Deeplinks

Creating and sharing knowledge are defining traits of humankind, yet copyright law has grown so restrictive that it can require acts of civil disobedience to ensure that students and scholars have the books they need and to preserve swaths of culture from being lost forever.

Reputable research generally follows a familiar pattern: Scientific articles are written by scholars based on their research—often with public funding. Those articles are then peer-reviewed by other scholars in their fields and revisions are made according to those comments. Afterwards, most large publishers expect to be given the copyright on the article as a condition of packaging it up and selling it back to the institutions that employ the academics who did the research and to the public at large. Because research is valuable and because copyright is a monopoly on disseminating the articles in question, these publishers can charge exorbitant fees that place a strain even on wealthy universities and are simply out of reach for the general public or universities with limited budgets, such as those in the global south. The result is a global human rights problem.

This model is broken, yet science goes on thanks to widespread civil disobedience of the copyright regime that locks up the knowledge created by researchers. Some turn to social media to ask that a colleague with access share articles they need (despite copyright’s prohibitions on sharing). Certainly, at least some such sharing is protected fair use, but scholars should not have to seek a legal opinion or risk legal threats from publishers to share the collective knowledge they generate.

Even more useful, though on shakier legal ground, are so-called “shadow archives” and aggregators such as SciHub, Library Genesis (LibGen), Z-Library, or Anna’s Archive. These are the culmination of efforts from volunteers dedicated to defending science.

SciHub alone handles tens of millions of requests for scientific articles each year and remains operational despite adverse court rulings thanks both to being based in Russia, and to the community of academics who see it as an ethical response to the high access barriers that publishers impose and provide it their log-on credentials so it can retrieve requested articles. SciHub and LibGen are continuations of samizdat, the Soviet-era practice of disobeying state censorship in the interests of learning and free speech.

Unless publishing gatekeepers adopt drastically more equitable practices and become partners in disseminating knowledge, they will continue to lose ground to open access alternatives, legal or otherwise.

EFF is proud to celebrate Open Access Week.

In early September, EFF submitted an amicus brief to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court supporting a constitutional challenge filed by Ecuadorian NGOs, including INREDH and LaLibre. The case challenges the constitutionality of the Ley Orgánica de Inteligencia (LOI) and its implementing regulation, the General Regulation of the LOI.

EFF’s amicus brief argues that the LOI enables disproportionate surveillance and secrecy that undermine constitutional and Inter-American human rights standards. EFF urges the Constitutional Court to declare the LOI and its regulation unconstitutional in their entirety.

More specifically, our submission notes that:

“The LOI presents a structural flaw that undermines compliance with the principles of legality, legitimate purpose, suitability, necessity, and proportionality; it inverts the rule and the exception, with serious harm to rights enshrined constitutionally and under the Convention; and it prioritizes indeterminate state interests, in contravention of the ultimate aim of intelligence activities and state action, namely the protection of individuals, their rights, and freedoms.”

The LOI contains key terms like “national security,” “integral security of the State,” “threats,” and “risks” that are left either undefined or so broadly framed that they could mean almost anything. This vagueness grants intelligence agencies wide, unchecked discretion, and fails short of the standard of legal certainty required under the American Convention on Human Rights (CADH).

The LOI makes secrecy the rule rather than the exception, reversing the Inter-American principle of maximum disclosure, which holds that access to information should be the norm and secrecy a narrowly justified exception. The law establishes a classification system—“restricted,” “secret,” and “top secret”—for intelligence and counterintelligence information, but without clear, verifiable parameters to guide its application on a case-by-case basis. As a result, all information produced by the governing body (ente rector) of the National Intelligence System is classified as secret by default. Moreover, intelligence budgets and spending are insulated from meaningful public oversight, concentrated under a single authority, and ultimately destroyed, leaving no mechanism for accountability.

The LOI leaves intelligence agencies to regulate themselves, with almost no external scrutiny. Civilian oversight is minimal, limited to occasional, closed-door briefings before a parliamentary commission that lacks real access to information or decision making power. This structure offers no guarantee of independent or judicial supervision and instead fosters an environment where intelligence operations can proceed without transparency or accountability.

