After 26 years, today is my last day at EFF. It's been a terrific and wild ride — the organization has grown from a tiny band of fighty people trying to plant a flag for freedom and justice in the coming digital world into a large, established band of fighty people doing, well, much the same. The world around us has changed enormously. Our core values haven't budged.

I'm proud of what we've achieved: freeing encryption, defending coders, pushing to rein in government and corporate surveillance and ensure the right to have a private conversation online, standing up for free speech and anonymous speech, fighting for network neutrality and safe voting machines, busting stupid patents, and making sure copyright didn't become the one law that rules the internet. That's only the start. We've stopped more bad legislative, regulatory, and legal ideas than I can count, built tools that millions rely on to protect their privacy, and helped encrypt the web. I've long said EFF is the plumber of the internet — finding the clogs and barriers that prevent technology from serving freedom, justice, and innovation for everyone.  

In addition to presenting cases in courts across the land, testifying in Congress and in California, in the European Parliament and at the United Nations, I went onto the internet with Stephen Colbert and engaged in a healthy disagreement with Jon Stewart.  I wrote a lot of it down in a book, hoping to recruit others to the cause.  The work has been hard and often frustrating at times.  But looking back, the fun parts are what I remember most.   

None of it would have been possible without EFF’s stalwart members. More than 30,000 people, some with big wallets and some with small ones, give us what we need to stand up to bullies and fight for the long haul. EFF has always served as a beacon for people who know that for technology to support freedom, justice, and innovation for all the people of the world, we need a dedicated band of folks working overtime on behalf of users, innovators, and creators. 

There's still plenty left to do. We haven't killed the third-party doctrine, tamed the surveillance business model, or gotten metadata the constitutional protection it deserves. Stupid patents persist as does the overreach of DMCA section 1201 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The government is now the largest purchaser of data from shady brokers, communities everywhere are fighting license plate readers and other street-level surveillance, and we haven't reined in NSA and FBI spying nearly enough. Meanwhile, the rise of AI is supercharging problems we've fought against for years. 

But I'm proud of what we've built together. I'm grateful to every EFFer — past, present, and future — who threw in with us when the odds were long and the pay was much better elsewhere. I'm grateful to the EFF Board and especially to my mentors and friends Pam Samuelson and Shari Steele, along with my longtime partner in justice, Lee Tien, who has been working with me since the Bernstein case. Fighting for justice is easier when you have a posse: coworkers, co-counsel, coalitions, interns, volunteers, and the heroic clients who trusted us to steward their cases in ways that bent the law toward everyone's benefit. Twenty-six years later, EFF is part of a global diaspora of organizations defending internet freedom — and I'm proud of that too. 

I'm stepping down because good leaders should make way for new ones, and the time feels right. EFF is strong and full of fight. My successor Nicole Ozer — a longtime friend and collaborator — is exactly the right person for this moment. She understands EFF's role and values at a deep level and will protect them while helping the organization rise to meet what's coming. 

As for me, I'm not going far. After a few months off to reflect and walk dogs, I plan to get back into the fight for justice — likely heading back into the courtroom. And I'll be watching, cheering, donating, and wearing the merch from EFF, just like the rest of you.

For years, civil society organizations, workers, journalists, and human rights experts have warned that major technology companies risk enabling grave human rights abuses when they provide cloud computing, AI, and surveillance infrastructure to governments implicated in violations of international and humanitarian law. While many companies pay lip service to evaluating customers and contracts for human rights implications (lip service Exhibit A: Palantir!), too often those processes fail to provide any meaningful accountability when their standards are not met or are simply ignored. But recent developments at Microsoft suggest that accountability for failing to uphold the human rights standards that a company itself sets, even if incomplete, is possible. 

According to recent reporting, Microsoft’s Israel chief has departed amid an escalating ethical controversy surrounding the company’s business relationships with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The move follows months of scrutiny, internal dissent, and sustained pressure from inside the organization along with press and civil society, especially after a report by The Guardian revealed that Microsoft technologies were used in systems connected to mass surveillance and military targeting operations in Gaza in ways that appeared to violate Microsoft’s own standards. This did not happen overnight.

In September 2025, Microsoft reportedly suspended certain services after initial investigations raised serious concerns about how its cloud and AI infrastructure may have been used. That alone distinguished Microsoft from many of its peers. Rather than simply dismissing mounting concerns or hiding behind vague claims of neutrality, Microsoft appeared to recognize that providing technology in conflict settings creates real human rights responsibilities. Now, after additional investigation and continued public scrutiny, it appears the company has taken another step, one that should send a strong signal to others that violating Microsoft’s human rights commitments could cost you your job. This is important. 

