Deeplinks

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 image that shows no wrongdoing. Yet, Bini remained arbitrarily detained for 70 days in 2019 and outrageously remains under criminal prosecution.

This week, the Observation Mission monitoring Ola Bini’s case is again calling out the prosecution’s inaccuracies and abuses that weaponize misunderstandings about computer security, undermining both Bini’s rights and digital security more broadly. The Observation Mission is comprised of digital and human rights organizations, including EFF. Specifically, we highlight how Ecuadorean law enforcement authorities have tried to associate the use of Tor, a crucial privacy protection tool, with inherently suspicious activity. 

Following a RightsCon 2025 session about the flaws and risks of such an interpretation, we are releasing this week a technical statement (see below) pointing out why Ecuadorean courts must reaffirm Bini’s innocence and repudiate misconceptions about technology and technical knowledge that only disguise the prosecutor’s lack of evidence supporting the accusations against Bini. 

Let’s not forget that Bini was unanimously acquitted in early 2023. Nonetheless, the Prosecutor’s Office appealed and the majority of the appeals court considered him guilty of attempted unauthorized access of a telecommunications system. The reasoning leading to this conclusion has many problems, including mixing the concepts of private and public IP addresses and disregarding key elements of the acquittal sentence.  

The ruling also refers to the use of Tor. Among other issues, the prosecution argued that Tor is not a tool known by any person except for technical experts since its purpose is to hide your identity on the internet while leaving no trace you're using it. As we stressed at RightsCon, this argument turns the use of a privacy-protective, security-enhancing technology into an indication of suspicious criminal activity, which is a dangerous extrapolation of the “nothing-to-hide argument.” 

The prosecutor’s logic, which the majority appeal ruling endorses, is if you’re keeping your online activities private it’s because you’re most likely doing something wrong, instead of we all have privacy rights, so we are entitled to use technologies that ensure privacy and security by default. 

Backing such an understanding in a court ruling sets an extremely worrying precedent for privacy and security online. The use of Tor must not be up for grabs when a prosecutor lacks actual evidence to sustain a criminal case.

Bini’s defense has appealed the unfounded conviction. We remain vigilant, hoping that the Ecuadorean judicial system will correct the course as per basic tenets of the right to a fair trial, recognizing the weakness of the case rather than surrendering to pressure and prejudice. It's past time for justice to prevail in this case. Six years of a lingering flimsy prosecution coupled with the undue restriction of Bini’s fundamental rights is already far too long.

Read the English translation of the statement below (see here the original one in Spanish):

TECHNICAL STATEMENT
Ola Bini’s innocence must be reaffirmed 

In the context of RightsCon Taipei 2025, the Observation Mission of the Ola Bini case and the Tor Project organized a virtual session to analyze the legal proceedings against the digital security expert in Ecuador and to discuss to what extent and with what implications the use of the Tor digital tool is criminalized1. In that session, which included organizations and speakers from civil society from different countries, we reached the following conclusions and technical consensuses: 

For these reasons, and six years after the beginning of Ola Bini’s criminal case, the undersigned civil society organizations call on the relevant Ecuadorian judicial authorities to reaffirm Bini’s presumption of innocence at the appropriate procedural stage, as was the first instance ruling demonstrated.

The Observation Mission will continue monitoring the development of the case until its conclusion, to ensure compliance with due process guarantees and to raise awareness of the case’s implications for the protection of digital rights.

1. RightsCon is the leading global summit on human rights in the digital age, organized by Access Now. ↩

2. See https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Informe-final-Caso-Ola-Bini.pdf ↩

3. The Tribunal is composed of Maritza Romero, Fabián Fabara and Narcisa Pacheco. The majority decision is from Fabara and Pacheco. ↩

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 “keep children safe online,” more times than not, notions of safety rest on the ability of platforms, websites, and online entities being able to discern users by age. This legislative trend has also arrived in the European Union, where online child safety is becoming one of the issues that will define European tech policy for years to come. 

Like many policymakers elsewhere, European regulators are increasingly focused on a range of online harms they believe are associated with online platforms, such as compulsive design and the effects of social media consumption on children’s and teenagers’ mental health. Many of these concerns lack robust scientific evidence; studies have drawn a far more complex and nuanced picture about how social media and young people’s mental health interact. Still, calls for mandatory age verification have become as ubiquitous as they have become trendy. Heads of state in France and Denmark have recently called for banning under 15 year olds from social media Europe-wide, while Germany, Greece and Spain are working on their own age verification pilots. 

