Users are always seeking more control over their social networking experience to make it better, whether to improve privacy or enhance flexibility. Interoperability between social networking platforms like Facebook and TikTok has so many benefits that solve those issues.
Say you’re on multiple pla…
Good news!(?) It’s good news of sorts, so we’ll go with a qualified “good news!” here. There’s a little table setting that needs to be done to explain why it’s better now than it was before the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court continued ingratiating itself to race-motivated tyranny. I realize that’s not …
The Premium Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Super Bundle is a twelve-course digital toolkit designed to take you from coding novice to AI architect. The curriculum breaks down complex data science concepts into actionable steps, guiding you through hands-on projects using Python, data analy…
For over a decade, a particular argument keeps resurfacing from well-meaning progressives: the rise of authoritarianism around the globe is a good reason to pass laws suppressing speech. The idea is that somehow, magically, without free speech, authoritarians and fascists would never come to power i…
For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can’t innovate and generally don’t know how competition works, it never really goes that well. The various …
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On th…
Sony just gave the world another lesson in how they don’t actually own the content they’ve bought digitally generally, and particularly not through Sony’s digital storefronts. Instead, as readers here will largely know, what is actually being bought is a temporary license to download and play these …
Civil rights groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s Colossus xAI data centers in Memphis disproportionately pollute the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn’…
ICE has already been operating like a paramilitary kidnapping squad. Officers roam through neighborhoods, stake out hardware store parking lots, and even occasionally enjoy some ethnic food just so they can raid the source of hospitality later. It’s nasty, disturbing, and definitely doesn’t resemble…
The Essential MATLAB and LabVIEW Mega Bundle has 9 courses to help you improve your skills in programming and visualization. You’ll learn the basics of each and then go through hands-on courses building apps, learning about data analysis and visualization, and more. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The T…
It’s hard to believe that the same people who spent the Biden years screaming that Democrats were “socialists” out to destroy free market capitalism are now cheerfully handing the federal government ownership stakes in private companies. And yet here we are. Just as Trumpists have decided that their…
For years, Tonga's .to domain names have been a popular choice for pirate sites, but that may very well change. Following a restructuring of the domain name operation, the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga appears to have suspended several domains, including the popular German streaming portals S.t…
Bulgaria's highest court has ruled that civil site blocking is legally impossible under current national law. Bulgaria failed to properly transpose the EU directives that authorize blocking injunctions. The decision is a major setback for rightsholders, including the association of music producers, …
In the global race to build and dominate the AI industry, it can sure seem like the interests of ordinary people sit last on the agenda. It's just the opposite for EFF. While companies furiously jam AI tools into their veins and your eyeballs, EFF’s technologists, activists, and attorneys have been …
This blog post is part 1 of a 2-part series. The second part will set out recommendations for companies and policymakers.Six years ago—one month into a global pandemic—we argued that the automated moderation processes many platforms were rapidly adopting should be highly transparent, easily appealab…
Google owes its existence to the open web, but today, its technological “innovations” have much to do with locking users into a “walled garden.” The latest of these is “reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification,” an experimental initiative that will let companies block users if they are running independent, "de…
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to the German court ruling that Google is liable for false claims in its AI overviews. In first place, it’s an anonymous comment about Bruce Schneier’s reaction to the ruling: In second place, it’s A Guy with the first comment on th…
Despite a lot of pretense, Meta, permanently deadbolted to Mark Zuckerberg’s outsized ego, simply isn’t an interesting, ethical, competent, or innovative company. They’re mostly an ad monopoly pretending to be Apple. They poured untold billions of dollars into their soggy and broadly uninteresting m…
The authoritarianism has been out in the open pretty much since day one with this presidency. Things that leak out around the edges — unaccompanied by official statements, announcements, or randomly-capitalized Truth Social posts — would embarrass any normal administration. But with this administrat…
The Soundfreaq Sound Spot II combines wireless audio performance, ambient lighting, and relaxing sound features in a compact design built for modern lifestyles. Featuring a Bamboo and White finish with eco-friendly materials, this Bluetooth speaker complements bedrooms, offices, living rooms, and pe…
Trump-appointed Louisiana federal judge Terry Doughty has spent years bending over backwards trying to help some MAGA faithful manufacture nonsense claims about “censorship” for some grifters getting moderated on social media. As you’ll recall, he issued a bizarrely problematic ruling on July 4th th…
In Larry Sanger’s recent failed attempt to start a “WikiProject Intellectual Diversity”, he tried to recruit his followers to help him change Wikipedia’s rules around representation of viewpoints, religions, parties, and nationalities (a version of his earlier “Nine Theses”). The draft WikiProject w…
Supported by U.S. intelligence, Vietnamese authorities have dismantled a massive network of over 100 pirate sites. Seven suspects have been charged with running a mass copyright infringement operation that included the now-defunct piracy giant HiAnime.to, allegedly earning $12.8 million in advertisi…
Access Now joins more than 20 human rights organizations and individuals in condemning Pegasus spyware attack against Stelios Kouloglou, Greek journalist and then-Member of the European Parliament
The post Same government, more victims: Access Now calls for an urgent investigation into hacking of ME…
Registration details coming soon. Session description: This civil society-led counter-event to the AI for Good Global Summit takes a critical look at the overhyped role of AI in solving humanity’s
The post Not AI for Good appeared first on Access Now.
