Last week, researchers at Citizen Lab revealed a horrifying new malware campaign, dubbed “AdFection.” It used an ad network to distribute spyware to journalist’s devices to infect them without the target ever needing to click anything. This sort of attack on journalists is dangerous and incredibly concerning, especially since it’s built on the backbone of a technology we already object to: behavioral advertising. Although this type of attack has only been described targeting journalists, you can take a few steps we outline in the next section to mitigate the risk no matter who you are.

A few factors combined to make this attack a noteworthy first-of-its-kind. First, it utilized the surveillance ad-tech ecosystem to specially target the malicious code. Second, the spyware it delivered was so-called “zero-click,” meaning it required no interaction from the user to be infected: all that is required is for the ad to be delivered and code bundled along with it to be run, which happens automatically. Neither malvertising nor zero-click attacks are new on their own. What’s novel about the AdFection attack is combining them, creating a highly targeted, extremely dangerous attack which is difficult to defend against and even harder to detect.

Let’s take a deeper look from the perspective of one of the Windows devices supplied to the researchers from Al Jazeera. Here’s how the report describes the infection happening: 

• Someone browsing the web or using an app on that machine is served an ad created by Discover-Tech, a company exposed in the report as “purporting to be a legitimate advertising company, [but] appears to be a front for large-scale ad espionage abuse.” 
• The ad contains a small snippet of JavaScript code which is automatically executed when rendered in the app or website. 
• This code reaches back out to a Discover-Tech server, referred to as their “NOAS server,” with detailed information about the machine rendering it: its cookie-set advertising ID, IP address, and more.

So far, nothing particularly unusual has happened. Ads that contain JavaScript code and reach back out to their servers with lots of information on your device—and by extension you—are commonplace. It’s all part of the data-driven advertising ecosystem. What happens next is more interesting:

• The NOAS server uses this detailed information to determine it is an Al Jazeera machine requesting the ad. 
• Instead of returning an empty response (as it does most of the time), it responds with a malicious, zero-click spyware payload. That payload was created by Discover-Tech’s partner Candiru/Integrity Labs, a company previously exposed for involvement in sophisticated malware attacks. 
• The payload is then executed and infects the targeted machine.

Companies targeting zero-click malware attacks against journalists might seem like the plot of a blockbuster spy thriller. But this attack was enabled by the everyday practices of ad-tech companies, which unfortunately have extreme latitude in the collection of users’ data. By leveraging the tracking identifiers and data collected on devices for the purpose of delivering targeted ads to specific individuals, mercenary spyware companies can repurpose this data in order to fine-tune who they infect—and hide that they’re doing it from everyone else. 

Most ads are not delivered directly by the ad creators, but rather by intermediaries that facilitate Real-Time Bidding auctions. Nonetheless, winning bidders are given the ability to execute JavaScript code in the browser of the person who receives the targeted ad. This allows for interactive ads to be displayed, but also (as we’ve seen) for the compromise of a device just by delivery of malicious code.

While the different components in this attack chain are not novel on their own, the exposure of this combined attack is significant because it reveals a technique to hyper-target individuals and organizations for infection. Luckily, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from the myriad of dangers presented by the ad-tracking industry. Here’s how.

What You Can Do About It

As we work towards fundamental fixes to the ad ecosystem and banning online behavioral ads altogether, the onus is on all of us to protect ourselves. This is especially important for higher risk individuals or journalists working in states with heavy surveillance. Citizen Lab outlines several steps, depending on your threat model, to take to help protect yourself:

• Take some simple steps to lock down your devices right now.
• Establish strong security fundamentals. Sites like our own Surveillance Self-Defense and Consumer Reports’ Security Planner can help get you started.
• Use a browser extension to reduce tracking. Our Privacy Badger extension is an excellent start. Network-wide ad blocking services are also worth considering if you’re comfortable handling the set up process.
• On mobile phones, disable or reset your AD ID. Here are directions to do so for Android and iPhone.
• Consider using more privacy protective browsers.

These steps can be very helpful in protecting yourself, but there is only so much you can do as an individual. Banning behavioral ads like this would be a good place to start. Behavioral ads aren’t just a privacy nightmare as designed. They are the perfect vehicle for malvertising and similar threats, just as we see here.

The vast amount of information on the open web requires researchers and journalists to adapt with new tools to make sense of it all. Checking facts, gauging public opinion, and other lines of inquiry depend on being able to analyze the overwhelming amount of material posted online every day. Unfortunately, responding to the AI industry’s voracious appetite for data, companies stewarding this public data are looking to cash in and block access to the open web. This makes the web harder to navigate, and threatens all kinds of important research.

Reddit’s lawsuit against SerpAPI and Perplexity threatens to do exactly that.

Reddit was once a very open platform, fostering a community of alternative apps and extensions putting users in control of their experience. Since the rise of AI however, it changed tack. Over the last three years Reddit has closed APIs to users, limited UI features, and otherwise restrained access without login. By making the voices on the platform harder to access, the company has positioned itself as a gatekeeper, and has since struck a lucrative data-sharing arrangement with Google.