EFF has been fighting age verification mandates because they undermine the free expression rights of adults and young people alike, create new barriers to internet access, and put at risk all internet users’ privacy, anonymity, and security. We do not think that requiring service providers to verify users’ age is the right approach to protecting people online. 

Policy makers frame age verification as a necessary tool to prevent children from accessing content deemed unsuitable, to be able to design online services appropriate for children and teenagers, and to enable minors to participate online in age appropriate ways. Rarely is it acknowledged that age verification undermines the privacy and free expression rights of all users, routinely blocks access to resources that can be life saving, and undermines the development of media literacy. Rare, too, are critical conversations about the specific rights of young users: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly expresses that minors have rights to freedom of expression and access to information online, as well as the right to privacy. These rights are reflected in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which establishes the rights to privacy, data protection and free expression for all European citizens, including children. These rights would be steamrolled by age verification requirements. And rarer still are policy discussions of ways to improve these rights for young people.

Currently, there is no legal obligation to verify users’ age in the EU. However, different European legal acts that recently entered into force or are being discussed implicitly require providers to know users’ ages or suggest age assessments as a measure to mitigate risks for minors online. At EFF, we consider these proposals akin to mandates because there is often no alternative method to comply except to introduce age verification. 

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in practice, providers will often need to implement some form of age verification or age assurance (depending on the type of service and risks involved): Article 8 stipulates that the processing of personal data of children under the age of 16 requires parental consent. Thus, service providers are implicitly required to make reasonable efforts to assess users’ ages – although the law doesn’t specify what “reasonable efforts” entails. 

Another example is the child safety article (Article 28) of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s recently adopted new legal framework for online platforms. It requires online platforms to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of safety, privacy and security of minors on their services. The article also prohibits targeting minors with personalized ads. The DSA acknowledges that there is an inherent tension between ensuring a minor’s privacy, and taking measures to protect minors specifically, but it's presently unclear which measures providers must take to comply with these obligations. Recital 71 of the DSA states that service providers should not be incentivized to collect the age of their users, and Article 28(3) makes a point of not requiring service providers to collect and process additional data to assess whether a user is underage. The European Commission is currently working on guidelines for the implementation of Article 28 and may come up with criteria for what they believe would be effective and privacy-preserving age verification. 

The DSA does explicitly name age verification as one measure the largest platforms – so called Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) that have more than 45 million monthly users in the EU – can choose to mitigate systemic risks related to their services. Those risks, while poorly defined, include negative impacts on the protection of minors and users’ physical and mental wellbeing. While this is also not an explicit obligation, the European Commission seems to expect adult content platforms to adopt age verification to comply with their risk mitigation obligations under the DSA. 

Adding another layer of complexity, age verification is a major element of the dangerous European Commission proposal to fight child sexual abuse material through mandatory scanning of private and encrypted communication. While the negotiations of this bill have largely stalled, the Commission’s original proposal puts an obligation on app stores and interpersonal communication services (think messaging apps or email) to implement age verification. While the European Parliament has followed the advice of civil society organizations and experts and has rejected the notion of mandatory age verification in its position on the proposal, the Council, the institution representing member states, is still considering mandatory age verification. 

Leaving aside the various policy work streams that implicitly or explicitly consider whether age verification should be introduced across the EU, the European Commission seems to have decided on the how: Digital identities.

In 2024, the EU adopted the updated version of the so-called eIDAS Regulation, which sets out a legal framework for digital identities and authentication in Europe. Member States are now working on national identity wallets, with the goal of rolling out digital identities across the EU by 2026.

Despite the imminent roll out of digital identities in 2026, which could facilitate age verification, the European Commission clearly felt pressure to act sooner than that. That’s why, in the fall of 2024, the Commission published a tender for a “mini-ID wallet”, offering four million euros in exchange for the development of an “age verification solution” by the second quarter of 2025 to appease Member States anxious to introduce age verification today. 