There is still much more Microsoft should do, of course. The company has yet to fully disclose the scope of its findings, explain exactly which services were suspended, or clarify what safeguards remain in place to prevent its technologies from contributing to human rights abuses in the future. We shouldn’t have to infer the connection between this employment action and the company’s investigation. 

Just prior to reports that Microsoft had fired its Israel Country General Manager, EFF joined Access Now, Amnesty International, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh in a joint May 7, 2026 letter to Microsoft leadership calling on the company to publicly release the findings of its investigation, suspend business relationships tied to serious human rights abuses, and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent its technologies from contributing to further harm. The letter detailed allegations regarding Microsoft’s reported provision of Azure cloud and AI services to Israeli military and intelligence units involved in surveillance and targeting operations, while also pressing the company to take concrete human rights due diligence measures going forward. Those demands remain urgent, even as Microsoft appears to be taking some of the steps we urged.

But even as we push for more, it is important to recognize when a company takes steps in the right direction. Because this is what it means to put human rights commitments into practice. It means acknowledging that human rights policies are not just branding exercises or transparency reports. It means accepting that companies providing cloud infrastructure and AI services have responsibilities when credible evidence emerges that their technologies may be enabling violations of international law. And it means taking concrete action when those risks become known.

The allegations facing Microsoft are serious. Human rights organizations and investigative reporting have documented claims that Microsoft Azure services were used by Israeli military and intelligence units to process large-scale surveillance data, support AI-assisted targeting systems, and sustain military cloud infrastructure during the war in Gaza. The concerns raised extend beyond ordinary business risk; they implicate potential complicity in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Faced with these allegations, Microsoft could have chosen the path many tech companies take: deny everything, attack critics, suppress worker dissent, and continue business as usual. Instead, the company appears to have begun responding to the evidence.

Technology companies are not powerless bystanders. Cloud providers and AI companies make choices every day about who gets access to their infrastructure, under what conditions, and with what oversight. When companies claim to uphold human rights principles, those commitments should have operational consequences. Too many companies, in both international and domestic policing contexts, provide technology to institutions that violate people’s human rights and civil liberties, then fall back on the claim that they are merely providing a service that their customers can use how they see fit. This is an ethical failing that falls short of most companies’ publicly expressed commitments. Microsoft’s recent actions suggest that sustained public pressure, worker organizing, investigative journalism, and civil society advocacy can force even the world’s largest technology companies to respond.

Google and Amazon should especially see this as a clear example to follow. Both companies also provide services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and have faced years of criticism over those contracts and services, including from EFF. Yet neither has demonstrated the level of responsiveness or accountability that Microsoft has shown. If Microsoft can suspend services, investigate allegations, and make leadership changes amid mounting evidence and ethical concerns, then other cloud giants can no longer pretend that meaningful action is impossible.

The technology industry has spent years insisting that ethics and human rights matter. The real test has always been whether those principles survive when profits, government contracts, and geopolitical pressure are on the line. Microsoft’s recent steps are not the end of that story, but they may mark the beginning of what real accountability can look like.

We’re looking at you, Amazon and Google. If Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?

For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work.

This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short. EFF is not alone in raising alarms about Palantir; immigrants' rights groups, human rights organizations, journalists, and former employees have raised similar concerns based on reports of the company's role in abusive immigration enforcement. We focus here on Palantir’s own human rights promises.

At the outset, we appreciate that Palantir was willing to engage respectfully, and we recognize that confidentiality and security obligations can limit what it can say. Nonetheless, measured against Palantir's own human rights commitments, its decision to keep powering ICE with tools used in dragnet raids and discriminatory detentions is indefensible. A good-faith application of those commitments should lead Palantir to end its contract with ICE, and refuse new, or end current, contracts with any other agency whose work predictably violates those commitments.

Palantir’s Public Promises

Palantir has long said it performs comprehensive human rights analysis on its work. It has also worked with ICE for years, apparently in a more limited capacity than today. It has publicly embraced the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Additionally, in its response to EFF, Palantir says its legal responsibilities are only “the floor” for broader risk assessments.

That was the point of our letter. We asked what human rights due diligence Palantir conducted when it first contracted with ICE and DHS; whether it performed the “proactive risk scoping” it advertises, how it reviews work over time, what it has done in response to reports of misuse, and whether it has used “every means at [its] disposal”—including contract provisions, third‑party oversight, and termination—to prevent or mitigate harms.

For the most part, Palantir did not answer our accountability questions. It did correct one point: Palantir says it does not currently work with CBP, and available evidence supports that, though it also made clear it could work with CBP in the future.