SerpAPI, in contrast, is a tool which offers automated access to Google’s search engine results pages. It’s used by Perplexity, an AI-based search tool. Reddit sued to stop SerpAPI and Perplexity from bypassing Reddit’s own arrangement with Google. (Google brought a similar suit, which was dismissed by another court.)

It comes as little surprise that the legal weapon Reddit employed in this case is Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the same “anti-circumvention” law that has caused so much trouble for artists, innovators, and researchers over the years—and that EFF has fought against from the beginning. Reddit’s suit claimed that SerpAPI’s use of widely used techniques to access Google search results amounted to “circumventing” access controls on copyrighted works. 

There are major problems with this argument. 

First, Reddit doesn’t own the copyright in its users’ posts—the users do, and they grant Reddit the right to distribute the posted content freely.

Second, there’s no meaningful copyright infringement going on here. Perplexity functions like a search engine, responding to users’ queries with relevant links and optionally an AI-generated summary. Crawling and indexing the web to create a search engine was long ago ruled a fair use under copyright law.

And third, Google’s efforts to put rate limits on search queries and block some kinds of automated querying aren’t the sort of “access controls” that Section 1201 was written for. The law was passed in 1998 and targeted things like breaking the encryption on DVDs and other digital media. In contrast to physical or paywalled media, Reddit posts are visible to everyone, without a paywall and generally without a login. 

Unfortunately, a federal district judge ruled in July that the suit could proceed, concluding that Section 1201 applied. That’s a dangerous ruling, because it casts a cloud of legal uncertainty over lots of important research, including efforts to study public sentiment through social media and to preserve records of historical events. Without tools that can look at the web at scale, many kinds of research are simply impossible today. But if employing those tools risks Section 1201 liability, only the wealthiest institutions will be able to use them.

We cannot let the internet be rebuilt such that information is divided up among a handful of gatekeepers and sold back to us like cable subscription packages. If our knowledge of the online world comes only through wealthy institutions, the cost of knowledge will only increase and access to unbiased answers diminishes. 

If you use the internet at all, you may have noticed that a large percentage of sites suddenly went down earlier this week—and all your nerdiest friends were talking about "The Vulnerability Apocalypse” and this thing called PHP that powers nearly 70% of the websites on the internet. You may find yourself wondering: what is PHP, what just happened, what is the vulnerability apocalypse, and what do I need to do?  

To find out what you can personally do read the first blog post in this series!  

What Is PHP?  

PHP is a programming language used mainly to create interactive websites. Facebook, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Etsy, and other major sites all use or were originally built on PHP. It is a long-established mainstay of web development. But because it is open-source, maintenance of these critical systems depends on a small number of volunteers working on this in their free time. The disaster scenario that happened this past week is the perfect example of why we need more money and people supporting open-source projects. Corporations should be contributing both. 

What Is the Vulnerability Apocalypse?  

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are the way that security professionals file reports about vulnerabilities in software. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD), run by NIST, is the official national database of CVEs. In other words, CVE reports managed by NIST are the closest thing we have to a canonical database of security vulnerabilities in software. The NVD currently has around 400,000 CVEs that have been filed and accepted since 1988. In just the month of October, 13,000 new CVEs have been submitted. This means that 3% of critical software security bugs that have ever been officially logged were found in the last month alone. And it's likely that by the end of the year over a quarter of the software vulnerabilities that have ever been found will be from 2026.  

 

Computer vulnerabilities reported are rising exponentially. Source: CVE Tracker

This research is being driven almost entirely by the cybersecurity capabilities of major AI models from companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Historically it has been popularly assumed by cybersecurity experts that finding unknown (zero-day) exploits in any specific project and turning them into exploits was expensive. The knowledge to discover them was not widespread, and it was a hard task even for those initiated into the arcane ways of vulnerability hunting. Google even dedicated an entire team to it.  

But now thanks to major AI models, vulnerabilities are cheap, and anyone of moderate technical skill with a few dollars and access to a frontier AI model can find vulnerabilities in a few minutes. For example, recent vulnerabilities in PHP were found with a prompt to an AI model that literally said "find bad vulnerabilities in PHP."  

What Happened This Week? 

In 2024, a potentially severe vulnerability in PHP was discovered during an external security audit. PHP’s maintainers couldn’t agree on a solution, but more importantly, they couldn’t find a way to exploit the vulnerability. Because it didn’t seem like an active threat, they ended up deprioritizing a fix in favor of working on more urgent security issues. Then, in August 2026, security researchers working with the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic independently discovered the vulnerability again, and another one—and now, with a way to exploit them.  

We now know that the vulnerabilities were so severe that they would have allowed even moderately inventive hackers to take over any website that uses PHP and then steal customer data, launch further malware attacks, spy on users, take websites offline, or launch a massive denial of service attack.[1] 

Because of the severity of these vulnerabilities, several of the involved researchers got together with the makers of PHP to patch the vulnerabilities and disclose them in a coordinated manner. The idea was that hopefully everyone would get a chance to quietly release and then apply fixes for the vulnerabilities before the whole world found out about it. 