Favoring digital identities for age verification follows an overarching trend to push obligations to conduct age assessments continuously further down in the stack – from apps to app stores to operating service providers. Dealing with age verification at the app store, device, or operating system level is also a demand long made by providers of social media and dating apps seeking to avoid liability for insufficient age verification. Embedding age verification at the device level will make it more ubiquitous and harder to avoid. This is a dangerous direction; digital identity systems raise serious concerns about privacy and equity.

This approach will likely also lead to mission creep: While the Commission limits its tender to age verification for 18+ services (specifically adult content websites), it is made abundantly clear that once available, age verification could be extended to “allow age-appropriate access whatever the age-restriction (13 or over, 16 or over, 65 or over, under 18 etc)”. Extending age verification is even more likely when digital identity wallets don’t come in the shape of an app, but are baked into operating systems. 

In the next post of this series, we will be taking a closer look at the age verification app the European Commission has been working on.

Update May 5, 2025: In a win for privacy and encryption, the Florida Legislature ended its regular 2025 session on May 2 without passing SB 868 / HB 743.

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 lawmakers aren’t just chipping away at digital privacy—they're aiming a wrecking ball straight at it.

TAKE ACTION

SB 868 is a blatant attack on encrypted communication. Since we last wrote about the bill, the situation has gotten worse. The bill and its House companion have both sailed through their committees and are headed to a full vote. That means, if passed, SB 868 would:

In short: if your kid loses their right to encrypted communication, so does everyone they talk to. 

If this all sounds impossible to do safely, that’s because it is. There’s no way to create a “just for law enforcement” access point into encrypted messages. Every backdoor is a vulnerability. It's only a matter of time before someone else—whether a hacker, abuser, or foreign government—finds it. Massive breaches like Salt Typhoon have already proven that surveillance tools don’t stay in the right hands for long. Encryption either protects everyone—or it protects no one. We must protect it.

Encryption isn’t optional in today’s internet—it’s essential. It protects your banking info, your health data, your personal chats, and yes, your kids' safety online. 

SB 868 pretends to “protect children,” but does the opposite. Teens often need encrypted messaging to talk to trusted adults, friends, and family—sometimes in high-stakes situations like abuse, mental health crises, or discrimination. Stripping away those safeguards makes them more vulnerable, not less.

Investigators already have powerful tools to pursue serious crimes, including the ability to access device-level data and rely on user reports. In fact, studies show user reporting is more effective at catching online abuse than mass surveillance. So why push a bill that makes everyone less safe, weakens encryption, and invites lawsuits? That’s a question we all deserve an answer to.

Florida’s SB 868 isn’t just a bad bill—it’s a dangerous blueprint for mass surveillance. Tell Florida Legislators: SB 868 is unsafe, unworkable, and unacceptable.

If you live in Florida, contact your lawmakers and demand they reject this attack on encryption. 

TAKE ACTION

If you're outside the state, you can still speak out—public pressure matters, and the more people who call out how egregious this bill is, the harder it becomes for lawmakers to quietly push it forward. Make sure you follow us on social media to track the bills’ progress and help amplify the message.

Privacy is worth fighting for. Let’s stop SB 868 before it becomes law.

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 fundamental reason: the Big Tech antitrust cases could and should lead to enforceable changes that will foster more vibrant online expression and more meaningful user privacy protections.

Antitrust doctrine isn’t just about prices – it’s about power. The cases are nothing less than a fight over who will control the future of the internet, and what that future will look like. Will social media platforms continue to consolidate and enshittify? Or will the courts create breathing room for new ways of connecting to emerge and thrive?

Take FTC v Meta: The FTC argues that Meta’s control over Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – the latter two being companies Facebook acquired in order to neutralize them as competitors— gives it unfair monopoly power in personal social media, i.e. communications with friends and family. Meta disputes that, of course, but even if you take Meta at their word, there’s no denying that this case is directly concerned with online expression. If the FTC succeeds, Meta could be broken up and forced to compete. More important than competition for its own sake is what competition can deliver: openings in the canopy that allow green shoots to sprout – new systems for talking with one another and forming communities under different and more transparent moderation policies, a break from the content moderation monoculture that serves no one well (except for corporate shareholders).

These antitrust cases aren’t the sole purview of government enforcers. Private companies have also brought significant cases with real implications for user rights.

