What do EFF staffers Sarah Chen, Javier Morales, Caitlin Chin, Emma Rodriguez, and Mikko Kopponen have in common? 

For one thing, they don’t exist. 

For another, all have been quoted as EFF experts in articles published in the past two months on a site called News-USA Today, which describes itself as “an independent news publisher focused on clear, accurate, and useful journalism.” 

Uh… 

(Please don’t confuse this site with USA Today, in which real EFF experts are accurately quoted on a regular basis.) 

News-USA Today is hardly the only slagheap that’s hallucinating or fabricating EFF personnel and quotes; as we wrote last September, media companies large and small are using AI to generate news content because it’s cheaper than paying for journalists’ salaries, but that savings can come at the cost of the outlets’ reputations— assuming they care about reputation at all. 

But this many fake EFF sources in two months? That’s making a play for the championship title of bogus news content. 

News-USA Today’s site proclaims, “Our goal is simple: give readers the facts and the context they need to make informed decisions.” It then defines its mission:

• “Deliver timely, factual reporting grounded in verifiable sources and public documents.”
• “Make complex topics understandable without losing nuance or accuracy.”
• “Serve the public interest by surfacing stories that affect lives, institutions, and communities.”
• “Maintain a clear separation between news, analysis, opinion, and sponsored content.” 

Attempts to reach contacts listed on the site went unanswered. In fact, after we reached out to them, they published a story on June 9 with quotes from Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Jared Cohen — who also doesn’t exist. 

As we noted last year, EFF is all about having our words spread far and wide. Per our copyright policy, any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY), unless otherwise noted.  

However, we don't want disreputable sites making up words (or false identities!) for us, whether or not they’re using AI. False quotations that misstate our positions damage the trust that the public and reputable media outlets have in us.  

The best thing a news consumer can do is invest a little time and energy to learn how to discern the real from the fake. It’s unfortunate that it's the public’s burden to put in this much effort, but while we're adjusting to new tools and a new normal, a little effort now can go a long way.   

As we’ve noted before in the context of election misinformation, the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica has published a handy guide about how to tell if what you’re reading is accurate or “fake news,” as has FactCheck.org. 

President Trump’s highly politicized appointment of an entirely unqualified acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) underscores why the government’s warrantless mass spying power must be reformed. 

Congress now faces a deadline of Friday, June 12 to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an unconstitutional program rife with problems, loopholes, and compliance issues. Section 702 allows the National Security Agency to collect communications from targets overseas – including communications with Americans in the U.S. – and stores them in massive databases. The NSA then allows other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to access untold amounts of that information.  

Under current practice, the FBI can query and even read the U.S. side of that communication without a warrant. What’s more, victims won’t even know and have very few ways of finding out that their communications have been surveilled. EFF and other civil liberties advocates have been trying for years to know how data collected through Section 702 is used in domestic investigations and prosecutions.  

Our advocacy to reform Section 702 has been consistent across administrations, including when the federal Intelligence Community was run by people with experience in the relevant agencies. In fact, the 2004 law creating the position of DNI – which coordinates America’s 18 spy agencies – requires those who hold it to have “extensive national security expertise.” 

Enter Bill Pulte. 

Trump on Tuesday named Pulte – currently director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – to replace current DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month. Pulte lacks any intelligence, military, or congressional experience.  

“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Pulte isn't a qualified intelligence administrator. He does, however, seem to be unquestioningly loyal to President Trump and willing to use his position to attack and smear the President’s political foes.   

Because Trump named him acting DNI, Pulte isn’t subject to Senate confirmation. And under the Vacancies Act, Pulte could remain in the role for about seven months. 

This is particularly concerning because of Pulte’s history of using private information held by the government as a political weapon. In his FHFA role, he has accused several of the President’s political foes and targets – including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – of mortgage fraud based on private data held by his agency.  

All these targets and others have denied wrongdoing. A federal criminal complaint filed against James in Virginia imploded after a judge found prosecutor Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully appointed, and prosecutors twice failed to convince a grand jury to indict James. Pulte’s accusations against Schiff, Cook, and others have not led to criminal charges. 

Pulte also used his FHFA pulpit to attack then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and dismantle internal oversight. 

Pulte isn't a qualified intelligence administrator. He does, however, seem to be unquestioningly loyal to President Trump and willing to use his position to attack and smear the President’s political foes. As acting DNI, Pulte would have access to every scrap of classified information the Intelligence Community holds, and under Section 702, that includes massive amounts of information about Americans. 

Even lawmakers who are typically friendly to the intelligence community acknowledge that this is a disaster in the making. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, told NPR that Pulte has "no experience in the military, no experience in Congress, no experience in the intel community or law enforcement" and was chosen because he is "100% loyal to doing anything and everything President Trump demands." 

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters “we don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director. Asked about fears that Pulte might pursue Trump’s political opponents, Thune said: “We need professionals there.” 

Congress already has had trouble reauthorizing Section 702 as Freedom Caucus Republicans and many Democrats joined forces to demand reforms including the common-sense requirement that federal agencies get a probable cause warrant from a judge before searching any data involving Americans. Pulte’s appointment exemplifies why no administration should have the power granted by Section 702 without the independent judicial review required in seeking a warrant. 

