The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted in 2018 and goes into effect in 2020. Throughout 2019, EFF and our privacy coalition allies beat back numerous attempts by big business to block this important law before it goes into… Read More ›
Archive for December 2019
The Fight Against Government Face Surveillance: 2019 Year in Review
Vendors woo law enforcement with a seemingly inexhaustible flow of new spy tech. This places concerned community members, civil society, and lawmakers in a seemingly Sisyphean struggle of trying to keep up with new technological threats to privacy, and to… Read More ›
Protecting the Legal Foundation of the Internet: 2019 in Review
When someone says something unlawful online, they should be the one held responsible for it, not the website or platform where they said it. Section 230—the most important law protecting free speech online—reflects that common-sense principle. This year, EFF defended… Read More ›
Activists Worldwide Face Off Against Face Recognition: 2019 Year in Review
We’ve all heard the expression, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” We might hope that what we do and where we go will only be known to those who were there in person. Yet maintaining such anonymity and privacy… Read More ›
Courts Grapple with a Sea Change in Fourth Amendment Law After Carpenter v US: Year in Review 2019
Last year, the Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion in a case we’ve written about a lot, called Carpenter v. United States, ruling that the Fourth Amendment protects data generated by our phones called historical cell-site location information or CSLI…. Read More ›
Encrypting DNS: Year in Review 2019
This February, with Venezuela rocked by economic collapse and a presidential succession crisis, an opposition party put out a call for volunteers. Juan Guaidó, a political leader with the Popular Will party, called on supporters to register at the site… Read More ›
Why Don’t We Care About China’s Uighur Muslims?
Subscribe to the Deconstructed podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, and other platforms. New to podcasting? Click here. It’s been described as the worst human rights crisis in the world — the arbitrary detention in sprawling… Read More ›
Jewel v. NSA: On to the Ninth Circuit: 2019 Year in Review
Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s landmark case challenging NSA’s mass spying moved forward in 2019, setting up a crucial decision for the Ninth Circuit in 2020. We’ve pursued this case for over a decade because we believe that mass surveillance, like… Read More ›
The Year in Corporate Speech Controls
Content moderation and its effects remained at the forefront of the public imagination in 2019, with stories of takedowns from Sweden to Syria and everywhere in between gaining media attention. Inconsistent and unfair moderation from companies—often under great pressure from… Read More ›
Immigration Detention Is Part of Mass Incarceration: The Case for Abolishing ICE and Everything Else
Not many people besides immigration law wonks had probably heard of “Section 1325,” before Julián Castro called for repealing it during the first Democratic presidential primary debate this summer. The law in question makes it a federal crime to enter the… Read More ›