Take Epic Games v Google, in which Google insists that the court order to open up its app store to competition will lead to massive security risks. This is a common refrain from tech giants like Google, who benefit from the system of “feudal security” in which users must depend on the whims of a monopolist to guarantee their safety. Google claims that its app store security measures keep its users safe – reprising the long-discredited theory of “security through obscurity.” As the eminent cryptographer (and EFF board member) Bruce Schneier says, “Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can’t break.”

It’s true that Google often does a good job securing its users against external threats, but Google does a much worse job securing users against Google itself – for example, there’s no way to comprehensively block tracking for Google’s apps on Android. Competition might make Google clean up its act here, but only if they start worrying that there’s a chance you’ll switch to an upstart with a better privacy posture. Enabling competition—as these cases are trying to do—means we don’t have to rely on Google to get privacy religion. We can just switch to an independently vetted rival. Of course, you can only vote with your feet if you have somewhere else to go.

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. For one, we urge Congress not to weaken current federal privacy law or create new policy that supplants stronger state laws. A law that overrides strong state protections would hurt consumers and prevent states from protecting their constituents. 

We also urge Congress to include the most important tool to ensure that privacy laws have real bite: the individual right to sue over privacy violations. As we say in our comments:

It is not enough for the government to pass laws that protect consumers from corporations that harvest and monetize their personal data. It is also necessary to ensure companies do not ignore them. The best way to do so is to empower consumers to bring their own lawsuits against the companies that violate their privacy rights. Strong “private rights of action” are among EFF’s highest priorities in any data privacy legislation.

Additionally, we reiterate that any strong privacy law must include these components:

As we have said in our Privacy First white paper, a strong privacy law would also help us address online harms, protect children, support journalism, protect access to health care, foster digital justice, limit private data collection to train generative AI, limit foreign government surveillance, and strengthen competition.

EFF thanks the committee for the opportunity to weigh in. We invite further conversation to develop strong, comprehensive law that affirms the privacy and civil rights of all American consumers. You can read our full comments here: 

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! Additionally, we've got an audio edition of EFFector on the Internet Archive, or you can view it by clicking the button below:

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EFFECTOR 37.4 - Congress Moves Closer to Risky Internet Takedown Law

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.

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 other words, their legal claims challenge how Meta obtained the training materials, not what it did with them.

But some of the plaintiffs’ arguments, if successful, could harm AI developers’ defenses in other cases, where fair use is directly at issue.

How courts decide this issue will profoundly shape the future of this transformative technology, including its capabilities, its costs, and whether its evolution will be shaped by the democratizing forces of the open market or the whims of an oligopoly.

A question this important deserves careful consideration on a full record—not the hyperbolic cries of “piracy” and the legal shortcuts that the plaintiffs in this case are seeking. As EFF explained to the court, the question of whether fair use applies to training generative AI is far too important to decide based on Kadrey’s back-door challenge.

And, as EFF explained, whether a developer can legally train an AI on a wide variety of creative works shouldn’t turn on which technology they used to obtain those materials. As we wrote in our brief, the “Court should not allow the tail of Meta’s alleged BitTorrent use to wag the dog of the important legal questions this case presents. Nor should it accept Plaintiffs’ invitation to let hyperbole about BitTorrent and 'unmitigated piracy' derail the thoughtful and fact-specific fair use analysis the law requires.”

We also urged the court to reject the plaintiffs’ attempt to create a carve out in copyright law for copies obtained using “BitTorrent.”

This dangerous argument seeks to categorically foreclose the possibility that even the most transformative, socially beneficial uses—such as AI training—could be fair use.

As EFF explained in its brief, adopting an exemption from the flexible, fact-specific fair use analysis for “BitTorrent,” “internet piracy,” “P2P downloading,” or something else, would defeat the purpose of the fair use doctrine as a safeguard for the application of copyright law to new technologies.

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, we sounded the alarm, urging lawmakers to protect individuals from the growing threats of location tracking tools—tools that are increasingly being used to target and criminalize people seeking essential reproductive healthcare.

The good news? Lawmakers in California, Massachusetts, Illinois and elsewhere are stepping up, leading the way to protect privacy and ensure that healthcare access and other exercise of our rights remain safe from invasive surveillance.