Governments must not adopt emerging and powerful AI technologies without also adopting strong and clear safeguards to protect Constitutional rights, EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia testified today to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. 

During the hearing on “The AI Security Landscape: How Frontier Models, Agentic AI, and AI Coding Tools Are Reshaping Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Resilience,” he explained that the use of generative AI for the purposes of mass government surveillance would supercharge unconstitutional violations of civil liberties. He also highlighted how government secrecy, in addition to the black box of for-profit proprietary technology, prevents the public and lawmakers from knowing when AI models make mistakes, including errors that seriously impact the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and the lives of individuals.  

“AI also has a track record of getting things wrong—from false citations on legal briefs to a major AI mistake that sent DHS recruits to the field without proper training. There are likely more consequential examples that we do not even know about because of classification that would prevent a more thorough accounting," he said in his opening remarks.

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“At this level the question is not how do we rein in AI, it’s how do we rein in the agencies that would unleash AI on the American public,” Matthew said in response to a question by Subcommittee Ranking Member Delia Ramirez, D-Ill.  

You can read his full testimony as prepared here. 

EFF welcomes our new Executive Director Nicole Ozer today! 

Nicole is a legal expert on privacy and surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital speech who previously served as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco. From 2004-2025, she was founding director of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. 

Nicole has long been a partner of EFF’s in the fight to defend civil liberties in the digital world. Many of us already know her, and she’s basically as close to EFF “family” as someone can be without actually having worked here.   

Over her more than two decades leading public interest technology work, Nicole has:  

• spearheaded passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act – working with EFF to enact the nation’s strongest electronic surveillance law, requiring a warrant for government access to electronic information; 
• modernized California law to protect reading records in the digital age by helping, along with EFF, to craft the Reader Privacy Act, requiring a “super warrant” for government access; 
• created a groundbreaking model law for local democratic oversight of surveillance systems which inspired 25 laws across the country that help safeguard the rights and safety of more than 17 million people; 
• litigated civil liberties cases, including work with EFF on the NSA cases, and drafted influential amicus briefs on technology issues at all levels of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court; and 
• developed multi-year campaigns to strengthen the anti-surveillance policies related to social media surveillance and face recognition of major technology companies and foster stronger privacy and free expression protection for billions of people worldwide. 

And that's just the TL;DR! You can read more about her bona fides here. 

EFF’s work to ensure technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation is more urgent than ever. And with Nicole’s decades of leadership in public interest technology work, EFF is poised to be stronger than ever to meet this moment and build for the fights ahead. 

Nicole succeeds Cindy Cohn, who has been with EFF for more than 25 years and served as executive director since 2015. Cindy is leaving EFF later this month – not to retire, but to find a role that puts her back in the courtroom doing what she does best: suing the government! She’ll still be part of the EFF community. 

We are living digital lives, using technology to connect, communicate, and mobilize for change. And we need you in these critical fights to defend and advance rights in the digital world – so join EFF today, and sign up for our EFFector newsletter to make sure you’re updated on the latest EFF news including upcoming events to help you get to know Nicole. 

Welcome Nicole! 

SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. technology companies should be legally accountable in U.S. courts for building tools that purposefully and actively facilitate human rights abuses by foreign governments, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in a brief filed Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The brief filed in the case of Cisco Systems, Inc., et al., v. Doe I, et al. urges the high court to uphold the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit’s 2023 ruling that U.S. corporations can be held liable under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) – a law that lets noncitizens bring claims in U.S. federal court for international law violations – for taking actions in the U.S. that aided and abetted persecution and torture abroad. 

“This is not a case about a company that merely provided routers or other general-purpose technologies to a foreign government. It is about a company that purposefully and actively assisted in the persecution of a religious group,” the brief says. “There is a growing set of companies—including American companies—that provide surveillance technologies that are vulnerable to, and indeed are being used to, support gross human rights abuses. Because of this, the outcome of this case will have profound implications for millions of people who rely on digital technologies in their everyday lives, including to practice their religion.” 

The “Golden Shield” system that Cisco custom-built for the Chinese government was an essential component of persecution against the Falun Gong religious group—persecution that included online spying and tracking, detention, and torture. Victims reported that intercepted communications were used during torture sessions aimed at forcing them to renounce their religion. Falun Gong victims and their families sued Cisco in 2011 and a federal district judge dismissed the case in 2014. The case was delayed three times as the Supreme Court considered three prior ATS cases.   

The 9th Circuit appeals court – after proceedings including an amicus brief from EFF – reversed that lower decision, holding that U.S. corporations can be held liable under the ATS for aiding and abetting human rights abuses abroad. It also held that a company does not need to have the “purpose” to facilitate human rights abuses in order to be held liable; it only needs to have “knowledge” that its assistance helped in such abuses. It then held that the plaintiffs’ allegations showed that Cisco’s actions met both standards. The court also held that the fact that a technology has legitimate uses does not shield a company from liability for other uses that led to human rights abuses when the standards of international law are met. Taken cumulatively, Cisco’s actions in the U.S. were sufficient to allow the case to proceed, the 9th Circuit ruled.  

Cisco appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted review in January. The case, No. 24-856, is scheduled for argument on April 28. 

