the-court brief—which was joined by the Brennan Center for Justice, Electronic Privacy...

3d

Visa Wants to Buy Plaid, and With It, Transaction Data for Millions of People

Visa, the credit card network, is trying to buy financial technology company Plaid for $5.3 billion. The merger is bad for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it would allow a giant company with a controlling market share and a history of anticompetitive practices to snap up its fast-growing competition in the market for payment apps. But Plaid...

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