Researchers from Delft University of Technology have spent more than two decades building their decentralized BitTorrent client Tribler. The software is designed to be impossible to shut down and the project itself is also going strong, as it recently secured funding up until 2032. New research focu…
Yesterday, Access Now and ten other civil society organizations filed an amicus brief in the U.S.’ Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals calling to protect encryption from NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware and to keep the lower court’s permanent injunction forbidding NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp or its custo…
There are bad takes on AI, and then there are bad takes on AI. Some of you think my takes on the use of AI in gaming are bad. Cool, love you, kiss kiss. I think the takes from folks on both extremes, the never-AI-ers and the AI evangelists, are pretty awful most of the […]
Last month, SpaceX began making lobbying filings in support of phone unlocking rules making it easier to switch your phone between wireless providers. You might recall that the Biden FCC was on the cusp of installing such rules before the Trump administration, hand in hand with giant telecoms, disma…
Some readers might look at this headline and think there’s something off about it. And I’ll grant you that. There are several ways music can be played: to, for, not at all. Sometimes though, the only way to describe the playing of music is “at.” One of Trump’s many vindictive “surges” targeting citi…
The MYNT3D 3D Printing Pen is a handheld creative tool that allows users to draw in three dimensions using heated plastic filament. Instead of printing from a machine, this pen lets you manually create 3D objects by extruding melted plastic that quickly hardens. It uses FDM technology similar to 3D …
Earlier this year we wrote about the ridiculous thin-skinned executives at Palantir suing a small independent Swiss online magazine, Republik, that had reported on the great lengths the company had gone to, trying to get the Swiss government to purchase Palantir’s surveillance technology. Palantir k…
In the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned would happen when you reduce sector competition). T-Mobile, which once tried to differentiate itself as the consumer-friendly “uncarrier,” almost immediat…
Qualified immunity — crafted out of thin air by the US Supreme Court — has rarely been anything but an easy way for government employees to duck out of lawsuits before they’re actually asked to defend themselves against allegations of rights violations. The Supreme Court has continually narrowed thi…
It’s been a while since we checked in on the Nintendo patent suit in Japan against Pocketpair, the company behind the hit game Palworld. If you need a quick refresher, here you go. Pocketpair made a game that was clearly inspired by the Pokémon series of games, but which also did no direct copying o…
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episod…
Sports broadcaster beIN and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance propose to expand the European blocking efforts with a blacklist of rogue hosting companies. These companies can then be banned by their ASN, covering a series of IP-address blocks. By implementing the blocking measures across various …
France's Gendarmerie nationale announced that it dismantled the organization behind YggTorrent, France's largest torrent site. Twelve people have been arrested on charges including money laundering. The site itself, however, was already destroyed months ago by a hacker who leaked its data and draine…
Zoom Session description: The rise of the anti-rights movement is accelerating the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people and identity in Africa. In Senegal, the government’s amendment of Article 319 of Senegal’s
The post Resisting anti-rights attacks on the LGBTQ+ movement in the digital age appeared f…
X Corp. should not be able to escape privacy compliance because it changed its name.
On May 15, X Corp. filed a petition before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to set aside or modify an order issued in 2022 requiring the company to report regularly to the FTC for its violations of user data. The…
This Pride, we’re answering all your digital rights questions in season two of our initiative, LGBT Q&A.