Cisco Systems is just one of many U.S. companies that make surveillance systems, spyware, and other products used by governments to violate people’s human rights. 

“This Court must not shut the courthouse door to victims of human rights abuses that are actively powered by American corporations,” the brief says. “In the digital age, repressive governments rarely act alone to violate human rights. They have accomplices—including technology companies that have the sophistication and technical know-how that those repressive governments lack.” 

For EFF’s amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court:  https://www.eff.org/document/2026-03-27-eff-amicus-brief-cisco-v-doe-scotus

For EFF’s Doe I v. Cisco case page: https://www.eff.org/cases/doe-i-v-cisco  

For the U.S. Supreme Court docket: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24-856.html  

SAN FRANCISCO – Nicole Ozer has been appointed as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation effective June 1. 

Ozer is a legal expert on privacy and surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital speech. She currently serves as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. From 2004-2025, she was founding director of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Ozer will succeed Cindy Cohn, who has been with EFF for more than 25 years and served as its executive director since 2015. 

EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development, with a mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. The organization celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2025. 

"I am honored to lead EFF forward in these critical times. EFF’s global work to defend and advance rights, justice, and democracy in the digital age is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives,” Ozer said. “I am ready to hit the ground running with EFF’s exceptional staff, board, and broad base of supporters and ensure that EFF is stronger than ever. Together, we can meet this moment and build a future where technology works for the people.”  

“I couldn’t be happier to pass EFF’s reins over to Nicole,” Cohn said. “She has been our stalwart partner for many years in standing up for privacy, free speech and innovation online. I’m confident that she understands both the strong heart and the future potential of EFF especially as our work is more critical than ever.”   

“Nicole Ozer is the ideal person to lead EFF during this unprecedented time in our nation’s history,” said EFF Board Chair Gigi Sohn. “She possesses all of the qualities necessary to lead the organization: great vision, strong management skills and deep substantive knowledge. The fact that she has worked alongside EFF for over two decades is icing on the cake. The EFF Board is excited to welcome Nicole and begin a new chapter in our history.” 

Over her more than two decades leading public interest technology work, Ozer: 

• spearheaded passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act – the nation’s strongest electronic surveillance law, requiring a warrant for government access to electronic information;
• modernized California law to protect reading records in the digital age by helping to craft the Reader Privacy Act requiring a “super warrant” for government access;
• created a groundbreaking model law for local democratic oversight of surveillance systems which inspired 25 laws across the country that help safeguard the rights and safety of more than 17 million people;
• litigated civil liberties cases and drafted influential amicus briefs on technology issues at all levels of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court; and
• developed multi-year campaigns to strengthen the anti-surveillance policies related to social media surveillance and face recognition of major technology companies and foster stronger privacy and free expression protection for billions of people worldwide. 

Ozer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; was a 2024-2025 technology and human rights fellow with the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and in 2019 was a visiting researcher at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and a non-residential fellow with the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.  

Ozer's work has earned accolades including the Fearless Advocate Award from the American Constitution Society Bay Area, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, and a 2025 California Senate Members resolution commending her “unwavering dedication to defending and promoting civil liberties in the digital world.” Her writings on privacy and constitutional law have been published widely, and she regularly provides expert testimony for government proceedings, offers commentary in the press, speaks at academic conferences, and presents at national and global forums including South by Southwest and the Centre for European Policy Studies. She holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a bachelor’s in American Studies from Amherst College. 

"It is incredibly exciting to welcome Nicole Ozer as our new leader at EFF at a time when the organization's mission couldn't be more essential,” said entrepreneur, activist, writer, and EFF Board member Anil Dash. "Nicole's unique skills promise to build on the foundation that Cindy Cohn established as Executive Director, preparing EFF to serve an even more vital role in protecting privacy and innovation." 

Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993 when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. She served as EFF’s legal director and general counsel from 2000 through 2015, and as executive director since then. She also co-hosted EFF’s award-winning “How to Fix the Internet” podcast. Her memoir, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, was published March 10 by MIT Press, and she is now conducting a national book tour. 

EFF's Board of Directors last year assembled a committee which undertook a wide search for Cohn’s successor with assistance from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates. 

Contact: press@eff.org

While How to Fix the Internet is on hiatus, we wanted to share a great conversation with you from last week. EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn spoke with bestselling novelist, journalist, and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow about Cindy’s new book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance” (MIT Press).

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You can also listen to this episode on the Internet Archive or watch the video on YouTube.

Part memoir, part battle cry, “Privacy’s Defender” is the story of Cindy’s fights alongside the visionaries who looked at the early internet and understood that the legal and political battles over this new technology - the Crypto Wars, the NSA’s dragnet, the FBI gag orders - were really over the future of free speech, privacy, and power for all. 

Cindy Cohn and Cory Doctorow at City Lights.jpg

And finally, stay tuned to this feed; we’re working on a special podcast series featuring key players and moments from the book! 

Resources: 

• The Crypto Wars: Bernstein v. US Department of Justice
• NSA Spying: Hepting v. AT&T
• NSA Spying: Jewel v. NSA
• EFF’s National Security Letter lawsuits 

SAN FRANCISCO – Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn will launch her memoir, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (MIT Press, March 10), with events in San Francisco and Berkeley before embarking on a national book tour. 

