HTTP/2 200 access-control-allow-origin: * cache-control: public, no-cache content-type: application/atom+xml; charset=utf-8 etag: W/"251b1537e6416ddb38b9d506a062d5af" referrer-policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains x-content-type-options: nosniff x-download-options: noopen x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN x-permitted-cross-domain-policies: none x-request-id: 8f7f1325-094e-4894-907d-98d0c7577484 x-runtime: 0.045657 x-xss-protection: 0 accept-ranges: bytes age: 0 date: Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:19:53 GMT via: 1.1 varnish x-served-by: cache-bom-vanm7210096-BOM x-cache: MISS x-cache-hits: 0 x-timer: S1767007192.833490,VS0,VE1336 vary: Accept-Encoding, Accept-Language alt-svc: h3=":443";ma=86400,h3-29=":443";ma=86400,h3-27=":443";ma=86400 content-length: 20356 tag:act.eff.org,2005:/action <span class="translation_missing" title="translation missing: en.summary">Summary</span> 2025-11-14T15:28:18-08:00 tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/589 2025-11-14T15:28:18-08:00 2025-11-14T16:15:28-08:00

<p>Congress is considering the GUARD Act, an age-verification mandate that would force every AI chatbot to verify all users&#39; ages, ban teens from using many everyday digital tools, and require AI companies to collect sensitive IDs or biometric information from everyone before allowing them access to speak, learn, or ask a question online.</p>

<p>The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could be imposed on nearly every public-facing chatbot—from customer-service bots to search-engine assistants. The GUARD Act could force countless AI companies to collect sensitive identity data, chill online speech, and block teens from using the digital tools that they rely on every day.</p> <p>EFF has warned for years that age-verification laws endanger free expression, privacy, and competition. The GUARD Act is no different. It would make the internet less free, less private, and less safe for everyone. It would further consolidate power and resources in the hands of the bigger AI companies, crush smaller developers, and chill innovation under the threat of massive fines. And it would cut off vulnerable groups’ ability to use helpful everyday AI tools, further stratifying the internet we know and love.</p> <p>While there may be legitimate problems with AI chatbots, young people’s safety is an incredibly complex social issue both on- and off-line. The GUARD Act tries to solve this complex problem with a blunt, dangerous solution. Rather than keeping us safe, it will build a sprawling surveillance and censorship regime that could reshape how people of all ages use the internet.</p> <p>Lawmakers should reject the GUARD Act and focus instead on policies that provide greater transparency, more options for users, and comprehensive privacy for all. Tell your representatives to oppose the GUARD Act today.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/582 2025-06-23T10:40:05-07:00 2025-08-05T17:58:01-07:00

<p>AI-generated imitations raise legitimate concerns, and Congress should consider narrowly-targeted and proportionate proposals to deal with them. Instead, some Senators have proposed the broad NO FAKES Act, which would create an expansive and confusing new intellectual property right with few real safeguard against abuse. Tell Congress to throw out the NO FAKES Act and start over.</p>

<p>The NO FAKES Act is designed to protect against companies or individuals that use an unauthorized digital likeness of someone by wrapping up those digital replicas in a federal intellectual property right and giving that individual—or their heirs—the right to sue. In doing so, the NO FAKES Act mimics some of the most broken parts of our copyright system and makes them worse.</p> <p>For example, the bill includes a safe harbor scheme modeled on the DMCA notice and takedown process. But the DMCA process has been abused for decades to target lawful speech, and there’s every reason to suppose NO FAKES will lead to the same result. In order to stay within safe harbors, when a platform receives a takedown notice for an alleged digital replica, it must remove “all instances” of that unlawful content. That requirement will inevitably lead to content “filters” that will censor lawful speech.</p> <p>And NO FAKES offers even fewer safeguards against abuse than the DMCA. For example, the DMCA includes a relatively simple counter-notice process that a speaker can use to get their work restored. NO FAKES does not. Instead, the burden is on the speaker to run to court within 14 days to defend their rights. While the powerful have lawyers on retainer who can do that, most creators, activists, and citizen journalists do not. The other various exceptions in the bill won’t mean much if you have to pay a lawyer to figure out if they apply to you, and then try to persuade a rightsholder to agree.</p> <p>NO FAKES is also a major government overreach. A person’s name and likeness are facts, and the Constitution forbids Congress from granting a property right in those facts.</p> <p>Deceptive, AI-generated replicas can cause real harm, and performers have a right to fair compensation for the use of their likenesses, should they choose to allow that use. But the costs of this bill far outweigh the benefits.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/581 2025-06-11T14:52:53-07:00 2025-08-05T17:58:13-07:00