Imagine this: you leave your home in Alabama, drop your kids off at daycare, and then drive across state lines to visit an abortion clinic in Florida. You spend two hours there before driving back home. Along the way, you used your phone’s GPS app to navigate or a free radio app to listen to the news. Unbeknownst to you, this “free” app tracked your entire route and sold it to a data broker. That broker then mapped your journey and made it available to anyone who would pay for it. This is exactly what happened when privacy advocates used a tool called Locate X, developed by Babel Street, to track a person’s device as they traveled from Alabama—where abortion is completely banned—to Florida, where abortion access is severely restricted but still available.

Despite this tool being marketed as solely for law enforcement use, private investigators were able to access it by falsely claiming they would work with law enforcement, revealing a major flaw in our data privacy system. In a time when government surveillance of private personal decisions is on the rise, the fact that law enforcement (and adversaries pretending to be law enforcement) can access these tools puts our personal privacy in serious danger.

The unregulated market for location data enables anyone, from law enforcement to anti-abortion groups, to access and misuse this sensitive information. For example, a data broker called Near Intelligence sold location data of people visiting Planned Parenthood clinics to an anti-abortion group. Likewise, law enforcement in Idaho used cell phone location data to charge a mother and her son with “aiding and abetting” abortion, a clear example of how this information can be weaponized to enforce abortion restrictions for patients and anyone else in their orbit. 

As we’ve seen time and time again, the collection and sale of location data can be weaponized to target many vulnerable groups—immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone seeking reproductive healthcare. In response to these growing threats, states like California, Massachusetts, and Illinois are leading the charge by introducing bills aimed at regulating the collection and use of location data. 

These bills are a powerful response to the growing threat. The bills are grounded in well-established principles of privacy law, including informed consent and data minimization, and they ensure that only essential data is collected, and that it’s kept secure. Importantly, they give residents—whether they reside in the state or are traveling from other states—the confidence to exercise their rights (such as seeking health care) without fear of surveillance or retaliation. 

This post outlines some of the key features of these location data privacy laws, to show authors and advocates of legislative proposals how best to protect their communities. Specifically, we recommend: 

Effective location privacy legislation starts with clear definitions. Without them, courts may interpret key terms too narrowly—weakening the law's intent. And in the absence of clear judicial guidance, regulated entities may exploit ambiguity to sidestep compliance altogether.

The following are some good definitions from the recent bills:

“Data minimization” is the privacy principle that corporations and other private actors must not process a person’s data except as necessary to give them what they asked for, with narrow exceptions. A virtue of this rule is that a person does not need to do anything in order to enjoy their statutory privacy rights; the burden is on the data processor to process less data. Together, these definitions and rules create a framework that ensures privacy is the default, not the exception.

One key data minimization rule, as in the Massachusetts bill, is: “It shall be unlawful for a covered entity to collect or process an individual’s location data except for a permissible purpose.” Read along with the definition above, this across-the-board rule means a covered entity can only collect or process someone’s location data to fulfil their request (with exceptions for emergencies and compliance with federal and state law).

Additional data minimization rules, as in the Illinois bill, back this up by restraining particular data practices:

The California bill rests largely on data minimization rules like these. The Illinois and Massachestts bills place an additional limit: no collection or processing of location data absent opt-in consent from the data subject. Critically, consent in these two bills is not an exception to the minimization rule, but rather an added requirement. EFF has supported both models of data privacy legislation: just a minimization requirement; and paired minimization and consent requirements. 

To best safeguard against invasive location tracking, it’s essential to place legal restrictions on the collection and use of all location data—not just data associated with sensitive places like reproductive health clinics. Narrow protections may offer partial help, but they fall short of full privacy.

Consider the example at the beginning of the blog: if someone travels from Alabama to Florida for abortion care, and the law only shields data at sensitive sites, law enforcement in Alabama could still trace their route from home up to near the clinic. Once the person enters a protected “healthcare” zone, their device would vanish from view temporarily, only to reappear shortly after they leave. This gap in the tracking data could make it relatively easy to deduce where they were during that time, essentially revealing their clinic visit.

To avoid this kind of loophole, the most effective approach is to limit the collection and retention of all location data—no exceptions. This is the approach in all three of the bills highlighted in this post: California, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

To truly protect people’s location privacy, legislation must include a strong private right of action (PRA)—giving individuals the power to sue companies that violate their rights. A private right of action ensures companies can’t ignore the law and empowers people to seek justice directly when their sensitive data is misused. This is a top priority for EFF in any data privacy legislation.