In Privacy’s Defender, Cohn weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders.  

The book will be Cohn’s swansong at EFF as she’s stepping down as executive director later this year after 25 years with the organization. And there’s no timelier topic: Everyone should be concerned about privacy right now, as the federal government consolidates and weaponizes data, companies track our every click, and law enforcement from local police to ICE keep tabs on all of us, everywhere we go, every day. 

The Privacy’s Defender tour will begin with a free event at San Francisco’s famed City Lights Bookstore (261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133) moderated by bestselling author and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow, at 7pm PST Tuesday, March 10.  

Then EFF will host a launch party at Berkeley’s Ciel Creative Space (940 Parker St., Berkeley, CA 94710) moderated by bestselling author Annalee Newitz at 7 p.m. PT on Thursday, March 12; tickets cost $12.50-$20. 

The book tour will also include events in Portland, OR; Seattle; Denver; Cambridge, MA; Ann Arbor, MI; and Iowa City, IA. Later events are being planned in New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as a May 13 event at Commonwealth Club World Affairs in San Francisco. 

Proceeds from sales of the book benefit EFF. 

“These beautifully written stories show why the fight for privacy is worth having and reveal all that Cindy Cohn and EFF have done to establish the modern privacy doctrine as the essential core of a free society.” -- Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University; author of How to Steal a Presidential Election 

“Cindy Cohn gives readers a first-person window into some of the pivotal legal disputes of the digital era and reminds us that action and activism are crucial to preserving Americans’ freedom.” -- U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, author of It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change 

“Privacy’s Defender is a compelling account of a life well lived and an inspiring call to action for the next generation of civil liberties champions.” -- Edward Snowden, whistleblower; author of Permanent Record 

For the San Francisco event: https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/ 

For the Berkeley event: https://www.eff.org/event/privacys-defender-book-launch-party  

For more on Privacy’s Defender and the book tour: https://www.eff.org/Privacys-Defender 

SAN FRANCISCO — A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales hype about police surveillance technology and report accurately on costs, benefits, privacy, and accountability as these invasive and often ineffective tools come to communities across the nation. 

The “Selling Safety” report is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Just Journalism (CJJ), and IPVM. 

Police technology is often sold as a silver bullet: a way to modernize departments, make communities safer, and eliminate human bias from policing with algorithmic objectivity. Behind the slick marketing is a sprawling, under-scrutinized industry that relies on manufacturing the appearance of effectiveness, not measuring it. The cost of blindly deferring to advertising can be high in tax dollars, privacy, and civil liberties. 

“Selling Safety” helps journalists see through the spin. It breaks down how policing technology companies market their tools, and how those sales claims — which are often misleading — get recycled into media coverage. It offers tools for asking better questions, understanding incentives, and finding local accountability stories. 

“The industry that provides technology to law enforcement is one of the most unregulated, unexamined, and consequential in the United States,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia. “Most Americans would rightfully be horrified to know how many decisions about policing are made: not by public employees, but by multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech companies who have an insatiable profit motive to market their technology as the silver bullet that will stop crime. Lawmakers often are too eager to seem ‘tough on crime’ and journalists too often see an easy story in publishing law enforcement press releases about new technology. This report offers a glimpse into how the police-tech sausage gets made so reporters and lawmakers can recognize the tactics of glossy marketing pitches, manufactured effectiveness numbers, and chumminess between companies and police.” 

“Surveillance and other police technologies are spreading faster than public understanding or oversight, leaving journalists to do critical accountability work in real time. We hope this report helps make that work easier,” said Hannah Riley Fernandez, CJJ’s Director of Programming. 

"The surveillance technology industry has a documented pattern of making unsubstantiated claims about technology,” said Conor Healy, IPVM's Director of Government Research. “Marketing is not a substitute for evidence. Journalists who go beyond press releases to critically examine vendor claims will often find solutions are not as magical as they may seem. In doing so, they perform essential accountability work that protects both taxpayer dollars and civil liberties." 

EFF also maintains resources for understanding various police technologies and mapping those technologies in communities across the United States. 

For the “Selling Safety” report:  https://www.eff.org/document/selling-safety-journalists-guide-covering-police-technology

For EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub: https://sls.eff.org/ 

For EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance: https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/ 

SAN FRANCISCO – California must revoke permits allowing federal agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to put automated license plate readers along border highways, a coalition led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Imperial Valley Equity & Justice (IVEJ) demanded today. 

In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Director Dina El-Tawansy, the coalition notes that this invasive mass surveillance – automated license plate readers (ALPRs) often disguised as traffic barrels – puts both residents and migrants at risk of harassment, abuse, detention, and deportation.  

“With USBP (U.S. Border Patrol) Chief Greg Bovino reported to be returning to El Centro sector, after leading a brutal campaign against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, it is urgent that your administration take action,” the letter says. “Caltrans must revoke any permits issued to USBP. CBP, and DEA for these surveillance devices and effectuate their removal.” 

