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Deeplinks

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

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No Face, No Case: California’s S.B. 627 Demands Cops...

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/10

Across the country, people are collecting and sharing footage of masked law enforcement officers from both federal and local agencies deputized to do so-called immigration enforcement: arresting civilians, in some cases violently and/or warrantlessly. That footage is part of a long tradition of recording law enforcement during their operations to ensure some level of accountability if people observe misconduct and/or unconstitutional practices. However, as essential as recording police can be in

Axon’s Draft One Is Designed to Defy Transparency

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/10

Axon Enterprise’s Draft One — a generative artificial intelligence product that writes police reports based on audio from officers’ body-worn cameras — seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that could provide any accountability to the public, an EFF investigation has found. Our review of public records from police agencies already using the technology — including police reports, emails, procurement documents, department policies, software settings, and more — as well as Axon’s own user manuals

EFF's Guide to Getting Records About Axon's Draft One...

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/10

The moment Axon Enterprise announced a new product, Draft One, that would allow law enforcement officers to use artificial intelligence to automatically generate incident report narratives based on body-worn camera audio, everyone in the police accountability community immediately started asking the same questions. What do AI-generated police reports look like? What kind of paper trail does this system leave? How do we get a hold of documentation using public records laws? Unfortunately, obtaining

It's EFF's 35th Anniversary (And We're Just Getting...

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/10

Today we celebrate 35 years of EFF bearing the torch for digital rights against the darkness of the world, and I couldn’t be prouder. EFF was founded at a time when governments were hostile toward technology and clueless about how it would shape your life. While threats from state and commercial forces grew alongside the internet, so too did EFF’s expertise. Our mission has become even larger than pushing back on government ignorance and increasingly dangerous corporate power. In this moment, we're

Data Brokers are Selling Your Flight Information to...

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/09

For many years, data brokers have existed in the shadows, exploiting gaps in privacy laws to harvest our information—all for their own profit. They sell our precise movements without our knowledge or meaningful consent to a variety of private and state actors, including law enforcement agencies. And they show no sign of stopping. This incentivizes other bad actors. If companies collect any kind of personal data and want to make a quick buck, there’s a data broker willing to buy it and sell it to the

Electronic Frontier Foundation to Present Annual EFF...

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/09

2025 Awards Will Be Presented in a Live Ceremony Wednesday, Sept. 10 in San Francisco SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that Just Futures Law, Erie Meyer, and Software Freedom Law Center, India will receive the 2025 EFF Awards for their vital work in ensuring that technology supports privacy, freedom, justice, and innovation for all people. The EFF Awards recognize specific and substantial technical, social, economic, or cultural contributions in diverse

EFF to US Court of Appeals: Protect Taxpayer Privacy

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/08

EFF has filed an amicus brief in Trabajadores v. Bessent, a case concerning the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sharing protected personal tax information with the Department of Homeland Security for the purposes of immigration enforcement. Our expertise in privacy and data sharing makes us the ideal organization to step in and inform the judge: government actions like this have real-world consequences. The IRS’s sharing, and especially bulk sharing, of data is improper and makes taxpayers

How to Build on Washington’s “My Health, My Data” Act

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/06

In 2023, the State of Washington enacted one of the strongest consumer data privacy laws in recent years: the “my health my data” act (HB 1155). EFF commends the civil rights, data privacy, and reproductive justice advocates who worked to pass this law. This post suggests ways for legislators and advocates in other states to build on the Washington law and draft one with even stronger protections. This post will separately address the law’s scope (such as who is protected); its safeguards (such as

🤫 Meta's Secret Spying Scheme | EFFector 37.7

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/02

Keeping up on the latest digital rights news has never been easier. With a new look, EFF's EFFector newsletter covers the latest details on our work defending your rights to privacy and free expression online.EFFector 37.7 covers some of the very sneaky tactics that Meta has been using to track you online, and how you can mitigate some of this tracking. In this issue, we're also explaining the legal processes police use to obtain your private online data, and providing an update on the NO FAKES

Podcast Episode: Cryptography Makes a Post-Quantum Leap

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/02

The cryptography that protects our privacy and security online relies on the fact that even the strongest computers will take essentially forever to do certain tasks, like factoring prime numbers and finding discrete logarithms which are important for RSA encryption, Diffie-Hellman key exchanges, and elliptic curve encryption. But what happens when those problems – and the cryptography they underpin – are no longer infeasible for computers to solve? Will our online defenses collapse?