You Asked: Is there a way for me to wipe data about me online that could point to my queer identity?
EFF’s Answer: You cannot protect everything all the time, but there are ways to wipe informat…
Look, 5-4 Supreme Court decisions count just as much as 9-0 ones, and a 5-4 decision getting it right is still a win, but for a number of reasons, the 5-4 decision in Trump v. Barbara, regarding the issue of birthright citizenship is terrifying. This isn’t a complicated issue. This isn’t an issue th…
The Luminar Neo Bundle includes a one time purchase of the software, an introductory course on how to use it, and 6 add-ons. Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative tools. Luminar Neo was built from th…
Plenty of people are going to disagree with this headline. But why should I bother defending it when I can let the government dig its own hole? From Executive Order 14367, issued by President Trump last December: Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic. Two milligrams, an al…
While we’ve been discussing a bunch of other Supreme Court end-of-term decisions this week, we should also call out two decisions the Supreme Court thankfully decided not to make. These non-decisions continue to help preserve First Amendment speech protections. First, and most importantly, they reje…
Legal systems have always struggled to keep up with rapid technological change, and things are no different in the world of generative AI. There are still relatively few rulings on the new issues that the roll-out of AI-based services is raising. That makes a ground-breaking judgment from a court in…
Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like Massachusetts, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, and EFF’s home state of Cali…
It’s no secret that Donald Trump has been waging an Orwellian war on knowledge and information for most of his second term thus far. While purging history of American racism, slavery, and anything else that makes us look less than perfect has been the primary focus in this war, so too has Trump atte…
The folks at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) have spent decades demonizing technology (and speech) they don’t understand, so it seems particularly ironic that they’re now getting benchslapped for allowing AI hallucinated citations in legal filings. First, some background: NCOSE ha…
DOGE was always designed to provide flimsy pseudo-efficiency cover for wholesale corruption. It was designed to pretend that the government was “cutting waste and fraud” while a bunch of velour tracksuit wearing con men stripped the country for parts and sold what was left off the back loading dock.…
The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle gives you unlimited access to expertly crafted online courses, interactive labs and study tools. Whether you’re aiming for industry-recognized certifications or expanding your tech expertise, this bundle will help you get there with courses on…
It is zero surprise that the Supreme Court officially overturned its 91-year-old precedent first created in Humphrey’s Executor. That case held that when Congress designates an agency as independent of the executive branch, the president cannot just fire its commissioners. The Humphrey’s Executor op…
We’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. And while it doesn’t disappoint, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for celebration. Okello Chatrie has been challenging the geofence warrant that led to his arrest and prosecution since 2019(!). Nearly seven years later, he’s a step closer to… well…
Call me crazy, but I tend to think when Supreme Court Justices make a big sweeping statement in one case, they should actually follow it through with other cases. You may recall, for example, that in the Dobbs case, where the right to an abortion was overturned, Justice Samuel Alito took the ‘histor…
It should be obvious at this point that JD Vance is a purely political creature. There’s no virtue to find in there, no moral stances firmly taken, nor anything resembling a true political ideology. There is only the attainment and retention of more and more power. You need look no further than Vanc…
Last fall, Ezra Klein was getting a lot of attention for his book Abundance, which basically argued that American had become bureaucracy-obsessed and fallen out of love with building things. I thought it was mostly simplistic cack, downplaying or ignoring the fact that the U.S. government has become…
For years, rightsholders have pushed for broader site blocking orders, with no direct liability if these result in overblocking. EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 European internet service providers, is now asking the EU Commission to change that. The association points to a series of overblocki…
After more than fourteen years of legal battles, Kim Dotcom has lost his latest attempt to avoid extradition to the United States. New Zealand's Court of Appeal dismissed the Megaupload founder's challenge to the Justice Minister's surrender order, concluding that a likely U.S. prison sentence of at…
Join the next webinar organized by the Digital Security Helpline, to discuss key trends and strategies to keep at-risk actors safe online.
The post Stronger together: digital security and resilience for LGBTQ+ people appeared first on Access Now.
The post Submission on amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules, 2021”) appeared first on Access Now.
A follow up to our open letter regarding Microsoft’s formal review of recent allegations about Israel’s usage of Azure cloud for the surveillance and targeting of Palestinians.