Palantir also raised a red herring it often deploys in response to criticism. It denied building a 'mega' or 'master' database for ICE and denied creating a database of protesters, which some ICE agents have claimed to have been built. We call it a red herring because those denials sidestep the central issues: what capabilities Palantir's tools actually provide to ICE.

To be clear, EFF has never claimed that Palantir is building a single centralized database. Our concern is grounded in how Palantir’s tools allow ICE to query and analyze data from multiple databases through a unified interface—which from an agent’s perspective can be a distinction without a difference.

In the sections that follow, we compare Palantir’s account of its work for ICE with evidence about how its tools seem to be used, and explain why legality, internal process, and sustained “engagement with the institutions whose vital tasks exist in tension with certain human rights” are no substitute for real human rights due diligence—because respect for human rights must be measured by outcomes, not just process.

Palantir’s ICE Work Undermines Its Own Standards

Palantir says ICE uses its ELITE tool for “prioritized enforcement”: to surface likely addresses of specific people, such as individuals with final orders of removal or high‑severity criminal charges. But according to sworn testimony in Oregon, ICE agents use ELITE to determine where to conduct deportation sweeps, and the system “pulled from all kinds of sources” to identify locations for raids aimed at mass detentions, including information from the Department of Health and Human Services such as Medicaid data. A leaked ELITE user guide for 'Special Operations' also instructs operators to disable filters to "display all targets within a Special Operations dataset." Those details directly conflict with Palantir’s narrow description of ELITE’s role.

Additionally, Palantir's response leans on legal authority and the Privacy Act. But it does not identify any specific lawful basis for using Medicaid data in this way or explain how its software enables that access. Even if a legal theory exists, turning sensitive medical information into fuel for dragnet sweeps is hard to reconcile with its commitments to privacy, equity, and the rights of impacted communities. Its own human rights framework requires grappling with foreseeable harms its products may enable, not just invoking possible legal authorization.   

Reporting shows that many people detained by ICE had no criminal record, much less a serious one, and in many cases no final order of removal. An overwhelming percentage of those detained were, or appeared to be, from Central and South America, and nearly one in five ICE arrests were street arrests of a Latine person with neither a criminal history nor a removal order.

These facts raise obvious questions about discriminatory impact, racial profiling, and whether Palantir's tools are facilitating detention practices far broader than the company claims. Palantir's response does not meaningfully engage those questions, despite the company's commitments to non-discrimination and due process.

EFF’s letter asked Palantir to explain how it is honoring its commitments to civil liberties in light of reports linking Palantir-owned systems to facial recognition and other tools used to identify and target people engaged in observing and recording law enforcement, including in connection with the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The letter also cites an incident in which an officer scanned protesters’ and observers’ faces and threatened to add their biometrics to a “nice little database.” Palantir’s response denies involvement in any such database.

A narrow denial about a single database does not answer the broader question: if ICE, its customer, claims it has this capability, what has Palantir done to ensure its tools are not used to chill protected speech, retaliate against observers, or facilitate targeting of people engaged in First Amendment‑protected activity? For a company that claims to value democracy and civil liberties, this is not a marginal issue; it goes to the heart of its human rights commitments.

Legality, Process, and Engagement with ICE Are Not Human Rights Standards

As mentioned above, Palantir leans heavily on legal compliance. It says government data sharing is “subject to, and governed by, data sharing agreements and government oversight” and that any sharing it facilitates is done according to “legal and technical requirements, including those of the Privacy Act of 1974.” It describes its role in ELITE as “data integration,” enabling ICE “to incorporate data sources to which it has access,” including data shared under inter‑agency agreements.

EFF is very familiar with the Privacy Act—we are suing the Office of Personnel Management over it currently. But Palantir’s response does not clarify how ICE legally has access to this information, how Palantir ensures that it follows those legal processes, or how Palantir’s software may have enabled access in the first place. More critically, that is still a legal answer to a human rights question, and legal compliance alone is insufficient as a human rights standard.

Human rights due diligence requires assessing foreseeable harms, responding to credible evidence of abuse, and changing course when the facts demand it—something Palantir, on paper, recognizes. That’s why it stresses that its legal responsibilities are only “the floor for [its] broader risk assessments,” pointing to the way it built toward GDPR‑style data protection principles and incorporated international humanitarian law principles before those requirements were formalized. If those commitments mean anything, Palantir has to explain how specific practices—like enabling ICE to use Medicaid data in dragnet raids—square with that broader standard.