The LOI allows access to communications, databases, and personal data without prior judicial order, which enables the mass surveillance of electronic communications, metadata, and databases across public and private entities—including telecommunication operators. This directly contradicts rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which establish that any restriction of the right to privacy must be necessary, proportionate, and subject to independent oversight. It also runs counter to CAJAR vs. Colombia, which affirms that intrusive surveillance requires prior judicial authorization.

Our amicus curiae draws on the CAJAR vs. Colombia judgment, which set strict standards for intelligence activities. Crucially, Ecuador’s LOI fall short of all these tests: it doesn’t constitute an adequate legal basis for limiting rights; contravenes necessary and proportionate principles; fails to ensure robust controls and safeguards, like prior judicial authorization and solid civilian oversight; and completely disregards related data protection guarantees and data subject’s rights.

At its core, the LOI structurally prioritizes vague notions of “state interest” over the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It legalizes secrecy, unchecked surveillance, and the impunity of intelligence agencies. For these reasons, we urge Ecuador’s Constitutional Court to declare the LOI and its regulations unconstitutional, as they violate both the Ecuadorian Constitution and the American Convention on Human Rights (CADH).

Read our full amicus brief here to learn more about how Ecuador’s intelligence framework undermines privacy, transparency, and the human rights protected under Inter-American human rights law.

Technology is supercharging the attack on democracy by making it easier to spy on people, block free speech, and control what we do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s activists, lawyers, and technologists are fighting back. Join the movement to Take Back CTRL.

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Take Back CTRL is EFF's new website to give you insight into the ways that technology has become the veins and arteries of rising global authoritarianism. It’s not just because of technology’s massive power to surveil, categorize, censor, and make decisions for governments—but also because the money made by selling your data props up companies and CEOs with clear authoritarian agendas. As the preeminent digital rights organization, EFF has a clear role to play.

EFF was created for scary moments like the one we’re facing now. For 35 years, EFF has fought to ensure your rights follow you online and wherever you use technology. We’ve sued, we’ve analyzed, we’ve hacked, we’ve argued, and we’ve helped people be heard in halls of power.

But we're still missing something. You.

Because it's your rights we're fighting for:

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The Take Back CTRL campaign highlights the work that EFF is doing to fight for our democracy, defend vulnerable members of our community, and stand up against the use of tech in this authoritarian takeover. It also features actions everyone can take to support EFF’s work, use our tools in their everyday lives, and fight back.

Help us spread the word:

Stop tech from dismantling democracy. Join the movement to Take Back CTRL of our rights. https://eff.org/tbc

EFF usually warns of new horrors threatening your rights online, but this Halloween we’ve summoned a few of our own we’d like to share.  Our new Signal Sticker Pack highlights some creatures—both mythical and terrifying—conjured up by our designers for you to share this spooky season.

If you’re new to Signal, it's a free and secure messaging app built by the nonprofit Signal Foundation at the forefront of defending user privacy. While chatting privately, you can add some seasonal flair with Signal Stickers, and rest assured: friends receiving them get the full sticker pack fully encrypted, safe from prying eyes and lurking spirits.

On any mobile device or desktop with the Signal app installed, you can simply click the button below.

Download EFF's Signal Stickers

To share Frights and Rights  

You can also paste the sticker link directly into a signal chat, and then tap it to download the pack directly to the app.

Once they’re installed, they are even easier to share—simply open a chat, tap the sticker menu on your keyboard, and send one of EFF’s spooky stickers.  They’ll then be asked if they’d like to also have the sticker pack.

All of this works without any third parties knowing what sticker packs you have or whom you shared them with. Our little ghosts and ghouls are just between us.

These familiar champions of digital rights—The Encryptids—are back! Don’t let their monstrous looks fool you; each one advocates for privacy, security, and a dash of weirdness in their own way. Whether they’re shouting about online anonymity or the importance of interoperability, they’re ready to help you share your love for digital rights. Learn more about their stories here, and you can even grab a bigfoot pin to let everyone know that privacy is a “human” right.

On a cool autumn night, you might be on the lookout for ghosts and ghouls from your favorite horror flicks—but in the real world, there are far scarier monsters lurking in the dark: police surveillance technologies. Often hidden in plain sight, these tools quietly watch from the shadows and are hard to spot. That’s why we’ve given these tools the hideous faces they deserve in our Street-Level Surveillance Monsters series, ready to scare (and inform) your loved ones.