Coalition members signing the letter include the California Nurses Association; American Federation of Teachers Guild, Local 1931; ACLU California Action; Fight for the Future; Electronic Privacy Information Center; Just Futures Law; Jobs to Move America; Project on Government Oversight; American Friends Service Committee U.S./Mexico Border Program; Survivors of Torture, International; Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans; Border Angels; Southern California Immigration Project; Trust SD Coalition; Alliance San Diego; San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium; Showing Up for Racial Justice San Diego; San Diego Privacy; Oakland Privacy; Japanese American Citizens League and its Florin-Sacramento Valley, San Francisco, South Bay, Berkeley, Torrance, and Greater Pasadena chapters; Democratic Socialists of America- San Diego; Center for Human Rights and Privacy; The Becoming Project Inc.; Imperial Valley for Palestine; Imperial Liberation Collaborative; Comité de Acción del Valle Inc.; CBFD Indivisible; South Bay People Power; and queercasa. 

California law prevents state and local agencies from sharing ALPR data with out-of-state agencies, including federal agencies involved in immigration enforcement. However, USBP, CBP, and DEA are bypassing these regulations by installing their own ALPRs. 

EFF researchers have released a map of more than 40 of these covert ALPRs along highways in San Diego and Imperial counties that are believed to belong to federal agencies engaged in immigration enforcement.  In response to a June 2025 public records request, Caltrans has released several documents showing CBP and DEA have applied for permits for ALPRs, with more expected as Caltrans continues to locate records responsive to the request. 

“California must not allow Border Patrol and other federal agencies to use surveillance on our roadways to unleash violence and intimidation on San Diego and Imperial Valley residents,” the letter says. “We ask that your administration investigate and release the relevant permits, revoke them, and initiate the removal of these devices. No further permits for ALPRs or tactical checkpoints should be approved for USBP, CBP, or DEA.” 

"The State of California must not allow Border Patrol to exploit our public roads and bypass state law," said Sergio Ojeda, IVEJ’s Lead Community Organizer for Racial and Economic Justice Programs.  "It's time to stop federal agencies from installing hidden cameras that they use to track, target and harass our communities for travelling between Imperial Valley, San Diego and Yuma." 

For the letter: https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-re-covert-alprs

For the map of the covert ALPRs: https://www.eff.org/covertALPRmap

For high-res images of two of the covert ALPRs: https://www.eff.org/node/111725

For more about ALPRs: https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-readers-alprs 

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week posted a photo of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three activists who had entered a St. Paul, Minn. church to confront a pastor who also serves as acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. 

A short while later, the White House posted the same photo – except that version had been digitally altered to darken Armstrong’s skin and rearrange her facial features to make it appear she was sobbing or distraught. The Guardian one of many media outlets to report on this image manipulation, created a handy slider graphic to help viewers see clearly how the photo had been changed.  

This isn’t about “owning the libs” — this is the highest office in the nation using technology to lie to the entire world. 

The New York Times reported it had run the two images through Resemble.AI, an A.I. detection system, which concluded Noem’s image was real but the White House’s version showed signs of manipulation. "The Times was able to create images nearly identical to the White House’s version by asking Gemini and Grok — generative A.I. tools from Google and Elon Musk’s xAI start-up — to alter Ms. Noem’s original image." 

Most of us can agree that the government shouldn’t lie to its constituents. We can also agree that good government does not involve emphasizing cruelty or furthering racial biases. But this abuse of technology violates both those norms. 

“Accuracy and truthfulness are core to the credibility of visual reporting,” the National Press Photographers Association said in a statement issued about this incident. “The integrity of photographic images is essential to public trust and to the historical record. Altering editorial content for any purpose that misrepresents subjects or events undermines that trust and is incompatible with professional practice.” 

This isn’t about “owning the libs” — this is the highest office in the nation using technology to lie to the entire world.

Reworking an arrest photo to make the arrestee look more distraught not only is a lie, but it’s also a doubling-down on a “the cruelty is the point” manifesto. Using a manipulated image further humiliates the individual and perpetuate harmful biases, and the only reason to darken an arrestee’s skin would be to reinforce colorist stereotypes and stoke the flames of racial prejudice, particularly against dark-skinned people.  

History is replete with cruel and racist images as propaganda: Think of Nazi Germany’s cartoons depicting Jewish people, or contemporaneously, U.S. cartoons depicting Japanese people as we placed Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Time magazine caught hell in 1994 for using an artificially darkened photo of O.J. Simpson on its cover, and several Republican politcal campaigns in recent years have been called out for similar manipulation in recent years. 

But in an age when we can create or alter a photo with a few keyboard strokes, when we can alter what viewers think is reality so easily and convincingly, the danger of abuse by government is greater.   

Had the Trump administration not ham-handedly released the retouched perp-walk photo after Noem had released the original, we might not have known the reality of that arrest at all. This dishonesty is all the more reason why Americans’ right to record law enforcement activities must be protected. Without independent records and documentation of what’s happening, there’s no way to contradict the government’s lies. 

This incident raises the question of whether the Trump Administration feels emboldened to manipulate other photos for other propaganda purposes. Does it rework photos of the President to make him appear healthier, or more awake? Does it rework military or intelligence images to create pretexts for war? Does it rework photos of American citizens protesting or safeguarding their neighbors to justify a military deployment? 