The post Joint letter to Microsoft regarding Israeli military use of Azure cloud and AI services appeared first on Access …
Through a new joint letter, we're calling on Microsoft to publish the findings of its review into the Israeli military’s use of the company services.
The post Microsoft: it’s time to come clean about your ties to the Israeli military appeared first on Access Now.
You have an expectation of privacy in location data that reveals your movements in the physical world, and even short-term surveillance of these movements is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in Chatrie v. United States.
The case involved geofence warrant…
The Illinois legislature recently passed House Bill 5511, which imposes a sweeping, device-level age-gating framework across nearly all internet-enabled hardware, operating systems, and online services. This well-intentioned but deeply flawed piece of legislation will harm young people who rely on t…
This Pride, we’re answering all your digital rights questions in season two of our initiative, LGBT Q&A.
You Asked: I live in the UK, and we have age verification now on a bunch of websites (including Reddit) and now on iPhones. Can you explain what sort of data companies are actually collecting w…
The ability to access publicly available information using automated tools is a central value and benefit of a free and open internet. Automated access—often called crawling or scraping—powers important, useful tools for locating, preserving, and analyzing online information. For example, crawling a…
Well, perhaps the demise of the Stop Killing Games movement in the EU was overstated. We were just talking about how the attempt to introduce new legislation to support the goals of the movement were defeated, despite a petition with over a million signatures and a parliamentary hearing that reporte…
You might recall that one of the conditions of the FCC’s approval of The Ellison family’s $8 billion acquisition of CBS was that the agency would install a “ombudsman” at the network to ensure CBS journalism was appropriately feckless and deferential to our mad, idiot king. This was particularly iro…
This is not the only administration to engage in corruption. Most administrations have to some extent. It’s that corruption is the everyday, front-page business of this administration. It’s so brazen, it’s insulting. It demands Americans pretend nothing matters but what Trump wants and, to a lesser …
Dive into Godot – a rising star in the game engine world – with the 2026 Complete Godot Stack Development Bundle. You’ll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you’ll also explore tec…
Just a couple weeks ago, the European Commission put out its plan for “European tech sovereignty.” It’s not surprising that Europeans are looking at their internet platform options and seeing a choice between US companies and Chinese companies as something that isn’t that appealing. Of course, Europ…
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episod…
Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bil…
When we talk about the scourge of anti-vaxxer philosophy within the federal government, we naturally spend a great deal of that time talking about RFK Jr. He’s the Secretary of Health and Human Services and perhaps the most infamous anti-vaxxer on the planet, after all. But if you thought HHS was th…
For years, WIPO has tried to starve pirate sites of advertising money. Now it wants to cut off their payments too. A new system called "WIPO Alert Pay" lets rightsholders flag pirate and counterfeit sites to payment providers such as PayPal and Mastercard, who can then act under their own rules. In …
Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Michael' tops the chart, followed by 'Obsession.' 'Mortal Kombat II' completes the top three.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In a series of DMCA takedown requests, "FIFA World Cup" is asking Google to permanently remove various pirate site domain names from its search results. While FIFA certainly is protective of its intellectual property, the seemingly AI-generated notices could be the work of a rival pirate site that's…
After 180 days, Comcast can no longer say which customer was linked to a given IP address. This retention limit has kept old piracy accusations out of reach for years, but that's beginning to change. A series of BitTorrent lawsuits from film companies targets alleged pirates whose identities Strike …
A new report published by the EU Intellectual Property Office shows that the share of major brand advertising on pirate sites increased 80%. The problem is the worst on court-adjudicated pirate sites, where top brands account for more than half of all ads. The data further shows that anti-piracy blo…
One of Latin America's most-visited illegal sports streaming networks has been disrupted by ACE, UEFA, and Mexican authorities. The enforcement action targeted 44 domain names that were operating under popular sports streaming brands including PirloTV. While the enforcement effort appears to have di…
DNS4EU is a relatively young DNS provider that launched last year with European Commission funding. The company is pitched as a privacy-first alternative to Google and Cloudflare, but it also comes with site blocking in mind. DNS4EU has shown an interest in pirate site blocklists, including the one …
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of nearly 400 pirate streaming domain names that offered access to FIFA World Cup matches. This enforcement action, dubbed "Operation Offsides", targets popular brands including "rojadirecta", "koora", and "futbollibre". TorrentFreak tracked down …
El lanzamiento de LatamGPT, un sistema de procesamiento de lenguaje natural hecho por y para América Latina nos lleva a analizar dónde estamos y qué pasos debemos priorizar en esta región en cuanto a innovación técnica.