But news already started to leak on October 20th. There was a post on a widely read forum “Hacker News” and other posts elsewhere. One of the researchers accidentally published a video early. Companies reported seeing active exploitation of the vulnerabilities going back as far as October 17th. On October 21st, six hours before the planned press embargo, one company, Chainguard, jumped the gun and released a patch early, essentially giving anyone instructions about exactly where to find the vulnerabilities and how to weaponize them. This sent system administrators everywhere scrambling to patch their systems before they were taken over by hackers. And it’s going to take a long time to patch all these systems. At the time of this writing over 33 million websites are still running on vulnerable versions of PHP.  

The internet is run largely on open-source software, mostly maintained by a small handful of skilled volunteers occasionally getting a small stipend, not by major corporations and highly paid engineers. These are projects you have perhaps never heard of, like PHP, OpenSSL, and SQLite, but these programs run on nearly every computer in the world and are maintained by teams as small as one person. When a vulnerability is found in these projects, it can be devastating.  

PHP isn’t the only critical open-source software with a high severity vulnerability this week either. Other widespread open-source projects like Node.js and GitLab also had severe security bugs reported.  

The small number of already overworked open-source maintainers are now facing a deluge of vulnerability reports, some of which are false, but many of which are very real. Burnout in open source has never been higher.  

We Need Stronger Support for Open Source Projects

Much of the foundation for the modern multibillion-dollar internet industry is built on open-source products that were created and still maintained—for free—by dedicated volunteers in their spare time. It’s an imperfect system, and it can lead to errors.  

One of those critical, under resourced open-source products is PHP. And while vulnerabilities in PHP were privately found years ago, they were left unfixed because they didn’t seem as impactful as other bugs at the time. These same vulnerabilities were recently rediscovered and proved to be trivially exploitable by security researchers using advanced AI models. While in the middle of the widespread, global effort to correct this mistake and deploy fixes, the problem was leaked by some of the security researchers who had gotten early access to the fixes. Unfortunately, this left millions of websites, ranging from personal blogs to government sites, vulnerable to hacking that could result in data theft, malware distribution, and worse.  

Open-source projects like PHP and others are the backbone of the entire internet. If they don’t get the resources they need, they and the internet they power, are at risk of falling apart. Corporations (whose products would not exist without these products) should be actively contributing to their maintenance. 

1. A technical analysis of the vulnerabilities is out of scope for this post and has already been written by the original researchers.

It is a commonly held truth among computer geeks that there is no such thing as bug free software, or a secure computer. Any piece of software that anyone actually uses will have a security vulnerability somewhere in the code. The more complex that software is, the more likely there will be a vulnerability. Fortunately for everyone, finding severe vulnerabilities was generally considered an expensive and difficult task requiring years of training and deep knowledge of how computers and software worked. Until recently there was a steady background hum of vulnerabilities being found and patched, with major vulnerabilities that could cripple the entire internet only happening every few years. Now that is no longer the case.  

You may have noticed your nerdiest friends freaking out about the “Vulnerability Apocalypse” this week and waving their arms in panic about something called PHP. You may have also noticed that some of your favorite websites were down for a bit. In the last two weeks of October alone, there have been multiple, potentially internet-breaking vulnerabilities reported and patched. Many of those vulnerabilities were in the open-source software that is the foundation of the vast majority of the internet.

For more detailed information on what happened, and why supporting open-source projects matters, check out our other blog.

This is all because frontier AI models, such as those created by OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, have made it incredibly cheap and easy to find previously unknown vulnerabilities (zero-days) in open- and closed-source code. Three percent of all software vulnerabilities ever found in history were found just in the month of October. This year alone researchers have found nearly a quarter of all software security issues which have ever been discovered. 

If exploiting critical software is now cheaper and easier than ever, what does that mean for us as individuals and what does that mean for society as a whole? TL; DR: It’s going to get worse before it gets better. But you can protect yourself with basic digital security hygiene that is now more important than ever.  

What Do I Need to Do? 

There absolutely needs to be a bigger conversation about how we got here and how to fix the systemic issues involved, including how corporations that depend on open-source code should contribute to their upkeep, and how big tech should be regulated.  

But for now, this news is a compelling reason to tighten up your digital hygiene. A lot of computers are going to get hacked a lot more often, and unfortunately, it isn’t going to get better any time soon. Thankfully, EFF has compiled a comprehensive set of security advice in our Surveillance Self-Defense guides. To start, we recommend making sure your browser and all applications are always up to date with the latest patches.   

You should also consider installing a tracker blocking tool, like EFF’s Privacy Badger (now on Safari), and remain vigilant for phishing attempts. Additionally, install a password manager and use unique passwords for each website, so that if one site is compromised, the rest of your passwords are safe. You should also be aware that data breaches may now be more likely, and the websites you visit may experience more attacks than usual, which means that some services may be disrupted.  

If you host a blog or other website, make sure that either you or your hosting provider has patched this particular issue.  

For additional tips on protecting yourself and others, head over to our Surveillance Self-Defense site. Additionally, if you’d like to support any of EFF’s open-source projects like Privacy Badger, Rayhunter, and Certbot, visit our donate page. 

Last week, two federal appeals courts issued opinions that will allow Florida and Georgia to start enforcing laws that will age-gate and block young people from accessing social media. The laws do not adequately respect minors’ rights to play, speak, and learn online. More fundamentally, these laws don’t help young people stay safe online—a goal that lawmakers should pursue.

Age-Gated? Email EFF at agegates@eff.org. 