Ask any online creator and they’ll tell you: few things are scarier than a copyright takedown. From unfair DMCA claims and demonetization to frivolous lawsuits designed to intimidate people into a hefty payment, the creeping expansion of copyright can inspire as much dread as any monster on the big screen. That’s why this pack includes a few trolls and creeps straight from a broken copyright system—where profit haunts innovation. 

To that end, all of EFF’s work (including these stickers) are under an open CC-BY License, free for you to use and remix as you see fit.

These frights may disappear with your message, but the fights persist. That’s why we’re so grateful to EFF supporters for helping us make the digital world a little more weird and a little less scary. You can become a member today and grab some gear to show your support. Happy Halloween!

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Should you have to think twice before posting a protest flyer to your Instagram story? Or feel pressure to delete that bald JD Vance meme that you shared? Now imagine that you could get kicked out of the country—potentially losing your job or education—based on the Trump administration’s dislike of your views on social media. 

That threat to free expression and dissent is happening now, but we won’t let it stand. 

"...they're not just targeting individuals—they're targeting the very idea of freedom itself."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-counsel are representing the United Automobile Workers (UAW), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security for their viewpoint-based surveillance and suppression of noncitizens’ First Amendment-protected speech online.  The lawsuit asks a federal court to stop the government’s unconstitutional surveillance program, which has silenced citizens and noncitizens alike. It has even hindered unions’ ability to associate with their members. 

"When they spy on, silence, and fire union members for speaking out, they're not just targeting individuals—they're targeting the very idea of freedom itself,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. 

The Trump administration has built this mass surveillance program to monitor the constitutionally protected online speech of noncitizens who are lawfully present in the U.S. The program uses AI and automated technologies to scour social media and other online platforms to identify and punish individuals who express viewpoints the government considers "hostile" to "our culture" and "our civilization".  But make no mistake: no one should be forced to conform to the views of the state. 

Your free expression and privacy are fundamental human rights, and democracy crumbles without them. We have an opportunity to fight back, but we need you.  EFF’s team of lawyers, activists, researchers, and technologists have been on a mission to protect your freedom online since 1990, and we’re just getting started.

Donate and become a member of EFF today. Your support helps protect crucial rights, online and off, for everyone.

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NEW YORK—The United Automobile Workers (UAW), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed a lawsuit today against the Departments of State and Homeland Security for their viewpoint-based surveillance and suppression of protected expression online. The complaint asks a federal court to stop this unconstitutional surveillance program, which has silenced and frightened both citizens and noncitizens, and hampered the ability of the unions to associate with their members and potential members. The case is titled UAW v. State Department.

Since taking power, the Trump administration has created a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. Using AI and other automated technologies, the program surveils the social media accounts of visa holders with the goal of identifying and punishing those who express viewpoints the government doesn't like. This has been paired with a public intimidation campaign, silencing not just noncitizens with immigration status, but also the families, coworkers, and friends with whom their lives are integrated.

As detailed in the complaint, when asked in a survey if they had changed their social media activity as a result of the Trump administration's ideological online surveillance program, over 60 percent of responding UAW members and over 30 percent of responding CWA members who were aware of the program said they had. Among noncitizens, these numbers were even higher. Of respondents aware of the program, over 80 percent of UAW members who were not U.S. citizens and over 40 percent of CWA members who were not U.S. citizens said they had changed their activity online.

Individual union members reported refraining from posting, refraining from sharing union content, deleting posts, and deleting entire accounts in response to the ideological online surveillance program. Criticism of the Trump administration or its policies was the most common type of content respondents reported changing their social media activity around. Many members also reported altering their offline union activity in response to the program, including avoiding being publicly identified as part of the unions and reducing their participation in rallies and protests. One member even said they declined to report a wage theft claim due to fears arising from the surveillance program.

Represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Muslim Advocates (MA), and the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic (MFIA), the UAW, CWA, and AFT seek to halt the program that affects thousands of their members individually and has harmed the ability of the unions to organize, represent, and recruit members. The lawsuit argues that the viewpoint-based online surveillance program violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

"The Trump administration's use of surveillance to track and intimidate UAW members is a direct assault on the First Amendment—and an attack on every working person in this country," said UAW President Shawn Fain. "When they spy on, silence, and fire union members for speaking out, they're not just targeting individuals—they're targeting the very idea of freedom itself. The right to protest, to organize, to speak without fear—that's the foundation of American democracy. If they can come for UAW members at our worksites, they can come for any one of us tomorrow. And we will not stand by and let that happen."

"Every worker should be alarmed by the Trump administration’s online surveillance program," said CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. "The labor movement is built on our freedoms under the First Amendment to speak and assemble without fear retaliation by the government. The unconstitutional Challenged Surveillance Program threatens those freedoms and explicitly targets those who are critical of the administration and its policies. This policy interferes with CWA members’ ability to express their points of view online and organize to improve their working conditions."

"Free speech is the foundation of democracy in America," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "The Trump administration has rejected that core constitutional right and now says only speech it agrees with is permitted—and that it will silence those who disagree. This suit exposes the online surveillance tools and other cyber tactics never envisioned by the founders to enforce compliance with the administration’s views. It details the direct harms on both the target of these attacks and the chilling effect on all those we represent and teach."

"Using a variety of AI and automated tools, the government can now conduct viewpoint-based surveillance and analysis on a scale that was never possible with human review alone," said EFF Staff Attorney Lisa Femia. "The scale of this spying is matched by an equally massive chilling effect on free speech."

"The administration is hunting online for an ever-growing list of disfavored viewpoints," said Golnaz Fakhimi, Legal Director of Muslim Advocates. "Its goal is clear: consolidate authoritarian power by crushing dissent, starting with noncitizens, but certainly not ending there. This urgent lawsuit aims to put a stop to this power grab and defend First Amendment freedoms crucial to a pluralistic and democratic society."

"This case goes to the heart of the First Amendment," said Anthony Cosentino, a student in the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic. "The government can’t go after people for saying things it doesn’t like. The current administration has ignored that principle, developing a vast surveillance apparatus to find and punish people for their constitutionally protected speech. It is an extraordinary abuse of power, creating a climate of fear not seen in this country since the McCarthy era, especially on college campuses. Our laws and Constitution will not allow it."

For the complaint: https://www.eff.org/document/uaw-v-dos-complaint

For more about the litigation: https://eff.org/cases/united-auto-workers-v-us-department-state

Contacts:
Electronic Frontier Foundation: [email protected]
Muslim Advocates: [email protected]

Instead of catching you off-guard with a jump scare this Halloween season, EFF is here to catch you up on the latest digital rights news with our EFFector newsletter!

In this issue, we’re helping you take control of your online privacy with Opt Out October; explaining the UK’s attack on encryption and why it’s bad for all users; and covering shocking new details about an abortion surveillance case in Texas.

Prefer to listen in? Check out our audio companion, where EFF Security and Privacy Activist Thorin Klosowski explains how small steps to protect your privacy can add up to big changes.  Catch the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive.

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EFFECTOR 37.14 - 🎃 A FULL MONTH OF PRIVACY TIPS FROM EFF

Since 1990 EFF has published EFFector to help keep readers on the bleeding edge of their digital rights. We know that the intersection of technology, civil liberties, human rights, and the law can be complicated, so EFFector is a great way to stay on top of things. The newsletter is chock full of links to updates, announcements, blog posts, and other stories to help keep readers—and listeners—up to date on the movement to protect online privacy and free expression. 

Thank you to the supporters around the world who make our work possible! If you're not a member yet, join EFF today to help us fight for a brighter digital future.

California Governor Newsom has signed S.B. 524, a bill that begins the long process of regulating and imposing transparency on the growing problem of AI-written police reports. EFF supported this bill and has spent the last year vocally criticizing the companies pushing AI-generated police reports as a service. 

S.B.524 requires police to disclose, on the report, if it was used to fully or in part author a police report. Further, it bans vendors from selling or sharing the information a police agency provided to the AI. 

The bill is also significant because it required departments to retain the first draft of the report so that judges, defense attorneys, or auditors could readily see which portions of the final report were written by the officer and which portions were written by the computer. This creates major problems for police who use the most popular product in this space: Axon’s Draft One. By design, Draft One does not retain an edit log of who wrote what. Now, to stay in compliance with the law, police departments will either need Axon to change their product, or officers will have to take it upon themselves to go retain evidence of what the draft of their report looked like. Or, police can drop Axon’s Draft One all together. 