The post La receta para una inteligencia artificial con sabor latinoamericano ap…
A Citizen Lab investigation confirms evidence Russian authorities used Cellebrite tool to hack prominent Russian activist Andrey Pivovarov after the Cellebrite claimed to have ceased sales to Russia.
The post Russia used Cellebrite tool to jail activist after company claimed to have ended contract …
The Trump administration’s approach to AI safety, particularly the generative AI models that regularly grab headlines, has been haphazard at best. At worst, it’s unconstitutional. As EFF and our allies explained in an amicus brief, the Pentagon’s actions against one company, Anthropic, violate the F…
Late last year, as part of our annual “Year in Review” series, we summarized our efforts providing digital privacy and security advice to at-risk communities. OPSEC trainings (short for operational security, a catch-all term we use to describe any kind of workshop, advising session, assessment, or p…
Court records belong to the public. Yet anyone seeking access to federal court filings through PACER, a government software system that stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, is usually required to pay hefty fees to search for and view documents. PACER’s fees have long acted as a bar…
Last week, Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden introduced the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression, or JAWBONE Act. The bipartisan legislation creates a federal cause of action against government officials who coerce or attempt to coerce broadcasters, interactive com…
This Pride season, join EFF and the Queer Arts Collective in building a creative space at the intersection of digital justice and artistic expression.
We’re looking for fresh, untold, historically censored takes on digital liberation.
Whether it’s pointing the lens towards an issue you feel is und…
EFF is grateful for SerpApi’s generous support, helping us fight for your rights to speak and access information online. SerpApi has been giving to EFF every year since 2018, and alongside our 32,000 individual donors, their gift is critical to keeping up the fight.
Whether in the courts, halls of p…
With no serious debate, including on proposed amendments, Canada is blazing full speed ahead with Bill C-22, which would threaten encryption and increase surveillance. Also known as the Lawful Access Bill, Bill C-22 is currently moving forward quickly to a vote despite the many, many criticisms civi…
This week, EFF joined Foxglove, Human Rights Watch, and 60 other organizations in writing to the UK’s Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, raising serious concern about the Home Office’s decision to deploy Facial Age Estimation (FAE) to assess asylum-seeking children from 2…
This week, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027.
The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response …
Sold to the public as a foreign surveillance tool, Section 702 is the law has let intelligence agencies spy on millions of Americans’ private conversations without a warrant. Despite years of revelations about this law's misuse, Congress has repeatedly reauthorized Section 702 without meaningful ref…
Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bil…
When a car passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), its plate is captured and instantly compared against a list of vehicles that police are actively looking for or that police have identified for real-time surveillance. These are called “hotlists,” and EFF has learned that one used by agenci…
The Federal Communications Commission wants to require telecommunications providers to collect vast amounts of personal information from every person who wants a phone number in the name of combatting scam and spam calls. This plan will fail to combat the deluge of unwanted calls people in the Unite…
This week marks four years since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for people seeking abortion care. Anniversaries are a moment to take stock, and over the last four years, EFF has seen firsthand how digital rights and reproductive right…
Seeking transparency and accountability in Paraguay’s use of facial recognition, EFF, the Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC), and the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights …
Time and time again, researchers have found numerous compromised Android devices for sale at large online retailers like Amazon. When these devices get individually reported, we have seen some noted efforts to take them down. But this is a systemic problem and Amazon and other major online retailers…
Ignoring EFF’s warnings about the dangers and impossibility of implementing a new mandate for 3D print surveillance software, the California State Assembly has signed off on legislation to do just that. In the process, legislators amended the bill to make it even more confusing, while failing to add…
This is not science fiction. It’s not premature. If towns, cities, states, or the federal government want to act to reign in the emergence of armed police drones and robots, we have precious little time. In the absence of substantial regulation around when and how domestic law enforcement in the Uni…
Poke your head into just about any online social network—or any general conversations about internet culture—and you’ll likely find a boogieman: the algorithm. Since at least the moment Facebook introduced (and apologized for) its News Feed, “the algorithm” has been shorthand for the ways the tech g…
This Pride month, we’re calling on the dating app Grindr to prioritize LGBTQ+ user safety by making privacy the default across its platform. That means no more sharing personal data with advertisers or training AI on private information without users’ opt-in consent.