Because of the new laws, some young people will lose their ability to access lawful information, find their online communities, and even engage with school board members. Others will need parental permission to stay online. And adults will face increased demands to prove their age, which will put their privacy at increased risk simply to continue to use the services they already use. 

We opposed these laws because they threaten the free expression and privacy of both minors and adults.  Even though these lawsuits are not over, the injunctions that paused enforcement have been lifted, and the states of Florida and Georgia will now be able to enforce broad restrictions on social media use. 

The restrictions that these states will start enforcing are a setback for the rights of all internet users, but they are not written in stone. That’s why EFF is encouraging internet users - and particularly young people – to start keeping a record of how they are affected. If you are a teenager who loses access to an online discussion, can’t participate in a political campaign, or stop seeking information because you don’t want to upload personal information, document what happened. The same is true for adults who may be mistakenly blocked by age checks, and parents who may encounter obstacles to authorizing their children's use of online services. These experiences matter. They can help us show courts, policymakers, and the public what government restrictions on online expression actually cost the people who live under them. 

Hopefully, with enough proof of the expressive harms these laws cause, we can push lawmakers to rescind them. That’s why we’re encouraging folks to reach out to EFF once they’ve documented these harms. You can write to us about this issue at the email address agegates@eff.org. 

The Decisions

These two opinions, issued by the same panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, allow Florida and Georgia to enforce restrictions on social media accounts for people under 16 years old. The requirements differ by state. 

In Florida, the judges allowed that state’s H.B. 3 to move forward, which requires covered platforms to ban anyone under 14 from opening or keeping accounts—even with parental permission. Teenagers who are 14 or 15 can have accounts only with parental consent. To be covered, a platform has to use algorithms, allow content uploads or the viewing of other peoples’ content, and have at least one feature on a list of features the state considers bad, including livestreaming, engagement metrics, autoplay, infinite scrolling, or push notifications. These requirements effectively apply to every major social media service that young people use.

To the extent there is a silver lining in the ruling on Florida’s law, it’s that the panel recognized that H.B. 3 targets expression protected by the First Amendment. The problem is that the ruling uncritically accepts the idea that a social media service is addictive in a clinical sense, even if just 10% of users under 16 are using the platform for two or more hours per day (the standard set in H.B. 3). The court simply accepts that time spent online is a proxy for harm. The bill doesn’t distinguish doomscrolling or compulsive use from organizing a campaign, making art, or talking with friends. 

In Georgia, S.B. 351 can now be enforced. That law requires parental consent for anyone under 16 to hold an account on social media platforms. It also requires platforms to make “commercially reasonable efforts” to check users’ ages, which creates a hurdle for adults as well as under-16s. 

The ruling acknowledges that S.B. 351 “overwhelmingly applies to platforms that overwhelmingly host protected speech.” But the ruling faults the plaintiffs for not being able to show that “invalid applications substantially outweigh the valid ones.” That asks the groups challenging the law to meet a virtually impossible standard—to make their case, they would have to measure and evaluate the content hosted by all online services affected by the law. 

Both of these cases may be further appealed, and are likely to continue in the lower courts. But people in Georgia and Florida can no longer count on court injunctions to protect their access to the web. What the effects will be going forward depends on how platforms implement these new restrictions, including how they check ages and parental consent, as well as state officials’ views on these efforts. 

If you hit an age-gate while online, check out our blog post about how you might want to proceed, and our age-gating resource hub. If you want to speak out about your experience, you can talk to us at agegates@eff.org.

What is Lost

Some youth who lose their social media accounts will lose contact with friends. Others will lose access to a support group, the ability to speak out on current issues, or an audience for their artwork. More young people will be shut out of discussions about what’s going on in their school and their community. U.S. law has long recognized that people under 18 have their own rights to speak and receive information. These new laws interfere with those rights. 

The Florida opinion suggests that young people can browse the internet without an account, or use a parent’s account. But that doesn’t help those who might participate in a private group, send a personal message, or speak to an audience they have built up. Nor does it recognize the reality that in many households, young people may not have the ability to use a parent’s device, or even have healthy relationships with their parents. For parents of children under 14, the Florida law also overrides parental autonomy—even if parents wanted to allow their child on these services, they cannot do so by law. 

These laws won’t just harm younger kids. Adults and older teens will bear the cost of the new rules. In order to figure out who is young enough to not be able to join, or who needs parental consent to join, services will have to check users’ ages. That likely means asking people to submit ID or other sensitive information. Some people will be mis-classified as too young; others will decide that they’d simply rather stop participating instead of handing over even more personal data. 

Keep A Record

Between the recent Meta settlement and these 11th Circuit decisions, despite widespread opposition, age-gating is becoming a reality for the American internet. As these laws are enforced, we need to understand what they mean for the people who have to deal with them. And we need to create a record of their effects on everyone’s speech so we can push to repeal them.

If you encounter a restriction due to these laws that affects you, keep a record, ideally while the details are still fresh in your mind. Screenshots, along with notes about the date and time, the service involved, and the task you were trying to accomplish, will all be helpful. 

