In a big win for protesters’ rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to sweeping warrants to search a protester’s devices and digital data and a nonprofit’s social media data.

The case, Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs, arose after a housing protest in 2021, during which Colorado Springs police arrested protesters for obstructing a roadway. After the demonstration, police also obtained warrants to seize and search through the devices and data of Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, who they claimed threw a bike at them during the protest. The warrants included a search through all of her photos, videos, emails, text messages, and location data over a two-month period, as well as a time-unlimited search for 26 keywords, including words as broad as “bike,” “assault,” “celebration,” and “right,” that allowed police to comb through years of Armendariz’s private and sensitive data—all supposedly to look for evidence related to the alleged simple assault. Police further obtained a warrant to search the Facebook page of the Chinook Center, the organization that spearheaded the protest, despite the Chinook Center never having been accused of a crime.

The district court dismissed the civil rights lawsuit brought by Armendariz and the Chinook Center, holding that the searches were justified and that, in any case, the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Colorado, appealed. EFF—joined by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University—wrote an amicus brief in support of that appeal.

In a 2-1 opinion, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of the lawsuit’s Fourth Amendment search and seizure claims. The court painstakingly picked apart each of the three warrants and found them to be overbroad and lacking in particularity as to the scope and duration of the searches. The court further held that in furnishing such facially deficient warrants, the officers violated “clearly established” law and thus were not entitled to qualified immunity. Although the court did not explicitly address the First Amendment concerns raised by the lawsuit, it did note the backdrop against how these searches were carried out, including animus by Colorado Springs police leading up to the housing protest.

It is rare for appellate courts to call into question any search warrants. It’s even rarer for them to deny qualified immunity defenses. The Tenth Circuit’s decision should be celebrated as a big win for protesters and anyone concerned about police immunity for violating people’s constitutional rights. The case is now remanded back to the district court to proceed—and hopefully further vindicate the privacy rights we all have in our devices and digital data.

This year, you may have heard EFF sounding off about our civil liberties on NPR, BBC Radio, or any number of podcasts. But we also started sharing our voices directly with listeners in 2025. In June, we revamped EFFector, our long-running electronic newsletter, and launched a new audio edition to accompany it.

Providing a recap of the week's most important digital rights news, EFFector's audio companion features exclusive interviews where EFF's lawyers, activists, and technologists can dig deeper into the biggest stories in privacy, free speech, and innovation. Here are just some of the best interviews from EFFector Audio in 2025.

Unpacking a Social Media Spying Scheme

Earlier this year, the Trump administration launched a sprawling surveillance program to spy on the social media activity of millions of noncitizens—and punish those who express views it doesn't like. This fall, EFF's Lisa Femia came onto EFFector Audio to explain how this scheme works, its impact on free speech, and, importantly, why EFF is suing to stop it.

"We think all of this is coming together as a way to chill people's speech and make it so they do not feel comfortable expressing core political viewpoints protected by the First Amendment," Femia said.

Challenging the Mass Surveillance of Drivers

But Lisa was hardly the only guest talking about surveillance. In November, EFF's Andrew Crocker spoke to EFFector about Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), a particularly invasive and widespread form of surveillance. ALPR camera networks take pictures of every passing vehicle and upload the location information of millions of drivers into central databases. Police can then search these databases—typically without any judicial approval—to instantly reconstruct driver movements over weeks, months, or even years at a time.

"It really is going to be a very detailed picture of your habits over the course of a long period of time," said Crocker, explaining how ALPR location data can reveal where you work, worship, and many other intimate details about your life. Crocker also talked about a new lawsuit, filed by two nonprofits represented by EFF and the ACLU of Northern California, challenging the city of San Jose's use of ALPR searches without a warrant.

Similarly, EFF's Mario Trujillo joined EFFector in early November to discuss the legal issues and mass surveillance risks around face recognition in consumer devices.

Simple Tips to Take Control of Your Privacy

Online privacy isn’t dead. But tech giants have tried to make protecting it as annoying as possible. To help users take back control, we celebrated Opt Out October, sharing daily privacy tips all month long on our blog. In addition to laying down some privacy basics, EFF's Thorin Klosowski talked to EFFector about how small steps to protect your data can build up into big differences.

"This is a way to kind of break it down into small tasks that you can do every day and accomplish a lot," said Klosowski. "By the end of it, you will have taken back a considerable amount of your privacy."

User privacy was the focus of a number of EFFector interviews. In July, EFF's Lena Cohen spoke about what lawmakers, tech companies, and individuals can do to fight online tracking. That same month, Matthew Guariglia talked about precautions consumers can take before bringing surveillance devices like smart doorbells into their homes.

Digging Into the Next Wave of Internet Censorship

One of the most troubling trends of 2025 was the proliferation of age verification laws, which require online services to check, estimate, or verify users’ ages. Though these mandates claim to protect children, they ultimately create harmful censorship and surveillance regimes that put everyone—adults and young people alike—at risk.

This summer, EFF's Rin Alajaji came onto EFFector Audio to explain how these laws work and why we need to speak out against them.

"Every person listening here can push back against these laws that expand censorship," she said. "We like to say that if you care about internet freedom, this fight is yours."

This was just one of several interviews about free speech online. This year, EFFector also hosted Paige Collings to talk about the chaotic rollout of the UK's Online Safety Act and Lisa Femia (again!) to discuss the abortion censorship crisis on social media.

You can hear all these episodes and future installments of EFFector's audio companion on YouTube or the Internet Archive. Or check out our revamped EFFector newsletter by subscribing at eff.org/effector!

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