Grindr is a dating app for the L…
There’s something going on over in Microsoft’s Xbox division and it isn’t good. Don’t take my word on that. Apparently the bosses over there are circulating an email to staff talking about how properly fucked everyone is if something doesn’t change soon. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox Game Studios he…
CNN brass have been waiting to get federal approval of their problematic $111 billion merger with Paramount. As we’ve detailed exhaustively, the high debt load from the CBS/Paramount and Warner Brothers merges is going to result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, and sagging quality control at…
On Friday, the government’s Section 702 surveillance authority lapsed! It may be temporary, but it’s still an important milestone. Section 702 was one of the surveillance programs Ed Snowden exposed in 2013 — and even after the exposure, the NSA has continued abusing it to spy on Americans. It’s the…
The Adobe Graphic Design Bundle has 3 courses designed to help you learn the essentials of graphic design and how to apply those skills to your projects. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You’ll learn all aspects of the design process. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals…
The US military has engaged in extrajudicial killings via drone strikes since it was first shown this tech could be used to murder people. The War on Terror has given us more than two decades of drone strikes — all of which have used war-related justifications to excuse them without the actual autho…
You have less than a week to weigh in on Brendan Carr’s obviously bullshit retaliatory censorial attack on Disney. While it’s quite clear that Carr is likely to ignore the comments, they still very much matter. It needs to be in the public record that the public is against this attack on free speech…
The internet is an essential resource for young people and adults to access information, explore community, and find themselves—both inside countries and across continents. Yet governments around the world continue to introduce and implement legislation requiring all online users to verify their age…
We were just talking about how angry RFK Jr. was at a report that he’s been out to lunch on most of what HHS’ work entails, choosing instead to focus his time and attention on his own pet interests, like curtailing vaccine programs in America, chasing chemtrails, and a newfound love for snake-handli…
For a long time organizations like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis disproportionately pollutes the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn…
If there’s one thing that Donald Trump has shown over the years, it’s that he will get his most sycophantic MAGA loyalists to insist there are perfectly obvious reasons why whatever he’s about to do is absolutely necessary… and then Trump will do the opposite, and all those hangers-on will magically…
With the FIFA World Cup coming up soon, the organizers of one of Mexico's host cities have asked the country's consumer watchdog to warn the public off pirate streaming services, including KaelusTV, ThunderTV, and Sunset TV. The government is not eager to step in to protect the commercial broadcast …
Elon Musk's X Corp has filed a motion to dismiss the multi-million dollar music piracy lawsuit, which was recently amended following the Cox Supreme Court ruling. X says the new complaint is partly based on a tweet that was pulled out of context. It argues that even the full version falls short of …
Less than a month after a New York court issued a default judgment against shadow library Anna's Archive, thirteen major publishers have sued WeLib. The publishers characterize WeLib as a young but popular pirate site that was largely copied from Anna's Archive. The site is allegedly used by tech co…
We, the undersigned civil society organizations, condemn in the strongest possible terms the cyberattack on the World Food Programme (WFP) that took place on May 14, 2026, exposing the personal data of 600,000 Palestinian households in Gaza.
The post Surveilled, targeted, and now hacked: WFP must pr…
An EFF analysis of millions of searches of Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) data by police has uncovered a troubling pattern: in the absence of a warrant requirement to search ALPR databases, law enforcement agencies have moved beyond specific investigations to use these surveillan…
The NO FAKES Act is supposed to target harmful AI-generated impersonations. But in reality, it will make it easier to suppress commentary, satire, and other lawful speech. That's why EFF has signed a letter urging the Senate Judiciary Committee not to advance the bill in its current form.