Did you lose an account or can’t participate? Describe what you lost. Were you using a group to organize a club, volunteer in your community, or keep in touch with friends? Did losing your account cut you off from people you wouldn’t otherwise be able to be in touch with? Even if you just used the account to access local news or follow your favorite content creator, that’s still a significant loss of your right to access information online.

Record problems with age checks and parental consent. What information did the service request from you? Were you able to provide it? Did it reject your age proof, or classify you incorrectly? If you’re a parent, were you able to give permission, and what did you have to provide? What promises did the service make about what it did with the data it collected from you? Save explanations given by the platforms or any services they employ to age gate, including any law they cite. If you are to appeal a result and choose to, keep track of those attempts as well. 

You can also document choosing to drop out. If you abandon an account or service because you’re unwilling to provide ID or other personal data, write down what you gave up, and why. You don’t need to submit sensitive information to show that you are burdened by new rules. 

You Can E-Mail agegates@eff.org

If these restrictions affect you, we encourage you to reach out to EFF by emailing agegated@eff.org and telling us more about what happened. 

EFF will continue to oppose laws that prevent adults and minors from expressing themselves online, or that push people to give up their privacy to participate in the digital world. These recent court decisions are setbacks, but they don’t settle the debate. By keeping track of people who lose access, age-check failures, and the online conversations that can no longer happen, we’ll be in a better position to challenge the worst of these restrictions, in both legislatures and courts. 

And in the meantime, EFF will keep fighting for laws that actually make us safer online—like stopping social media companies’  harmful surveillance of all internet users. We’ll continue to push for laws that empower parents, children, and all internet users to have meaningful choice and control over their online services. Those goals can make everyone safer online, while preserving our ability to speak and access information. 

Further Action 

• Email EFF about your experience at agegates@eff.org . 

Further Reading

• 11th Circuit Opinion in Netchoice v. Carr (Georgia)
• 11th Circuit Opinion in CCIA, NetChoice v. Uthmeier (Florida) 
• EFF amicus brief in Florida case
• EFF amicus brief in Georgia case
• EFF’s Age Verification Hub

Canada’s Parliament is debating a massive expansion of surveillance powers that will threaten the privacy and security of millions of people. Bill C-22, also called the Lawful Access Act, has already passed the House of Commons, and is now before the Canadian Senate. 

Canadians still have an opportunity to speak out and stop this dangerous legislation. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) is urging all Canadians to sign its petition opposing the bill. (The petition on CCLA’s website is governed by CCLA’s privacy policy.) 

Take action

Tell the canadian senate to stop C-22

As we wrote earlier this year, Bill C-22 gives the government new powers to force digital services—including telecom companies, messaging apps, and more—to help with government surveillance. Worse, it allows Canada’s Minister of Public Safety to order companies to create a backdoor to their services for law enforcement, as long as it doesn’t lead to a “systemic insecurity.” That’s a clear recipe for weakening the encryption we all rely on. 

It also requires services to retain metadata for up to a year, which reveals who people communicate with, where they go, and what services they use, even when they are not suspected of any crime. 

Researchers at CCLA and Citizen Lab published a detailed analysis of C-22 and its serious constitutional and cybersecurity problems. The analysis points out that the bill needs more than cosmetic changes—it calls for entirely withdrawing Part 2 of Bill C-22, the section that establishes the surveillance and data retention regime. 

Bill C-22 could also expand the sharing of Canadians’ personal data with foreign law enforcement, including the United States. Canada has been negotiating a cross-border data-sharing agreement with the U.S. that would allow American police to get information about Canadian internet users without any Canadian court oversight. 

Some Canadian senators have already expressed concerns about the bill, and rightly suggested, as CCLA and Citizen Lab have, that it may not be compatible with privacy protections in the Canadian constitution. 

If you’re in Canada, read and sign CCLA’s petition opposing Bill C-22 today. Don’t let the Senate allow this dangerous expansion of government surveillance to become Canada’s new reality. 

Take action

Canadians: defend your privacy and security

The internet is a vast and confusing place no matter your age. Trying to help youth engage with it safely and privately is a complicated topic that touches on many different skillsets and ideas. But just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We’ve launched our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth Surveillance Self-Defense guide in hopes to provide a framework for finding solutions that work for you. 

EFF rolls out this crucial resource as state and local governments consider ill-advised laws that cut young people off from essential information and experiences. This particularly harms vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline. Such laws also entail age gating, which compromises the privacy of all internet users and stifles young users’ ability to learn, grow, and express themselves.

Young people have unique needs and those needs change over time. Trying to protect from everything all the time is an exhausting process, but the security community has long had a solution for this: security planning (also called threat modeling). The idea is to provide a series of questions designed to help you focus on what’s truly important. When it comes to online privacy, this is as applicable for youth and parents as it is for anyone else. 

We used a security plan as our foundation for this guide because deciding what is and isn’t important is the first step we should all take when assessing our privacy risks. But this isn’t a place for quick fixes, and every young person has their unique needs and considerations. There is no single tool or technology fix that can substitute for spending time learning, and then teaching a young person, how the internet works, how to use it, what sorts of harms exist, and how to navigate those harms.

Solutions are rarely about the tools or software you use. It’s about understanding the threats and concerns you have, and then determining what steps you can take to mitigate those risks. We hope our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth guide can help provide the outline to get the conversation started.