<p>Privacy fears should never stand in the way of healthcare. That&#39;s why this common-sense bill will require businesses and non-governmental organizations to act responsibly with personal information concerning reproductive health care. Specifically, it restricts them from collecting, using, retaining, or disclosing reproductive health information that isn&#39;t essential to providing the service someone asks them for.</p>

<p>These restrictions apply to companies that collect personal information related to a person’s reproductive or sexual health. That includes information such as data related to pregnancy, menstruation, surgery, termination of pregnancy, contraception, basal body temperature or diagnoses. The bill would protect people who, for example, use fertility or period-tracking apps or are seeking information about reproductive health services.</p> <p>Rep. Jacobs&#39; bill also provides people with necessary rights to access and delete their reproductive health information. Companies must also publish a privacy policy, so that everyone can understand what information companies process and why. It also ensures that companies are held to public promises they make about data protection, and gives the Federal Trade Commission the authority to hold them to account if they break those promises.</p> <p>It also lets people take on companies that violate their privacy with a strong private right of action. Empowering people to bring their own lawsuits not only places more control in the individual&#39;s hands, but also ensures that companies will not take these regulations lightly.</p> <p>Tell Congress to pass the &quot;My Body, My Data&quot; Act today.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/580 2025-05-30T12:18:01-07:00 2025-08-05T17:58:55-07:00

<p>Two dangerous patent bills—PERA and PREVAIL—are back in Congress. These bills would revive harmful patents and make it harder for the public to fight back.</p> <p>The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would overturn key Supreme Court decisions that currently protect us from patents on the most basic internet software, and even human genes. This would open the floodgates to vague, overbroad claims on simple, widely used web features—exactly the kind of patents that patent trolls exploit.</p> <p>The PREVAIL Act would gut the inter partes review (IPR) process, one of the most effective tools for challenging bad patents. It would ban many public interest groups, including EFF, from filing challenges.</p>

<p>Together, these bills are a gift to patent trolls—companies that don’t make anything, but use patents to threaten and sue developers, small businesses, and online creators. In 2024, patent trolls were responsible for 88% of all tech-sector patent lawsuits.</p> <p>We need progress on patent reform, not a giant step backward. Tell your lawmakers to oppose PERA and PREVAIL.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/576 2025-05-15T11:22:56-07:00 2025-08-05T17:57:14-07:00

<p>The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is back—and it still threatens free expression online. It would let government officials pressure or sue platforms to block or remove lawful content—especially on topics like mental health, sexuality, and drug use.</p> <p>To avoid liability, platforms will over-censor. When forums or support groups get deleted, it’s not just teens who lose access—we all do. KOSA will also push services to adopt invasive age verification, handing private data to companies like Clear or ID.me.</p> <p>Lawmakers should reject KOSA. Tell your Senators to vote NO.</p>

<p>KOSA has been reintroduced with the same core problems as before. It still encourages over-removal of legal speech and hands too much power to government officials.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/570 2025-04-01T16:21:08-07:00 2025-04-02T08:49:21-07:00

<p>Congress is once again pushing dangerous website-blocking laws, including the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA). These bills would let copyright holders get court orders to block entire websites, without due process, based on nothing but a hollow promise not to abuse their new power.</p>