In this instance, like so much of today’s political trolling, there’s a good chance it’ll be counterproductive for the trolls: The New York Times correctly noted that the doctored photograph could hinder the Armstrong’s right to a fair trial. “As the case proceeds, her lawyers could use it to accuse the Trump administration of making what are known as improper extrajudicial statements. Most federal courts bar prosecutors from making any remarks about court filings or a legal proceeding outside of court in a way that could prejudice the pool of jurors who might ultimately hear the case.” They also could claim the doctored photo proves the Justice Department bore some sort of animus against Armstrong and charged her vindictively. 

In the past, we've urged caution when analyzing proposals to regulate technologies that could be used to create false images. In those cases, we argued that any new regulation should rely on the established framework for addressing harms caused by other forms of harmful false information. But in this situation, it is the government itself that is misusing technology and propagating harmful falsehoods. This doesn't require new laws; the government can and should put an end to this practice on its own. 

Any reputable journalism organization would fire an employee for manipulating a photo this way; many have done exactly that. It’s a shame our government can’t adhere to such a basic ethical and moral code too. 

EFF last summer asked a federal judge to block the federal government from using Medicaid data to identify and deport immigrants.  

We also warned about the danger of the Trump administration consolidating all of the government’s information into a single searchable, AI-driven interface with help from Palantir, a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights. 

Now we have the first evidence that our concerns have become reality. 

“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address,” 404 Media reports today. “ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.” 

The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources. 

This revelation comes as ICE – which has gone on a surveillance technology shopping spree – floods Minneapolis with agents, violently running roughshod over the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike; President Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy military troops against protestors there. Other localities are preparing for the possibility of similar surges. 

Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected.

This kind of consolidation of government records provides enormous government power that can be abused. Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected. 

As EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn wrote in a Mercury News op-ed last August, “While couched in the benign language of eliminating government ‘data silos,’ this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked ‘Total Information Awareness’ plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress. It’s time to cry out again.” 

In addition to the amicus brief we co-authored challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data, EFF has successfully sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and sued the departments of State and Homeland Security to halt a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. 

But litigation isn’t enough. People need to keep raising concerns via public discourse and Congress should act immediately to put brakes on this runaway train that threatens to crush the privacy and security of each and every person in America.  

EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists don’t just do the hard, endless work of defending our digital civil liberties — they also spend a lot of time and effort explaining that work to the public via media interviews. 

EFF had thousands of media mentions in 2025, from the smallest hyperlocal outlets to international news behemoths. Our work on street-level surveillance — the technology that police use to spy on our communities — generated a great deal of press attention, particularly regarding automated license plate readers (ALPRs). But we also got a lot of ink and airtime for our three lawsuits against the federal government: one challenging the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's illegal data sharing, a second challenging the State Department's unconstitutional "catch and revoke" program, and the third demanding that the departments of State and Justice reveal what pressure they put on app stores to remove ICE-tracking apps.

Other hot media topics included how travelers can protect themselves against searches of their devices, how protestors can protect themselves from surveillance, and the misguided age-verification laws that are proliferating across the nation and around the world, which are an attack on privacy and free expression.

On national television, Matthew Guariglia spoke with NBC Nightly News to discuss how more and more police agencies are using private doorbell cameras to surveil neighborhoods. Tori Noble spoke with ABC’s Good Morning America about the dangers of digital price tags, as well as with ABC News Live Prime about privacy concerns over OpenAI’s new web browser.

Privacy info. This embed will serve content from youtube.com

Privacy info. This embed will serve content from youtube.com

In a sampling of mainstream national media, EFF was cited 33 times by the Washington Post, 16 times by CNN, 13 times by USA Today, 12 times by the Associated Press, 11 times by NBC News, 11 times by the New York Times, 10 times by Reuters, and eight times by National Public Radio. Among tech and legal media, EFF was cited 74 times by Privacy Daily, 35 times by The Verge, 32 times by 404 Media, 32 times by The Register, 26 times by Ars Technica, 25 times by WIRED, 21 times by Law360, 21 times by TechCrunch, 20 times by Gizmodo, and 14 times by Bloomberg Law.

Abroad, EFF was cited in coverage by media outlets in nations including Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Palestine, the Philippines, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. 

EFF staffers spoke to the masses in their own words via op-eds such as: 

• The Well News, Feb. 6: “Net Neutrality Needs to Be Preserved” (Corynne McSherry) 
• Ms. Magazine, Feb. 25: “Age-Verification Laws Seek to Erase LGBTQ+ Identity from the Internet” (Rin Alajaji & Paige Collings) 
• Teen Vogue, April 25: “How to Protect Your Online Privacy: 3 Simple Steps to Stay Safe on the Internet” (Paige Collings) 
• La Silla Vacía (Colombia), April 25: “Big Tech y financiación del periodismo: dependencia, trampas y caminos viables / Big Tech and journalism funding: dependence, traps and viable roads” (Veridiana Alimonti) 
• The Register, Aug. 21: “The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety” (Paige Collings) 
• Bay Area News Group, Aug. 21: "Trump is building ‘one interface to rule them all.’ It’s terrifying.” (Cindy Cohn) 
• Bay Area News Group, Dec. 6: "San Jose’s vast surveillance network is watching you. Be afraid." (Lisa Femia)

And we ruled the airwaves on podcasts including: 

• Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, Jan. 6: “ALPRs Are Everywhere” (Adam Schwartz & Gowri Nayar) 
• CNN Terms of Service, Jan. 7: “If TikTok is Banned, What Happens to Creators and Fans?” (Eva Galperin) 
• Richie & John, Jan. 9: “Meta's Content Changes: What It Means for LGBTQ+ Rights” (Jillian York) 
• The Privacy Insider, Feb. 14: “Signal and Noise: The New Administration, Privacy, and Our Digital Rights” (Cindy Cohn) 
• Tech Policy Press Podcast, Feb. 23: “Evaluating the First Systemic Risk and Audit Reports Under the Digital Services Act” (Svea Windwehr) 
• Tech Policy Press Podcast, March 27: “About that Signal Chat” (Cooper Quintin) 
• CNN Terms of Service, April 1: “Think Before You Ring: Keeping Home Surveillance Safe” Matthew Guariglia 
• Malwarebytes Lock & Code, April 6: “Is your phone listening to you?” (Lena Cohen) 
• Adult Site Broker, April 22: Age verification discussion (Lisa Femia) 
• Plutopia News Network, May 19: “Settling the Digital Frontier” (Cindy Cohn) 
• Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People, July 2: “Who Defends Your Digital Rights?” (Cindy Cohn) 
• Tech Policy Press Podcast, July 13: “How US States Are Shaping AI Policy Amid Federal Debate and Industry Pushback” (Hayley Tsukayama)
• KALW Your Legal Rights, July 23: "Privacy in the Digital Age" (Sophia Cope & Tori Noble) 
• StateScoop Priorities Podcast, July 30: “Cop or AI? This tech makes it hard to tell” (Matthew Guariglia) 
• Malwarebytes' Lock and Code, Aug. 11: “‘The worst thing’ for online rights: An age-restricted grey web” (Jason Kelley) 
• Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, Sept. 1: “Meet Rayhunter” (Cooper Quintin) 
• It Could Happen Here, Sept. 9: “ICE Partners with Israeli Phone Hacking Spyware” (Cooper Quintin) 

We're grateful to all the intrepid journalists who keep doing the hard work of reporting accurately on tech and privacy policy, and we encourage them to keep reaching out to us at press@eff.org.

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

2025 was a stellar year for EFF’s award-winning podcast, “How to Fix the Internet,” as our sixth season focused on the tools and technology of freedom. 

It seems like everywhere we turn we see dystopian stories about technology’s impact on our lives and our futures—from tracking-based surveillance capitalism, to street level government surveillance, to the dominance of a few large platforms choking innovation, to the growing efforts by authoritarian governments to control what we see and say—the landscape can feel bleak. Exposing and articulating these problems is important, but so is envisioning and then building solutions. That’s where our podcast comes in. 

EFF's How to Fix the Internet podcast offers a better way forward. Through curious conversations with some of the leading minds in law and technology, EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn and Activism Director Jason Kelley explore creative solutions to some of today’s biggest tech challenges. Our sixth season, which ran from May through September, featured: 

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  “Digital Autonomy for Bodily Autonomy” – We all leave digital trails as we navigate the internet—records of what we searched for, what we bought, who we talked to, where we went or want to go in the real world—and those trails usually are owned by the big corporations behind the platforms we use. But what if we valued our digital autonomy the way that we do our bodily autonomy? Digital Defense Fund Director Kate Bertash joined Cindy and Jason to discuss how creativity and community can align to center people in the digital world and make us freer both online and offline. 

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  “Love the Internet Before You Hate On It” – There’s a weird belief out there that tech critics hate technology. But do movie critics hate movies? Do food critics hate food? No! The most effective, insightful critics do what they do because they love something so deeply that they want to see it made even better. Molly White—a researcher, software engineer, and writer who focuses on the cryptocurrency industry, blockchains, web3, and other tech joined Cindy and Jason to discuss working toward a human-centered internet that gives everyone a sense of control and interaction; open to all in the way that Wikipedia was (and still is) for her and so many others: not just as a static knowledge resource, but as something in which we can all participate. 

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  “Why Three is Tor's Magic Number” – Many in Silicon Valley, and in U.S. business at large, seem to believe innovation springs only from competition, a race to build the next big thing first, cheaper, better, best. But what if collaboration and community breeds innovation just as well as adversarial competition? Tor Project Executive Director Isabela Fernandes joined Cindy and Jason to discuss the importance of not just accepting technology as it’s given to us, but collaboratively breaking it, tinkering with it, and rebuilding it together until it becomes the technology that we really need to make our world a better place. 

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  “Securing Journalism on the ‘Data-Greedy’ Internet” – Public-interest journalism speaks truth to power, so protecting press freedom is part of protecting democracy. But what does it take to digitally secure journalists’ work in an environment where critics, hackers, oppressive regimes, and others seem to have the free press in their crosshairs? Freedom of the Press Foundation Digital Security Director Harlo Holmes joined Cindy and Jason to discuss the tools and techniques that help journalists protect themselves and their sources while keeping the world informed. 

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  “Cryptography Makes a Post-Quantum Leap” – The cryptography that protects our privacy and security online relies on the fact that even the strongest computers will take essentially forever to do certain tasks, like factoring prime numbers and finding discrete logarithms which are important for RSA encryption, Diffie-Hellman key exchanges, and elliptic curve encryption. But what happens when those problems—and the cryptography they underpin—are no longer infeasible for computers to solve? Will our online defenses collapse? Research and applied cryptographer Deirdre Connolly joined Cindy and Jason to discuss not only how post-quantum cryptography can shore up those existing walls but also help us find entirely new methods of protecting our information. 