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An open internet where people can freely build, share, and remix each other's work is a powerful engine of grassroots innovation we’ve all benefited from. In recent decades, however, corporations have taken control of an increasing share of this work, giving them a greater ability to stifle challengers and limit our choices. When regulators address this by mandating that  tech giants play fair by requiring interoperability, the gatekeepers respond with a tired refrain: Playing fair puts users’ security at risk.

Unfortunately for these trillion-dollar companies, this gotcha isn’t the end of the conversation. Regulators can ensure that meaningful choice and security thrive.

Lawmakers have been catching up, recognizing that the best way to rein in big tech is to require these oligopolies to open up their platforms to independent developers. As we explained six years ago, mandating interoperability helps prevent the misuse of people’s data and enables more privacy-respecting alternatives. Tech giants, in contrast, have been arguing that our data is safer when they have exclusive control.

Tech Giants Claim Interoperability Means Insecurity

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) put interoperability into law under Article 6(7): “gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with” a designated Core Platform Service they operate. The language describes an unambiguous requirement to remediate vendor lockouts and anti-competitive behavior of the major service operators—it is not optional.

Apple claimed that enforcing this obligation in mobile app stores would put their customers at risk and do irreparable harm to trust in their brand. It’s an argument reminiscent of Apple’s fight against the right to repair, and in both instances the company is fighting to maintain its restrictive ecosystem to stop people from finding better deals elsewhere. Apple has long cultivated a more corporate-controlled experience with the iPhone, but this argument is now also being used for the relatively-more-open Android devices from Google.

In the same year Apple argued against the DMA, Epic Games sued Google for its restrictive terms of service and extractive policies for revenue generated in apps. Google predictably alleged that opening up its platform to other app stores it couldn’t vet would allow harmful apps to be installed. The case was ultimately decided this year in the U.S. federal appeals court for the Ninth Circuit, with the court rejecting this argument, dealing a blow to  Google’s feudal security arrangement, and paving the way for third-party app stores to be delivered as apps via the Google Play Store.

Interoperating Secure Systems Can (and Should) Exist

Policymakers cannot take tech giants’ claims at face value. Companies have every incentive to resist interoperability requirements, because interoperability lowers practical barriers and reduces switching costs for consumers adopting competing services. 

Even where companies offer credible claims from internal technical and security experts, independent experts rarely have the access and information they need to test those claims. Companies have selectively made arguments that security is harmed by interoperability, often in contexts which are to their advantage. These companies are happy to let a general misconception flourish which frames security as inherently opposed to interoperability.

This narrative is wrong. We’ve seen that when interoperability and information security are both set as essential and non-negotiable criteria, secure interoperable systems result—systems that don’t sacrifice the rich features we’ve come to expect of the services we rely on. 

The cross-platform rollout of Rich Communication Services (RCS), and now Message Layer Security (MLS) on top of it is a perfect example of this, creating end-to-end secure messaging by default between Android and iOS. For RCS and MLS, Google was conveniently on the other side of the interoperability argument, campaigning Apple to adopt the standard to overcome the diminished “green bubble” experience iPhone users had when texting non-iPhone users. Once Apple finally agreed to interoperate by implementing common standards, all users benefited from improved messaging security. In cases where legitimate security concerns are raised, these can be assessed and remedied on a case-by-case basis, without sacrificing user agency.

Striking the Right Balance

Retrofitting interoperability into already secure closed systems shouldn’t be done carelessly: it requires regulators strike the right balance of pressure and leniency to allow the time and precision necessary to make these renovations. Any components developed with the assumption of privileged access by trusted parties (e.g. your browser engine) are particularly vulnerable to serious security risks when opened up to unaccountable third parties.

By adapting interoperability and information security as essential design principles, we can expect more safety, but also more freedom.

With regard to the DMA, when security concerns are legitimate, we urge the European Commission to work with companies and outside experts to offer guidance in technical implementation and provide clarity on regulatory compliance. This approach paves a path forward that balances the interest of legal oversight and the needs of the companies alike. 

Policymakers wishing to uproot these unfair platforms of control must do so with care and limit the impact this disruption can have. But security concerns must not act as a lever to indefinitely delay compliance. Closed systems should be impartially evaluated, and if concerns are valid, regulators can allow more time and guidance to be given to companies implementing these changes. One possibility is a tiered approach: offering leniency during an initial period where systems need to be retrofitted to abide by new requirements, followed by a subsequent and ongoing stricter observance of fair play.

Once interoperability and information security are adopted as essential design principles, further development with these rights-enhancing principles in mind will more easily follow. The result will be an internet the world deserves—where we can expect more safety, but also more freedom.

The Brazilian National Data Protection Agency (ANPD) plays a pivotal role in the regulation of digital platforms according to new legislation approved in Brazil. Throughout this year, EFF has presented comments, filed submissions, and met with the agency to emphasize crucial guardrails that the enforcement of new regulations should ensure. 

ANPD is responsible for detailing and applying obligations set in Law n. 15.211/2025, which established rules for the protection of children and adolescents in the digital space. While some provisions establish important privacy safeguards, like prohibiting advertising based on profiling of underage users, the law created mandatory age assurance mechanisms for accessing digital products and services. 