Palantir also leans heavily on process. It points to a “layered approach” to risk, frameworks that purportedly examine multiple dimensions of privacy and equity, and “indelible” audit logs that track how its tools are used. Audit logs are not sufficient for protecting human rights. There is a long history of authoritarian regimes keeping extensive logs of their human rights abuses. Those structures can be useful for protecting human rights, but only if they are used to detect harm, trigger reassessment, and lead to changes in design, access, support, or contract enforcement when credible reports of abuse emerge.

That is why we pressed Palantir to spell out clearly what reports of misuse Palantir has received, what changes it made, and on what timeline. Again, instead of offering specific examples, Palantir points back to its internal framework and its willingness to “move towards the hardest problems” as evidence of effective efforts. But human rights are an outcome, not just a process.

Human rights due diligence is not a one-time approval at contract signing; under the UN Guiding Principles, it is supposed to be continuous, with new facts triggering reassessment. Complaints, media reports, leaks, litigation, and sworn testimony are exactly the kinds of events that should prompt review. If Palantir has an account for that work— how often it reviews ICE contracts, who conducts the reviews, what triggers them, and how findings reach the Board— it had every opportunity to describe it. Instead, it offered a generic assurance that it remains committed to human rights without engaging in the specifics. Confidentiality may sometimes limit disclosure, but it is no substitute for accountability.

What Needs to Happen Next 

Palantir wants credit for “mov[ing] towards the hardest problems” and engaging with institutions whose missions it says are “in tension with certain human rights” while having a human rights framework. But when the record includes violent raids, dragnet detentions, use of sensitive medical data, discriminatory targeting, retaliation against observers, and deaths tied to immigration enforcement operations, pointing to a values page is not enough; it has to reckon with the results.

Voluntary corporate human rights policies often function as weak accountability mechanisms: companies can tout principles, publish policies, and answer criticism with polished statements while changing very little on the ground. Palantir’s response fits that pattern all too well. EFF will continue to challenge its role in abusive immigration enforcement and demanding more accountability for technology vendors whose tools enable human rights violations. We are also happy to continue a dialogue with Palantir to that end. For now, this much is clear: Palantir needs to reconsider its contract with ICE and with all agencies whose work predictably violate human rights.

We are sad to report the passing of longtime EFF Board member, Dave Farber. Dave was 91 and lived in Tokyo from age 83, where he was the Distinguished Professor at Keio University and Co-Director of the Keio Cyber Civilization Research Center (CCRC).  Known as the Grandfather of the Internet, Dave made countless contributions to the internet, both directly and through his support for generations of students.  

Dave was the longest-serving EFF Board member, having joined in the early 1990s, before the creation of the World Wide Web or the widespread adoption of the internet.  Throughout the growth of the internet and the corresponding growth of EFF, Dave remained a consistent, thoughtful, and steady presence on our Board.  Dave always gave us credibility as well as ballast.  He seemed to know and be respected by everyone who had helped build the internet, having worked with or mentored too many of them to count.  He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of the internet's technical history. 

From the beginning, Dave saw both the promise and the danger to human rights that would come with the spread of the internet around the world. He committed to helping make sure that the rights and liberties of users and developers, especially the open source community, were protected. He never wavered in that commitment.  Ever the teacher, Dave was also a clear explainer of internet technologies and basically unflappable.  

Dave also managed the Interesting People email list, which provided news and connection for so many internet pioneers and served as model for how people from disparate corners of the world could engage in a rolling conversation about all things digital.  His role as the Chief Technologist at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 2000 to 2001 gave him a strong perspective on the ways that government could help or hinder civil liberties in the digital world. 

We will miss his calm, thoughtful voice, both inside EFF and out in the world. May his memory be a blessing.  

The Electronic Frontier Foundation stands with the people of Minneapolis and with all of the communities impacted by the ongoing campaign of ICE and CBP violence. EFF will be closed Friday, Jan. 30 as part of the national shutdown in opposition to ICE and CBP and the brutality and terror they and other federal agencies continue to inflict on immigrant communities and any who stand with them.

We do not make this decision lightly, but we will not remain silent. 

• See our statement on ICE/CBP violence: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/eff-statement-lawless-actions-ice-and-cbp
• See our Surveillance Self-Defense tips for protestors: https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
• See our explanation of the right to record police activity: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/yes-you-have-right-film-ice

Dangerously unchecked surveillance and rights violations have been a throughline of the Department of Homeland Security since the agency’s creation in the wake of the September 11th attacks. In particular, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been responsible for countless civil liberties and digital rights violations since that time. In the past year, however, ICE and CBP have descended into utter lawlessness, repeatedly refusing to exercise or submit to the democratic accountability required by the Constitution and our system of laws.  

