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Deeplinks

EFF"s Deeplinks Blog: Noteworthy news from around the internet

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Nominations Open for 2025 EFF Awards!

Deeplinks ·

2025/05/06

Nominations are now open for the 2025 EFF Awards! The nomination window will be open until Friday, May 23rd at 2:00 PM Pacific time. You could nominate the next winner today!For over thirty years, the Electronic Frontier Foundation presented awards to key leaders and organizations in the fight for freedom and innovation online. The EFF Awards celebrate the longtime stalwarts working on behalf of technology users, both in the public eye and behind the scenes. Past Honorees include visionary

Beware the Bundle: Companies Are Banking on Becoming...

Deeplinks ·

2025/05/06

When your local police department buys one piece of surveillance equipment, you can easily expect that the company that sold it will try to upsell them on additional tools and upgrades. At the end of the day, public safety vendors are tech companies, and their representatives are salespeople using all the tricks from the marketing playbook. But these companies aren't just after public money—they also want data. And each new bit of data that police collect contributes to a pool of information to

Washington’s Right to Repair Bill Heads to the Governor

Deeplinks ·

2025/05/01

The right to repair just keeps on winning. Last week, thanks in part to messages from EFF supporters, the Washington legislature passed a strong consumer electronics right-to-repair legislation through both the House and Senate. The bill affirms our right to repair by banning restrictions that keep people and local businesses from accessing the parts, manuals, and tools they need for cheaper, easier repairs. It joined another strong right-to-repair bill for wheelchairs, ensuring folks can access the

Ninth Circuit Hands Users A Big Win: Californians Can...

Deeplinks ·

2025/05/01

Simple common sense tells us that a corporation’s decision to operate in every state shouldn’t mean it can’t be sued in most of them. Sadly, U.S. law doesn’t always follow common sense. That’s why we were so pleased with a recent holding from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Setting a crucial precedent, the court held that consumers can sue national or multinational companies in the consumers’ home courts if those companies violate state data privacy laws. The case, Briskin v. Shopify, stems

Age Verification in the European Union: The...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/29

This is the second part of a three-part series about age verification in the European Union. In this blog post, we take a deep dive into the age verification app solicited by the European Commission, based on digital identities. Part one gives an overview of the political debate around age verification in the EU and part three explores measures to keep all users safe that do not require age checks. In part one of this series on age verification in the European Union, we gave an overview of the

Congress Passes TAKE IT DOWN Act Despite Major Flaws

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/28

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, giving the powerful a dangerous new route to manipulate platforms into removing lawful speech that they simply don't like. President Trump himself has said that he would use the law to censor his critics. The bill passed the Senate in February, and it now heads to the president's desk. The takedown provision in TAKE IT DOWN applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual

EFF Leads Prominent Security Experts in Urging Trump...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/28

Political Retribution for Telling the Truth Weakens the Entire Infosec Community and Threatens Our Democracy; Letter Remains Open for Further Sign-Ons SAN FRANCISCO – The Trump Administration must cease its politically motivated investigation of former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and dozens hundreds (see update below) of prominent cybersecurity and election security experts urged in an open letter. The

Texas’s War on Abortion Is Now a War on Free Speech

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/28

Once again, the Texas legislature is coming after the most common method of safe and effective abortion today—medication abortion. Senate Bill (S.B.) 2880* seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills—but it doesn’t stop there. By restricting access to certain information online, the bill tries to keep people from learning about abortion drugs, or even knowing that they exist. If passed, S.B. 2880 would make it illegal to “provide information” on how to obtain an abortion-inducing

Trump Administration’s Targeting of International...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/26

The federal government is using social media surveillance to target student visa holders living in the United States for online speech the Trump administration disfavors. The administration has initiated this new program, called “Catch and Revoke,” in an effort to revoke visas, and it appears to be a cross-agency collaboration between the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Justice. It includes a dedicated task force and the use of AI and other data

IRS-ICE Immigrant Data Sharing Agreement Betrays Data...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/25

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently reached an agreement allowing the IRS to share with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) taxpayer information of certain immigrants. The redacted 15-page memorandum of understanding (MOU) was exposed in a court case, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent, which seeks to prevent the IRS from unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information for immigration enforcement purposes

