New technologies are radically advancing our freedoms but they are also enabling unparalleled invasions of privacy.
Your cell phone helps you keep in touch with friends and family, but it also makes it easier for security agencies to track your location.
Your Web searches about sensitive medical information might seem a secret between you and your search engine, but companies like Google are creating a treasure trove of personal information by logging your online activities, and making it potentially available to any party wielding enough cash or a subpoena.
And the next time you try to board a plane, watch out—you might be turned away after being mistakenly placed on a government watch list, or be forced to open your email in the security line.
National and international laws have yet to catch up with the evolving need for privacy that comes with new technology. Several governments have also chosen to use malware to engage in extra-legal spying or system sabotage for dissidents or non-citizens, all in the name of “national security.”
Respect for individuals' autonomy, anonymous speech, and the right to free association must be balanced against legitimate concerns like law enforcement. National governments must put legal checks in place to prevent abuse of state powers, and international bodies need to consider how a changing technological environment shapes security agencies’ best practices.
EFF fights in the courts and Congress to extend your privacy rights into the digital world, and works with partners around the globe to support the development of privacy-protecting technologies. Read our work on privacy issues below, and join EFF to help support our efforts.
For information about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States check out EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense project.
Issues in Privacy
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In Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) EFF filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that federal wiretapping law protects emails from unauthorized interception while they are temporarily stored on the email servers that transmit them.
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(aka Movies Studios v. TorrentSpy)
In this copyright infringement case the district court issued a dangerous ruling compelling TorrentSpy to create and store logs of its users' activities as part of electronic discovery obligations in a civil lawsuit.
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Defending free speech and privacy EFF has helped the ACLU and an unnamed Internet service provider (ISP) challenge the constitutionality of "National Security Letters" (NSLs) a key power under the USA PATRIOT Act.
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EFF has asked a federal court to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming.
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EFF has served a motion to quash dragnet subpoenas that put privacy and anonymity at risk for the operators of dozens of Internet blogs and potentially hundreds of commenters.
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EFF along with Google and numerous other public interest organizations and Internet industry associations asked a federal court Tuesday to block a government attempt to access the contents of a Yahoo! email account without a search warrant based on probable cause.
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No. 07-6346-CW (N.D. Cal)
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EFF urged the United States Supreme Court to uphold an appeals court decision that blocks invasive and unnecessary background checks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) arguing that the over-collection of personal data puts employees' privacy at risk.
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EFF urged the Oregon Supreme Court to block warrantless searches of arrestees' cell phones arguing in an amicus brief that granting law enforcement free rein to search data on the devices violates basic privacy protections guaranteed by the Constitution.
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EFF has urged a California state court to suppress evidence gathered by law enforcement from a suspect's iPhone during a warrantless search including phone book contacts called phone numbers emails text messages Internet search history and photos.
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EFF and attorney Bryan Vroon have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reexamine a panel ruling that violated a whistleblower's Fourth Amendment right to privacy in his email communications.
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EFF have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to focus on the privacy issues at stake in a battle over the sale and data mining of medical records urging justices to reverse a ruling that could jeopardize patient privacy.
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- Ropp Ruling October 8 2004
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EFF and other civil liberties groups filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. United States urging the 6th U.S.
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Update On 6/18/07: Sixth Circuit issues opinion upholding district court's injunction against secret warrantless seizures of email
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This page collects pleadings and other information from the multi-district litigation that apply to all of the cases or that are not otherwise included in the specific case pages for the multi-district litigation arising from the warrantless wiretapping.
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On April 21st, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v.
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The forced collection of DNA samples from arrestees without search warrants violates their Fourth Amendment right to privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation told a federal appeals court in an amicus brief filed in Jul
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Can the government force people who are arrested – but not yet convicted of a crime – to give a DNA sample without a search warrant, or does that violate the Fourth Amendment? One arrestee is asking the U.S.
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The 11th U.S.
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EFF and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court on January 14, 2009 to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement.
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EFF filed an amicus brief in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Ricky Wahchumwah, a tribal member of the Yakima Nation who was suspected of selling bald and gold eagle feathers in violation of federal law.
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A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers an iPod a cell phone and other technology.
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EFF has teamed up with the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and
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To protect your privacy, EFF supported the prosecution of an email provider who illegally copied his customers' incoming mail to his own email account. After a federal court misinterpreted the Wiretap Act and dismissed criminal charges, EFF and several other groups filed briefs endorsing the federal government's request for a rehearing of the case. The First Circuit Court of Appeals obliged and overturned the previous ruling, making it criminal for email providers to snoop on your email during transmission.
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EFF helped preserve the legal protections for actually private websites while protecting your right to read public websites.
This case involved a lawsuit against DirecTV for accessing the public website of anti-DirecTV activists run by plaintiff Michael Snow. The website had a banner and purported Terms of Service forbidding DirecTV representatives from entering the site or using its message board, but it was configured such that anyone in the public could enter the site, create a profile, and use the board. Setting aside a privacy-destroying lower court decision, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with EFF's arguments and ruled that web sites are protected by the Stored Communications Act, except when they are configured to be readily accessible to the general public.
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After EFF intervened in the case, an Oklahoma school superintendent dropped his attempt to unmask the identities of a website operator and all registered users of an Internet message board devoted to discussion of local public schools. The superintendent sued anonymous speakers who criticized him on an online message board. As part of the case, he filed a broad subpoena seeking to identify the site's creator and everyone who had posted or even registered on the site, violating First Amendment protections for anonymous speech and association. EFF filed a motion to quash the subpoena on behalf of the site's operator and a registered user, and the superintendent responded by dismissing the case.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union represent Birgitta Jonsdottir a member of the Icelandic Parliament in response to the efforts by the U.S.