The Trump Administration has made indiscriminate immigration enforcement and mass deportation a key feature of its agenda, with little to no accountability for illegal actions by agents and agency officials. Over the past year, we’ve seen massive ICE raids in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis. Supercharged by an unprecedented funding increase, immigration enforcement agents haven’t been limited to boots on the ground: they’ve been scanning faces, tracking neighborhood cell phone activity, and amassing surveillance tools to monitor immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. 

Congress must vote to reject any further funding of ICE and CBP

The latest enforcement actions in Minnesota have led to federal immigration agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Both were engaged in their First Amendment right to observe and record law enforcement when they were killed. And it’s only because others similarly exercised their right to record that these killings were documented and widely exposed, countering false narratives the Trump Administration promoted in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.  

These constitutional violations are systemic, not one-offs. Just last week, the Associated Press reported a leaked ICE memo that authorizes agents to enter homes solely based on “administrative” warrants—lacking any judicial involvement. This government policy is contrary to the “very core” of the Fourth Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable search and seizure, especially in our own homes.  

These violations must stop now. ICE and CBP have grown so disdainful of the rule of law that reforms or guardrails cannot suffice. We join with many others in saying that Congress must vote to reject any further funding of ICE and CBP this week. But that is not enough. It’s time for Congress to do the real work of rebuilding our immigration enforcement system from the ground up, so that it respects human rights (including digital rights) and human dignity, with real accountability for individual officers, their leadership, and the agency as a whole.

Each December we take a moment to publish a series of blog posts that look back at the things we’ve accomplished in fighting for your rights and privacy the past 12 months. But this year I’ve been thinking not just about the past 12 months, but also over the past 25 years I’ve spent at EFF.  As many folks know, I’ve decided to pass the leadership torch and will leave EFF in 2026, so this will be the last time I write one of these annual reviews.  It’s bittersweet, but I’m filled with pride, especially about how we stick with fights over the long run.  

EFF has come a long way since I joined in 2000.  In so many ways, the work and reputation we have built laid the groundwork for years like 2025 – when freedom, justice and innovation were under attack from many directions at once with tech unfortunately at the center of many of them.  As a result, we launched our Take Back CRTL campaign to put the focus on fighting back. 

In addition to the specific issues we address in this year-end series of blog posts, EFF brought our legal expertise to several challenges to the Trump Administration’s attacks on privacy, free speech and security, including directly bringing two cases against the government and filing multiple amicus briefs in others.  In some ways, that’s not new: we’ve worked in the courts to hold the government accountable all the way back to our founding in1990.  

In this introductory blog post, however, I want to highlight two topics that attest to our long history of advocacy.  The first is our battle against the censorship and privacy nightmares that come from requirements that internet users to submit to  age verification. We’ve long known that age verification technologies, which aim to block young people from viewing or sharing information that the government deems “harmful” or “offensive,” end up becoming  tools of censorship.  They often rely on facial recognition and other techniques that have unacceptable levels of inaccuracy and that create security risks.  Ultimately, they are surveillance systems that chill access to vital online communities and resources, and burden the expressive rights of adults and young people alike. 

The second is automated license plate readers (ALPR), which serve as a mass surveillance network of our locations as we go about our day.  We sued over this technology in 2013, demanding public access to records about their use and ultimately won at the California Supreme Court.  But 2025 is the year that the general public began to understand just how much information is being collected and used by governments and private entities alike, and to recognize the dangers that causes. Our investigations team filed another public records requests, revealing racist searches done by police. And 12 years later after our first lawsuit, our lawyers filed another case, this time directly challenging the ALPR policies of San Jose, California.  In addition, our activists have been working with people in municipalities across the country who want to stop their city’s use of ALPR in their communities.  Groups in Austin, Texas, for example, worked hard to get their city to reject a new contract for these cameras.  

These are just two issues of many that have engaged our lawyers, activists, and technologists this year. But they show how we dig in for the long run and are ready when small issues become bigger ones.   

The more than 100 people who work at EFF spent this last year proving their mettle in battles, many of which are nowhere near finished. But we will push on, and when those issues breach public consciousness, we’ll be ready.    

We can only keep doggedly working on these issues year after year because of you, our members and supporters. You engage on these issues, you tell us when something is happening in your town, and your donations power everything we do. This may be my last end-of-the-year blog post, but thanks to you, EFF is here to stay.  We’re strong, we’re ready, and we know how to stick with things for the long run. Thanks for holding us up. 

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.