Leaders Must Do All They Can to Bring Alaa Home

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/25

It has now been nearly two months since UK Prime Minister Starmer spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, yet there has been no tangible progress in the case of Alaa Abd El Fattah, the British-Egyptian writer, activist, and technologist who remains imprisoned in Egypt.In yet another blow to his family and supporters, who have been tirelessly advocating for his release, we’ve now learned that Alaa has fallen ill while on a sustained hunger strike protesting his incarceration. Alaa’s

Six Years of Dangerous Misconceptions Targeting Ola...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/23

Ola Bini was first detained in Quito’s airport six years ago, called a “Russian hacker,” and accused of “alleged participation in the crime of assault on the integrity of computer systems.” It wouldn't take long for Ecuadorean authorities to find out that he was Swedish and an internationally respected free software developer and computer expert. Lacking evidence, authorities rapidly changed the criminal offense underpinning the accusation against Bini and struggled to build a case based on a mere

Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/23

This is the first part of a three-part series about age verification in the European Union. In this blog post, we give an overview of the political debate around age verification and explore the age verification proposal introduced by the European Commission, based on digital identities. Part two takes a closer look at the European Commission’s age verification app, and part three explores measures to keep all users safe that do not require age checks. As governments across the world pass laws to

Florida’s Anti-Encryption Bill Is a Wrecking Ball to...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/22

We've seen plenty of bad tech bills in recent years, often cloaked in vague language about "online safety." But Florida’s SB 868 doesn’t even pretend to be subtle: the state wants a backdoor into encrypted platforms if minors use them, and for law enforcement to have easy access to your messages. This bill should set off serious alarm bells for anyone who cares about digital rights, secure communication, or simply the ability to message someone privately without the government listening. Florida

Why the FTC v. Meta Trial Matters: Competition Gaps...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/21

We’re in the midst of a long-overdue resurgence in antitrust litigation. In the past 12 months alone, there have been three landmark rulings against Google/Alphabet (in search, advertising, and payments). Then there’s the long-running FTC v. Meta case, which went to trial last week. Plenty of people are cheering these cases on, seeing them as a victories over the tech broligarchy (who doesn’t love to see a broligarch get their comeuppance?). But we’re cautiously cheering for another, more

EFF to Congress: Here’s What A Strong Privacy Law...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/21

Enacting strong federal consumer data privacy laws is among EFF’s highest priorities. For decades, EFF has advocated for federal privacy law that is concrete, ambitious, and fully protective of all Americans’ data privacy. That’s why, when the House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently established a Privacy Working Group and asked for comments on what we’d like to see from a Data Security and Privacy Framework, EFF was pleased to offer our thoughts. Our comments highlight several key points

Congress Moves Closer to Risky Internet Takedown Law...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/16

Sorry, EFF doesn't hand out candy like the Easter Bunny, but we are here to keep you updated on the latest digital rights news with our EFFector newsletter!This edition of EFFector explains how you can help us push back against the TAKE IT DOWN Act, an internet censorship law; why we oppose site-blocking legislation, found in two upcoming bills; and how to delete your data from 23andMe. You can read the full newsletter here, and even get future editions directly to your inbox when you subscribe

EFF Urges Court to Avoid Fair Use Shortcuts in Kadrey...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/15

EFF has filed an amicus brief in Kadrey v. Meta, one of the many ongoing copyright lawsuits against AI developers. Most of the AI copyright cases raise an important new issue: whether the copying necessary to train a generative AI model is a non-infringing fair use. Kadrey, however, attempts to side-step fair use. The plaintiffs—including Sarah Silverman and other authors—sued Meta for allegedly using BitTorrent to download “pirated” copies of their books to train Llama, a large language model. In

Privacy on the Map: How States Are Fighting Location...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/15

Your location data isn't just a pin on a map—it's a powerful tool that reveals far more than most people realize. It can expose where you work, where you pray, who you spend time with, and, sometimes dangerously, where you seek healthcare. In today’s world, your most private movements are harvested, aggregated, and sold to anyone with a credit card. For those seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, or visiting a protest or a immigration law clinic, this data is a ticking time bomb. Last year,

Florida’s New Social Media Bill Says the Quiet Part...

Deeplinks ·

2025/04/11

At least Florida’s SB 868/HB 743, “Social Media Use By Minors” bill isn’t beating around the bush when it states that it would require “social media platforms to provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena.” Usually these sorts of sweeping mandates are hidden behind smoke and mirrors, but this time it’s out in the open: Florida wants a backdoor into any end-to-end encrypted social media platforms that allow accounts for minors. This would likely lead

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