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This case alleges alleges that the Bush Administration illegally targeted the leaders of an Islamic charity and their lawyers for warrantless surveillance by the NSA.
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In May 2011, EFF partnered with the ACLU and the ACLU of Vermont to urge the Vermont Supreme Court to authorize courts to impose limitations on the police's ability to search computers and other forms of electronic evidence.
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EFF defended online journalists and their rights to protect the confidentiality of sources as offline reporters do.
Apple Computer sued several unnamed individuals, called "Does," who allegedly leaked information about an upcoming product to online news sites PowerPage and AppleInsider. As part of its investigation, Apple subpoenaed Nfox -- PowerPage's email service provider -- for communications and unpublished materials obtained by PowerPage publisher Jason O'Grady. EFF successfully defended the journalists -- a California state appeals court held that they were protected by California's reporter's shield law and the constitutional privilege against disclosure of confidential sources. The court also held that Apple's subpoena to Nfox was unenforceable because it violated the federal Stored Communications Act.
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EFF joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Texas in backing a judge who required a search warrant before approving the seizure of two months of cell phone location data by law enforcement. In this case, the government asked a magistrate judge to ap
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We filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to restrict the release of drivers license information stored by DMVs.
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Police shouldn’t be able to get your sensitive location data – information that can reveal your religion, health, hobbies, and politics – on a whim.
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In October 2013, NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a sweeping subpoena seeking identification, financial, and other information on effectively all New York Airbnb “Hosts,” those users offering living space for rent.
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Note: There are two parts for the case page for Authors Guild v. Google.
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EFF urged a federal district court in Colorado to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
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EFF and EarthRights International (ERI) are fighting to quash subpoenas issued by Chevron Corporation to three email providers (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) demanding identifying information about the users of more than 100 email accounts, including environmental activists, journalists, and att
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Along with EFF-Austin, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas, EFF urged the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to rule that a person has an expectation of privacy in the contents of their cell phone even when the phone is out of their control or custody.
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EFF urged the Washington State Supreme Court to recognize that text messages are “the 21st Century phone call” and require that law enforcement obtain a warrant before reading texts on someone’s phone.
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EFF filed an amicus brief with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, asking it to rule police must get a search warrant in order to access historical cell site information.
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EFF urged the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in an amicus brief to rule an email provider could not be forced to disclose its private encryption key to the government.
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EFF submitted an amicus brief to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, arguing that people have an expectation of privacy in text message conversations, regardless of whether that conversation is stored on the their own phone or someone else's.
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Together with the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, EFF filed an amicus brief arguing police needed to obtain a search warrant in order to monitor a car's location with a GPS device.
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EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology ("CDT") have asked the U.S.
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EFF is supporting Microsoft's challenge to a search warrant ordering it to disclose the contents of email stored in Dublin, Ireland.
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In this criminal case, the government installed a pole camera overlooking a defendant's front yard and secretly recorded for more than a month.
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Military investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service ("NCIS") launched an investigation into online criminal activity by anyone in the state of Washington without limiting their search to military personnel or computers.
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EFF filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court arguing that individuals should be able to bring so-called facial challenges to laws that violate the Fourth Amendment by authorizing unconstitutional warrantless searches.
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EFF fought the government's attempts to track the location of a mobile phone user without sufficient evidence.
The government had argued that it did not need to show probably cause that a crime was being committed. Consistent with EFF's brief, a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the government's arguments, calling them "unsupported," "misleading," "contrived," and a "Hail Mary." Since there, several judges have made similar rulings.
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In Maryland v.
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In January 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that Americans have constitutional protections against GPS surveillance by law enforcement, holding that GPS tracking is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment.
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EFF urged the United States Supreme Court to ensure that modern communications methods such as text messages retain the constitutional privacy protections applied to earlier technologies in an amicus brief filed in City of Ontario v. Quon.
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EFF and the ACLU of Southern California each sent California Public Records Act requests to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking documents about each agency's use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems—sophisticated
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Should police should be allowed to collect and analyze “inadvertently shed” DNA without a warrant or consent, such as swabbing cells from a drinking glass or a chair? That’s the question in Raynor v.
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Defendant Aaron Graham was suspected in a series of armed robberies around Baltimore. Without a warrant, police obtained 221 days of historical cell site location information about Graham from Sprint, which detailed 29,000 location points, an average of 100 data points a day.
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When the U.S.
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Army officials were investigating a contractor for theft and other misconduct arising from Army contracts. In 2003, they obtained a search warrant seeking computer files and records from the company's outside accountant, Stavros Ganias.
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A federal magistrate judge in San Jose, California denied a government request for historical cell site records, ordering the government to seek a search warrant for the information. The government appealed this order to U.S.
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Police obtained 67 days worth of location information, detailing more than 11,000 specific cell site locations, to pinpoint defendant Quartavious Davis at various robberies without a search warrant.
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A challenge to the NSA’s warrantless Internet backbone surveillance (aka “Upstream” surveillance) brought by the ACLU on behalf of Wikimedia and a number of other media and human rights organizations.
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California State Senator Mark Leno has introduced critical new legislation to update privacy laws around our electronic communications.
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EFF filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that the court should require a probable cause warrant for searches of digital devices at the U.S. border.
eff.org/nsa-spying