The bills in Illinois and Massachusetts offer strong models. They make clear that any violation of the law is an injury and allow individuals to bring civil suits:“A violation of this [law] … regarding an individual’s location information constitutes an injury to that individual. … Any individual alleging a violation of this [law] … may bring a civil action …” Further, these bills provide a baseline amount of damages (sometimes called “liquidated” or “statutory” damages), because an invasion of statutory privacy rights is a real injury, even if it is hard for the injured party to prove out-of-pocket expenses from theft, bodily harm, or the like. Absent this kind of statutory language, some victims of privacy violations will lose their day in court.

These bills also override mandatory arbitration clauses that limit access to court. Corporations should not be able to avoid being sued by forcing their customers to sign lengthy contracts that nobody reads.

Other remedies include actual damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, and attorney’s fees. These provisions give the law real teeth and ensure accountability can’t be signed away in fine print.

Strong location data privacy laws must protect everyone equally—and that means rejecting “pay-for-privacy” schemes that allow companies to charge users for basic privacy protections. Privacy is a fundamental right, not a luxury add-on or subscription perk. Allowing companies to offer privacy only to those who can afford to pay creates a two-tiered system where low-income individuals are forced to trade away their sensitive location data in exchange for access to essential services. These schemes also incentivize everyone to abandon privacy.

Legislation should make clear that companies cannot condition privacy protections on payment, loyalty programs, or any other exchange of value. This ensures that everyone—regardless of income—has equal protection from surveillance and data exploitation. Privacy rights shouldn’t come with a price tag.

We commend this language from the Illinois and Massachusetts bills: 

A covered entity may not take adverse action against an individual because the individual exercised or refused to waive any of such individual’s rights under [this law], unless location data is essential to the provision of the good, service, or service feature that the individual requests, and then only to the extent that this data is essential. This prohibition includes, but is not limited to: (1) refusing to provide a good or service to the individual; (2) charging different prices or rates for goods or services, including through the use of discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties; or (3) providing a different level of quality of goods or services to the individual.

It is helpful for data privacy laws to require covered entities to be transparent about their data practices. All three bills discussed in this post require covered entities to make available a privacy policy to the data subject—a solid baseline. This ensures that people aren’t left in the dark about how their location data is being collected, used, or shared. Clear, accessible policies are a foundational element of informed consent and give individuals the information they need to protect themselves and assert their rights.

It is also helpful for privacy laws like these to require covered entities to prominently publish their privacy policies on their websites. This allows all members of the public – as well as privacy advocates and government enforcement agencies – to track whether data processors are living up to their promises.

The bottom line is clear: location data is highly sensitive, and without proper protections, it can be used to harm those who are already vulnerable. The digital trail we leave behind can reveal far more than we think, and without laws in place to protect us, we are all at risk. 

While some states are making progress, much more needs to be done. More states need to follow suit by introducing and passing legislation that protects location data privacy. We cannot allow location tracking to be used as a tool for harassment, surveillance, or criminalization.

To help protect your digital privacy while we wait for stronger privacy protection laws, we’ve published a guide specifically for how to minimize intrusion from Locate X, and have additional tips on EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense site. Many general privacy practices also offer strong protection against location tracking.

If you live in California, Illinois, Massachusetts – or any state that has yet to address location data privacy – now is the time to act. Contact your lawmakers and urge them to introduce or support bills that protect our sensitive data from exploitation. Demand stronger privacy protections for all, and call for more transparency and accountability from companies that collect and sell location data. Together, we can create a future where individuals are free to travel without the threat of surveillance and retaliation.

Update 4/25/25: EFF joined the ACLU and other legal advocacy organizations today in filing an additional amicus brief in support of the law firm Susman Godfrey LLP, which also has been targeted by President Donald Trump.

Update 4/11/25: EFF joined the ACLU and other legal advocacy organizations today in filing two additional amicus briefs in support of the law firms Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, which have also been targeted by President Donald Trump.

Original post published 4/3/25: EFF has joined the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal advocacy organizations across the ideological spectrum in filing an amicus brief asking a federal judge to strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie for its past work on voting rights lawsuits and its representation of the President’s prior political opponents. 