We have raised alarms on the privacy and free expression issues around age-gating the internet. Age verification technology is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive. Examples also show how it’s prone to enforcement overreach, resulting in sites blocked beyond legal requirements. In the UK, providers disproportionately restricted several counseling, support and mental health sites under the Online Safety Act. Current age assurance methods risk wrongly walling off adults with no valid IDs, facial differences, physical disabilities, among others. 

We highlighted these concerns in our comments and submissions underscoring that ANPD should avoid a blanket approach to age assurance obligations. Following the legislation, restrictions should apply only to products and services that are inadequate or prohibited to children and adolescents according to categories already set in regulation, with robust protections against subjective and overbroad interpretations. Guarantees such as access to information, freedom to participate in society and meaningful access to technologies also compound what constitutes the best interests of the child.  

Moreover, we stressed that zero knowledge proofs alone fail to ensure strong user privacy, including safeguards that the law itself sought to secure. Our submission explains why other requirements, such as unlinkability, selective disclosure, batch issuance and processing on device, are crucial for achieving greater levels of protection and mitigating privacy harms. Minimum information being shared to the verifier and no “phoning home” to the issuer of a user’s accepted credentials are conditions that prevent actions like collusion and data sharing about the user. 

We also shared inputs about the scope of the law, asking more clarity on which providers are covered by its obligations and the importance of treating differently non-dominant players like federated networks and free software applications. Without that clarity, this could negatively impact beyond gaming and major platforms that are the main target of these regulations. We elaborated on the agency’s regulation of prevention duties, the relevance of modulating them according to the type and structure of providers, and alerted them that their interpretation should not result in general monitoring obligations. 

On another but related front, we sent comments regarding Brazil’s new internet intermediary rules. Here too, ANPD has a critical regulatory role after a Supreme Court’s decision and presidential decrees changed the liability regime initially set in the law known as “Marco Civil.”  

With the turn to notice and takedown mechanisms and duty of care obligations, we emphasized measures to prevent censorship of protected content. These involve ensuring solid means for appeals of restricted posts, avoiding overreliance on AI-based content moderation, strictly tailoring the application of concepts like duty of care and systemic failure, and not normalizing the blocking of platforms and websites.  

We raised concerns about a trend reflected in the new regulation requiring platforms to proactively report user to authorities with unclear guarantees. Finally, we urged the agency to advance essential transparency and accountability measures for enabling greater public oversight over the application of the new regime. 

As we said before, platform accountability under the new rules ultimately hinges on how accountable its enforcement will be by platforms and state institutions. Rigorous commitment to fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, privacy and data protection, is required so that intended protections don’t instead lead to harms. ANPD must uphold this commitment and make sure that new regulations don’t backfire. 

Police agencies across the U.S. have deployed Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) to capture images of passing vehicles along with time, date, and GPS coordinates. While the technology itself isn’t new (ALPRs have existed in various forms for more than 50 years, and in the U.S. since 1998), the surveillance landscape has shifted dramatically. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and national data sharing have transformed police ALPRs into an interconnected, nationwide tracking network. It is pitched to city councils by law enforcement and private vendors like Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), and Axon as an essential tool for solving violent crime.

In reality, it is an inherently dangerous infrastructure of mass surveillance.

Since 2012, EFF has worked with others to expose the severe digital rights harms of ALPR systems. For example, we’ve recently documented how these camera networks allow law enforcement to search for immigrants, track peaceful protesters, target Romani communities, and track women seeking reproductive healthcare. Police also routinely use ALPRs for low-level matters like enforcing school residency requirements or investigating noise complaints. Many officers also use ALPR databases to stalk past romantic partners. Recent EFF analysis revealed officers using the system without legitimate justification—logging search reasons like "LOL" and "LMAO."

Understandably, the public backlash to police ALPR technology is accelerating, and state lawmakers across the country are taking action.

New Hampshire enacted the nation’s first state law on ALPR use in 2007, but technological advances and misconduct have driven even more recent legislative action. In 2026 alone, six states enacted laws that limit police use of ALPRs: Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

This is a good start, but far more is needed. This blog presents a framework for state legislators who want to stop ALPR mass police surveillance:

1. Just ban it. It is incompatible with a free society and cannot be fixed.
2. In the absence of a flat ban, reduce its harms. Most importantly: limit police use of ALPRs to real-time comparison of passing plates to hotlists; require a warrant to place a plate on a hotlist; impose strict limits on the creation and use of those hotlists; and prohibit the storage of ALPR data (and thus prevent the subsequent search and disclosure of that data).
3. In the absence of a prohibition on storing ALPR data, reduce its harms. Most importantly, place strict limits on police storage, search, and disclosure of ALPR data.
4. Ban three especially dangerous police practices: placement of ALPRs near sensitive locations like hospitals; purchase of ALPR data; and use of ALPR data to try to predict crime.
5. Require transparency about ALPR mass surveillance, including: a 30-day public notice before a city procures police ALPRs; a statewide registry of all police ALPRs; and regular, public audits and statistical reports about police usage.
6. Ensure effective enforcement of all new ALPR restraints, including by means of a private right of action and the exclusionary rule.