Take actio…
The ability to access publicly available information using automated tools is a central value and benefit of a free and open internet. Automated access—often called crawling or scraping—powers important, useful tools for locating, preserving, and analyzing online information. For example, crawling a…
Last week Elon Musk successfully conned America and U.S. regulators into signing off on his preposterous SpaceX IPO, which immediately generated Musk $75 billion by comically over-stating the value of SpaceX, xAI, and Starlink. Then bone-grafting the entire pile of bullshit to the U.S. economy and y…
Just once I’d like to see this administration engage in the slightest bit of subtlety. Just once. It would be a refreshing change from literally everything it has done during this current iteration. Sure, it’s easier to prove actions are vindictive if they’re transparently vindictive. On the other h…
To completely understand computer security, it’s vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It’s also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, …
Yesterday we wrote about the Trump administration forcing Anthropic to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The short version: dumb. Today, Axios got White House officials on the record, and it turns out the real reason is even dumber than we thought. In that original piece, we had pointed out that cyber…
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not having a particularly good time of being the UK’s leader. Basically everyone thinks he’s doing a terrible job and it seems unlikely that he’ll be in the role much longer. Apparently desperate to turn the tide on being historically disliked, he’s decided to grab …
For the first time in Canada, a site-blocking order has been issued that specifically targets YouTube rippers. The Federal Court has ordered major ISPs to block access to Y2Mate, YTMP3, and Savefrom domains. Interestingly, the order targets copycats, as the original Savefrom site preemptively starte…
El vínculo entre la desinformación y la privacidad La desinformación impulsada por internet y el uso de las redes sociales supone un desafío que muchos hacedores de políticas están abordando
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Each year sees an increase in the number of governments imposing internet shutdowns during national school exams. It's time to take action and demand change! #NoExamShutdown
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After 26 years, today is my last day at EFF. It's been a terrific and wild ride — the organization has grown from a tiny band of fighty people trying to plant a flag for freedom and justice in the coming digital world into a large, established band of fighty people doing, well, much the same. The wo…
We should all know at this point that RFK Jr. is bad at his job as Secretary of HHS. But that simplistic statement apparently needs something of a qualifier. Instead, it appears we should say that RFK Jr. is bad at the parts of his job that he chooses to do. Because, according to a […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Robert Freetard with a comment on our post about AI replacing workers: Ultimately the the best positions to replace in a company with AI The best positions to replace in a company with AI is the CEO and other C* positions. They do NO […]
Last month I noted how the Trump FCC had unveiled a brand new plan to “stop robocalls.” As with most efforts the proposal doesn’t actually do much to stop robocalls because a well-lobbied U.S. government (1) refuses to hold big companies accountable or collect fines, (2) constantly embraces weak rul…
Cops are human beings. Despite constantly pretending they’re on a higher plane (see also: Thin Blue Line, etc.), they’re just as fallible as anyone else. Especially now. This occupation is self-selecting. Righting wrongs is rarely the main draw. It’s almost always the immense of amount of power that…
The Lifetime Learner Bundle feature access to uTalk and Stack Skills. Through uTalk, you’ll be able to speak keywords and phrases in no time and will start to see the results straight away. You can pick 6 languages to learn from their library of 140+ languages. You also get access to Stack Skills, t…
Late Friday, Anthropic shut down access to its just-released Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after the Trump administration slapped export controls on them — treating cutting-edge AI, in other words, like weapons. The trigger, it turns out, was a jailbreak. And the entity that tipped off the government?…
The Trump “Department of Justice’s” “antitrust division” dumped its unsurprising approval of the terrible Paramount Warner Brothers merger late on Friday in the hopes people wouldn’t notice it. As we’ve noted the $111 billion megadeal is a historically harmful mess. Backed by billions in Saudi and C…
What’s most disturbing about Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order isn’t its fully-blinkered, jingoistic take on American history where America does no wrong and is almost always white right. I mean, that’s pretty awful on its own, but it’s the flip side of pretend…
The Premier League has requested a DMCA subpoena in an attempt to unmask the operators of 25 pirate sports streaming sites. The domain names were registered through Tucows, which is asked to hand over all personal details of the operators. Interestingly, the football league's own evidence shows the …
Italy's Guardia di Finanza dismantled a piracy system it says it had never seen until now, carrying out more than 100 searches and seizures. The system relied on an app called CinemaGoal that constantly passed on the access codes of legitimate Sky, DAZN, Netflix, Spotify and Disney+ accounts to its …
To keep their piracy lawsuit alive, adult film producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media don't have to prove Meta used their films for AI training. A California federal judge has denied Meta's motion to dismiss, ruling that the alleged torrenting is itself the infringement. Additionally, the…
كشف تحقيق جديد أجراه فريق خط المساعدة للأمن الرقمي التابع لمنظمة أكسس ناو عن هجمة تصيّد إلكتروني مأجورة، استهدفت اثنين من الصحفيين المصريين البارزين والمعارضين .للحكومة
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