As a legal organization that has fought in court to defend the rights of technology users for almost 35 years, including numerous legal challenges to federal government overreach, EFF unequivocally supports Perkins Coie’s challenge to this shocking, vindictive, and unconstitutional executive order. In punishing the law firm for its zealous advocacy on behalf of its clients, the March 6 order offends the First Amendment, the rule of law, and the legal profession broadly in numerous ways. We commend Perkins Coie and other targeted law firms that have chosen to do so (and their legal representatives) for fighting back.  

“If allowed to stand, these pressure tactics will have broad and lasting impacts on Americans' ability to retain legal counsel in important matters, to arrange their business and personal affairs as they like, and to speak their minds,” our brief says. 

Lawsuits against the federal government are a vital component of the system of checks and balances that undergirds American democracy. They reflect a confidence in both the judiciary to decide such matters fairly and justly, and the executive to abide by the court’s determination. They are a backstop against autocracy and a sustaining feature of American jurisprudence since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).   

The executive order, if enforced, would upend that system and set an appalling precedent: Law firms that represent clients adverse to a given administration can and will be punished for doing their jobs.   

This is a fundamental abuse of executive power.   

The constitutional problems are legion, but here are a few:   

An independent legal profession is a fundamental component of democracy and the rule of law. As a nonprofit legal organization that frequently sues the federal government, we well understand the value of this bedrock principle and how it – and First Amendment rights more broadly – are threatened by President Trump’s executive orders targeting Perkins Coie and other law firms. It is especially important that the whole legal profession speak out against the executive orders in light of the capitulation by a few large law firms. 

The order must be swiftly nullified by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and must be uniformly vilified by the entire legal profession. 

The ACLU’s press releases with quotes from fellow amici can be found here and here.

Update May 5, 2025: In a win for privacy and encryption, the Florida Legislature ended its regular 2025 session on May 2 without passing SB 868 / HB 743.

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 to companies not offering end-to-end encryption to minors at all, making them less safe online.

Encryption is the best tool we have to protect our communication online. It’s just as important for young people as it is for everyone else, and the idea that Florida can “protect” minors by making them less safe is dangerous and dumb.

The bill is not only privacy-invasive, it’s also asking for the impossible. As breaches like Salt Typhoon demonstrate, you cannot provide a backdoor for just the “good guys,” and you certainly cannot do so for just a subset of users under a specific age. After all, minors are likely speaking to their parents and other family members and friends, and they deserve the same sorts of privacy for those conversations as anyone else. Whether social media companies provide “a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption” or choose not to provide end-to-end encryption to minors at all, there’s no way that doesn’t harm the privacy of everyone.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because we saw a similar attempt from an Attorney General in Nevada last year. Then, like now, the reasoning is that law enforcement needs access to these messages during criminal investigations. But this doesn’t hold true in practice.

In our amicus brief in Nevada, we point out that there are solid arguments that “content oblivious” investigation methods—like user reporting— are “considered more useful than monitoring the contents of users’ communications when it comes to detecting nearly every kind of online abuse.” That remains just as true in Florida today.

Law enforcement can and does already conduct plenty of investigations involving encrypted messages, and even with end-to-end encryption, law enforcement can potentially access the contents of most messages on the sender or receiver’s devices, particularly when they have access to the physical device. The bill also includes measures prohibiting minors from accessing any sort of ephemeral messaging features, like view once options or disappearing messages. But even with those features, users can still report messages or save them. Targeting specific features does nothing to protect the security of minors, but it would potentially harm the privacy of everyone.

SB 868/HB 743 radically expands the scope of Florida’s social media law HB 3, which passed last year and itself has not yet been fully implemented as it currently faces lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. The state was immediately sued after the law’s passage, with challengers arguing the law is an unconstitutional restriction of protected free speech. That lawsuit is ongoing—and it should be a warning sign. Florida should stop coming up with bad ideas that can't be implemented.

Weakening encryption to the point of being useless is not an option. Minors, as well as those around them, deserve the right to speak privately without law enforcement listening in. Florida lawmakers must reject this bill. Instead of playing politics with kids' privacy, they should focus on real, workable protections—like improving consumer privacy laws to protect young people and adults alike, and improving digital literacy in schools.