EFF will continue to monitor whether departments are complying with this state law.

After Utah, California has become the second state to pass legislation that begins to address this problem. Because of the lack of transparency surrounding how police departments buy and deploy technology, it’s often hard to know if police departments are using AI to write reports, how the generative AI chooses to translate audio to a narrative, and which portions of reports are written by AI and which parts are written by the officers. EFF has written a guide to help you file public records requests that might shed light on your police department’s use of AI to write police reports. 

It’s still unclear if products like Draft One run afoul of record retention laws, and how AI-written police reports will impact the criminal justice system. We will need to consider more comprehensive regulation and perhaps even prohibition of this use of generative AI. But S.B. 524 is a good first step. We hope that more states will follow California and Utah’s lead and pass even stronger bills.

In a letter sent to Microsoft at the end of last month, EFF and five other civil society organizations—Access Now, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh—called on the company to cease any further involvement in providing AI and cloud computing technologies for use in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

EFF also sent updated letters to Google and Amazon renewing our calls for each company to respond to the serious concerns we raised with each of them last year about how they are fulfilling their respective human rights promises to the public. Neither Google nor Amazon has responded substantively. Amazon failed to even acknowledge our request, much less provide any transparency to the public. 

On September 25, Microsoft’s Vice Chair & President reported that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services” provided to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense. The announcement followed an internal review at the company after The Guardian reported on August 6 that the IDF is using Azure for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call also revealed the extent to which Israel’s military intelligence unit in question, Unit 8200, has used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and AI technologies to process intercepted communications and power AI-driven targeting systems against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—potentially facilitating war crimes and acts of genocide.

Microsoft’s actions are a positive step, and we urge its competitors Google and Amazon to, at the very least, do the same, rather than continuing to support and facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  

But this must be the starting point, and not the end. Our joint letter therefore calls on Microsoft to provide clarity around:

Microsoft’s announcement of an internal review and the suspension of some of its services is long overdue and much needed in addressing its potential complicity in human rights abuses. But it must not end here, and Microsoft should not be the only major technology company taking such action.  

EFF, Access Now, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh provided a deadline of October 10 for Microsoft to respond to the questions outlined in the letter. However, Microsoft is expected to send its written response by the end of the month, and we will publish the response once received.

Read the full letter to Microsoft here.

Online surveillance is everywhere—and understanding how you’re being tracked, and how to fight back, is more important than ever. That’s why EFF partnered with Women In Security and Privacy (WISP) for our annual Global Members’ Speakeasy, where we tackled online behavioral tracking and the massive data broker industry that profits from your personal information. 

Our live panel featured Rory Mir (EFF Associate Director of Community Organizing), Lena Cohen (EFF Staff Technologist), Mitch Stoltz (EFF IP Litigation Director) and Yael Grauer, Program Manager at Consumer Reports. Together, they unpacked how we arrived at a point where a handful of major tech companies dictate so much of our digital rights, how these monopolies erode privacy, and what real-world consequences come from constant data collection—and most importantly, what you can do to fight back. 

Members also joined in for a lively Q&A, exploring practical steps to opt out of some of this data collection, discussing the efficacy of privacy laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and sharing tools and tactics to reclaim control over their data. 

We're always excited to find new ways to connect with our supporters and spotlight the critical work that their donations make possible. And because we want everyone to learn from these conversations, you can now watch the full conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive: 

WATCH THE FULL DISCUSSION

EFF’s Global Member Speakeasy: You Are the Product 

Events like the annual Global Members’ Speakeasy are just one way we like to thank our members for powering EFF’s mission. When you become a member, you’re not only supporting our legal battles, research, and advocacy for digital freedom—you’re joining a global community of people who care deeply about defending privacy and free expression for everyone. 

Join EFF today, and you’ll receive invitations for future member events, quarterly insider updates on our most important work, and some conversation-starting EFF gear to help you spread the word about online freedom. 

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us and our partners at WISP for helping make this event happen. We’re already planning upcoming in-person and virtual events, and we can’t wait to see you there.