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  “Finding the Joy in Digital Security” – Many people approach digital security training with furrowed brows, as an obstacle to overcome. But what if learning to keep your tech safe and secure was consistently playful and fun? People react better to learning and retain more knowledge when they're having a good time. It doesn’t mean the topic isn’t serious—it’s just about intentionally approaching a serious topic with joy. East Africa digital security trainer Helen Andromedon joined Cindy and Jason to discuss making digital security less complicated, more relevant, and more joyful to real users, and encouraging all women and girls to take online safety into their own hands so that they can feel fully present and invested in the digital world. 

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  “Smashing the Tech Oligarchy” – Many of the internet’s thorniest problems can be attributed to the concentration of power in a few corporate hands: the surveillance capitalism that makes it profitable to invade our privacy, the lack of algorithmic transparency that turns artificial intelligence and other tech into impenetrable black boxes, the rent-seeking behavior that seeks to monopolize and mega-monetize an existing market instead of creating new products or markets, and much more. Tech journalist and critic Kara Swisher joined Cindy and Jason to discuss regulation that can keep people safe online without stifling innovation, creating an internet that’s transparent and beneficial for all, not just a collection of fiefdoms run by a handful of homogenous oligarchs. 

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  “Separating AI Hope from AI Hype” – If you believe the hype, artificial intelligence will soon take all our jobs, or solve all our problems, or destroy all boundaries between reality and lies, or help us live forever, or take over the world and exterminate humanity. That’s a pretty wide spectrum, and leaves a lot of people very confused about what exactly AI can and can’t do. Princeton Professor and “AI Snake Oil” publisher Arvind Narayanan joined Cindy and Jason to discuss how we get to a world in which AI can improve aspects of our lives from education to transportation—if we make some system improvements first—and how AI will likely work in ways that we barely notice but that help us grow and thrive. 

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  “Protecting Privacy in Your Brain” – Rapidly advancing "neurotechnology" could offer new ways for people with brain trauma or degenerative diseases to communicate, as the New York Times reported this month, but it also could open the door to abusing the privacy of the most personal data of all: our thoughts. Worse yet, it could allow manipulating how people perceive and process reality, as well as their responses to it—a Pandora’s box of epic proportions. Neuroscientist Rafael Yuste and human rights lawyer Jared Genser, co-founders of The Neurorights Foundation, joined Cindy and Jason to discuss how technology is advancing our understanding of what it means to be human, and the solid legal guardrails they're building to protect the privacy of the mind. 

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  “Building and Preserving the Library of Everything” – Access to knowledge not only creates an informed populace that democracy requires but also gives people the tools they need to thrive. And the internet has radically expanded access to knowledge in ways that earlier generations could only have dreamed of—so long as that knowledge is allowed to flow freely. Internet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle joined Cindy and Jason to discuss how the free flow of knowledge makes all of us more free.

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

SAN FRANCISCO—With ill-advised and dangerous age verification laws proliferating across the United States and around the world, creating surveillance and censorship regimes that will be used to harm both youth and adults, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new resource hub that will sort through the mess and help people fight back. 

To mark the hub's launch, EFF will host a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) next week and a free livestreamed panel discussion on January 15 highlighting the dangers of these misguided laws. 

“These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet,” said EFF Activist Molly Buckley. “While they are wrapped in the legitimate concern about children's safety, they operate as tools of censorship, used to block people young and old from viewing or sharing information that the government deems ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive.’ They also create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, and chill access to vital online communities and resources. Our new resource hub is a one-stop shop for information that people can use to fight back and redirect lawmakers to things that will actually help young people, like a comprehensive privacy law.” 

Half of U.S. states have enacted some sort of online age verification law. At the federal level, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last week held a hearing on “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.” While many of the 19 bills on that hearing’s agenda involve age verification, none would truly protect children and teens. Instead, they threaten to make it harder to access content that can be crucial, even lifesaving, for some kids. 

It’s not just in the U.S.  Effective this week, a new Australian law requires social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account. 

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the panacea that regulators and corporations claim it to be; in fact, it could undermine the safety of many. 

Age verification laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like government ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “age estimation” methods—before granting them access to certain online content or services. These methods are often inaccurate and always privacy-invasive, demanding that users hand over sensitive and immutable personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. Once that valuable data is collected, it can easily be leaked, hacked, or misused.  

To truly protect everyone online, including children, EFF advocates for a comprehensive data privacy law. 

EFF will host a Reddit AMA on r/privacy from Monday, Dec. 15 at 12 p.m. PT through Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 5 p.m. PT, with EFF attorneys, technologists, and activists answering questions about age verification on all three days. 

EFF will host a free livestream panel discussion about age verification at 12 p.m. PDT on Thursday, Jan. 15. Panelists will include Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; a representative of Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. RSVP at https://www.eff.org/livestream-age. 

For the age verification resource hub: https://www.eff.org/age 

For the Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/  

For the Jan. 15 livestream: https://www.eff.org/livestream-age