EFFecting Change: EFF Turns 35!

Deeplinks ·

2025/07/01

We're wishing EFF a happy birthday on July 10! Since 1990, EFF's lawyers, activists, analysts, and technologists have used everything in their toolkit to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. They've seen it all and in this special edition of our EFFecting Change livestream series, leading experts at EFF will explore what's next for technology users. EFFecting Change Livestream Series:EFF Turns 35!Thursday, July 10th11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific

Flock Safety’s Feature Updates Cannot Make Automated...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/28

Two recent statements from the surveillance company—one addressing Illinois privacy violations and another defending the company's national surveillance network—reveal a troubling pattern: when confronted by evidence of widespread abuse, Flock Safety has blamed users, downplayed harms, and doubled down on the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place. Flock's aggressive public relations campaign to salvage its reputation comes as no surprise. Last month, we described how

Today's Supreme Court Decision on Age Verification...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/27

Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. The Court ruled that “no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.” This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy. These are real and immense burdens

Georgia Court Rules for Transparency over Private...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/27

A Georgia court has decided that private non-profit Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) must comply with public records requests under the Georgia Open Records Act for some of its functions on behalf of the Atlanta Police Department. This is a major win for transparency in the state. The lawsuit was brought last year by the Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and Electronic Frontier Alliance member Lucy Parsons Labs (LPL). It concerns the APF’s refusal to disclose records about its role as the

Two Courts Rule On Generative AI and Fair Use — One...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/26

Things are speeding up in generative AI legal cases, with two judicial opinions just out on an issue that will shape the future of generative AI: whether training gen-AI models on copyrighted works is fair use. One gets it spot on; the other, not so much, but fortunately in a way that future courts can and should discount. The core question in both cases was whether using copyrighted works to train Large Language Models (LLMs) used in AI chatbots is a lawful fair use. Under the US Copyright Act,

Ahead of Budapest Pride, EFF and 46 Organizations...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/26

This week, EFF joined EDRi and nearly 50 civil society organizations urging the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen, Executive Vice President Henna Virkunnen, and Commissioners Michael McGrath and Hadja Lahbib to take immediate action and defend human rights in Hungary. The European Commission has a responsibility to protect EU fundamental rights, including the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals in Hungary and across the Union With Budapest Pride just two days away, Hungary has

How Cops Can Get Your Private Online Data

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/26

Can the cops get your online data? In short, yes. There are a variety of US federal and state laws which give law enforcement powers to obtain information that you provided to online services. But, there are steps you as a user and/or as a service provider can take to improve online privacy.Law enforcement demanding access to your private online data goes back to the beginning of the internet. In fact, one of EFF’s first cases, Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service, exemplified the now

California’s Corporate Cover-Up Act Is a Privacy...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/25

California lawmakers are pushing one of the most dangerous privacy rollbacks we’ve seen in years. S.B. 690, what we’re calling the Corporate Cover-Up Act, is a brazen attempt to let corporations spy on us in secret, gutting long-standing protections without a shred of accountability. The Corporate Cover-Up Act is a massive carve-out that would gut California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and give Big Tech and data brokers a green light to spy on us without consent for just about any reason. If

FBI Warning on IoT Devices: How to Tell If You Are...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/25

On June 5th, the FBI released a PSA titled “Home Internet Connected Devices Facilitate Criminal Activity.” This PSA largely references devices impacted by the latest generation of BADBOX malware (as named by HUMAN’s Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team) that EFF researchers also encountered primarily on Android TV set-top boxes. However, the malware has impacted tablets, digital projectors, aftermarket vehicle infotainment units, picture frames, and other types of IoT devices. One goal of

Why Are Hundreds of Data Brokers Not Registering with...

Deeplinks ·

2025/06/24

Written in collaboration with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Hundreds of data brokers have not registered with state consumer protection agencies. These findings come as more states are passing data broker transparency laws that require brokers to provide information about their business and, in some cases, give consumers an easy way to opt out. In recent years, California, Texas, Oregon, and Vermont have passed data broker registration laws that require brokers to identify themselves to state

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