<p>FADPA, and other proposals in the works, would force internet service providers (ISPs) and domain name system (DNS) providers to block sites, including U.S. sites, based on one-sided copyright accusations, even when those sites also host lawful content. These blunt tactics would fragment the internet, silence innocent users, invite more censorship by people in power, and push Americans to rely on risky workarounds just to access information.</p> <p>We&#39;ve seen this play out before. Thirteen years ago, internet freedom supporters stopped SOPA and PIPA. Now we have to do it again.</p> <p>Tell your members of Congress: Don&#39;t let private actors build a censorship machine into the core of the internet. Block site-blocking legislation now.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/568 2025-02-25T11:49:03-08:00 2025-02-25T13:13:36-08:00

<p>Congress is pushing a dangerous internet censorship bill, the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146/H.R.633), and we need your help to stop it. While this bill claims to fight the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), it is deeply flawed and will lead to suppression of legal content, weaken encryption, and undermine free speech online.</p>

<p>The bill forces online platforms to remove flagged content—regardless of whether it is actually NCII—within 48 hours, with no real safeguards to prevent abuse. Because takedown requests would not have to verify that the content is NCII, the bill creates an unaccountable censorship regime. That will lead to journalists, artists, and everyday users seeing their lawful speech erased. The bill could also push services to back away from offering encrypted communications—harming the very people it claims to protect.</p> <p>We already have strong laws against creating and sharing NCII. Instead of creating a broad, easily abused censorship regime, Congress should focus on enforcing and improving existing protections for victims.</p> <p>This bill has passed the Senate but can still be stopped in the House. Act now and tell your Representatives to vote NO on the TAKE IT DOWN Act.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/563 2024-12-05T07:41:28-08:00 2024-12-06T07:20:38-08:00

<p>Deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have been turning to civil lawsuits to silence their opponents. These Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, aren’t designed to win on the merits, but rather to harass journalists, activists, and consumers into silence by suing them over their protected speech.</p> <p>Now there’s a bill in Congress that will allow speakers targeted by SLAPPs to fight back, by getting the lawsuits quickly thrown out of federal court, and allow for SLAPP victims to get their legal fees back. The Free Speech Protection Act, H.R. 10310, sponsored by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), will protect people from getting sued just for exercising their constitutional rights.</p>

<p>34 states and Washington, D.C. have some sort of anti-SLAPP law. The effective ones, such as California’s law, allow for SLAPP lawsuits to be quickly identified and thrown out of court. These laws have passed on a bipartisan basis and have successfully protected speakers of all backgrounds and political views. But there’s no federal anti-SLAPP law, and many states have no SLAPP protections at all.</p> <p>The First Amendment gives power to anyone who wants to speak out. We can voice our views on our own blogs or social media, work with an activist organization, and protest in person. Civil lawsuits brought by the wealthy and powerful must not be a tool for trampling on those rights.</p> <p>Tell your members of Congress to support the Free Speech Protection Act today.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation tag:act.eff.org,2005:ActionPage/562 2024-11-15T10:28:07-08:00 2025-05-19T13:32:50-07:00

<p>The House of Representatives just passed a dangerous bill that gives broad and easily abused new powers to the executive branch would allow the Secretary of Treasury to strip a U.S. nonprofit of its tax-exempt status. Nonprofits would not have a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves, and could be targeted without disclosing the reasons or evidence for the decision. Even if they are not targeted, the threat alone could chill the activities of some nonprofit organizations. Over 130 civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations signed a letter opposing the bill as written. We most tell the Senate not to pass H.R. 9495, the so-called “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”</p>

<p>The bill’s authors have combined this attack on nonprofits, originally written as H.R. 6408, with other legislation that would prevent the IRS from imposing fines and penalties on hostages while they are held abroad. These are separate matters. Congress should separate these two bills to allow a meaningful vote on this dangerous expansion of executive power. No administration should be given this much power to target nonprofits without due process.</p> Electronic Frontier Foundation