These policy battles often unfold locally, so state legislators must ensure that state law is a regulatory floor, never a ceiling. State preemption should never force unwanted camera networks onto communities that have chosen to reject them. Local government must retain authority to enact full bans, deny funding, reject contracts, and decommission existing camera networks.

Table of Contents

• The Gold Standard: Statewide Bans on ALPR Mass Surveillance
• Strict Limits on Real-time Use of ALPRs 
  • Limits on creating hotlists
  • Limits on using hotlists
• Strict Limits on Storage, Search, and Disclosure of ALPR Data
  • Storage limits 
  • Search limits 
  • Disclosure limits 
• Transparency 
• Additional Restrictions
• Enforcement 
• Conclusion

A Note on Scope

As in our previous post on ALPR policy, our focus here is ALPR mass surveillance: the continuous dragnet collection and retention of location data on innocent drivers. Different issues are raised by automated traffic enforcement (ATE) systems, such as standalone red-light or speed cameras that solely photograph and ticket specific traffic violations, without building a searchable network about uninvolved drivers. As such, state laws against ALPR mass surveillance should not cover ATE. This is the approach in at least six states: Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington. The most common approach is to exclude ATE from the law’s definition of “ALPR.”

Of course, ATE carries risks and demands legal restrictions too. This includes tight limits on data collection, retention, usage, and disclosure—all of which should be addressed in a different statute. Lawmakers must also actively guard against vendor efforts to piggyback mass surveillance tools onto ATE contracts.

The Gold Standard: Statewide Bans on ALPR Mass Surveillance

Statutory limits cannot make ALPR mass surveillance safe. Because the technology relies on the indiscriminate recording of every driver’s movements, the risks are baked into the system itself. Also, innocent motorists will be menaced by police due to false matches, bad actors will misuse location data, and sensitive personal movements will be exposed to broad government overreach. Promising harsher penalties for officer misuse cannot fix an inherently flawed architecture. Thus, state lawmakers should pursue a complete, statewide ban on ALPR mass surveillance.

First, lawmakers should prohibit all state-level law enforcement agencies from acquiring, retaining, accessing, or using ALPRs or any data derived from them.

Second, they must impose the same prohibition on county, municipal, and other local law enforcement agencies.

These prohibitions should require any agency ending an ALPR program (both state and local) to fully decommission the programs within a strict timeframe. This includes requiring agencies to: physically remove all camera hardware; revoke all user, network, and database access credentials; permanently delete all stored location data; and require vendor certification of compliance.

Third, ban the use of state funds for state or local agencies to acquire, maintain, or access ALPR systems. This must include direct appropriations, law enforcement grants, pass-through funds, and state-administered federal funds. In August 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned state agencies from spending public funds on Flock cameras.

Fourth, ban state and local agencies from installing or operating ALPRs on state-owned highways, roadways, or public properties. In August 2026, Florida’s Department of Transportation  ordered the removal of all ALPRs from the right-of-way on state highways within 30 days. The order revokes all previously approved permits to install ALPRs, and bars future permits.

An outright prohibition is the only effective way to eliminate this mass surveillance. This follows the lead of municipalities across the country that have already enacted bans. However, where there’s political resistance, state lawmakers might consider a moratorium that prevents further expansion of ALPR networks.

Strict Limits on Real-time Use of ALPRs

In the absence of a ban on police ALPR mass surveillance, state legislators must restrict ALPRs to real-time comparison of passing plates to hotlists. ALPR data is simply too dangerous for police to safely store, search, and disclose. An effective way to do this, as in New Hampshire, is to require deletion of ALPR data within three minutes after collection. That means no ALPR data is stored after comparison to a hotlist, and thus that no ALPR data about unmatched cars can be searched or disclosed.

A state legislature must also reduce the harms of police use of real-time ALPRs by strictly limiting the creation and use of law enforcement hotlists.

Limits on creating hotlists

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of police hotlists. An agency might link its ALPRs to external hotlists created by another agency, such as the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) or a state’s department of motor vehicles. Also, a police agency might link its ALPRs to its own internal hotlist, created by its own officers, of people under investigation. State legislators must strictly limit both.

First, limit the kinds of external hotlists that police agencies may link to. For example, ban police agencies from linking to the NCIC’s “immigration violator” hotlist, which ICE uses to hunt immigrants with the ALPRs operated by police agencies across the country.

Second, if a police agency links to external hotlists, require the agency to update that link every day. Otherwise, drivers may be detained even though they have been removed from the list. This is required by Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Third, forbid officers from adding a plate on a hotlist, absent a warrant from a judge based on probable cause and particularity. Without this judicial check on police power, an officer stalked a potential romantic partner by placing her plate on a hotlist.

As with other laws requiring a warrant (such as the federal Wiretap Act), there should be an exception where: (1) there is an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury to a person; (2) there is no time to acquire a warrant; and (3) there are grounds upon which a warrant could be granted. This exception might apply, for example, when police have probable cause to believe a child has just been abducted. In such cases, the statute must require police to seek a warrant within 48 hours, and if it is denied, to immediately remove the plate from the hotlist.

Minnesota requires a warrant or an emergency to use ALPRs “to monitor or track an individual who is the subject of an active criminal investigation.” In Maine, an ALPR system may use only information based on reasonable suspicion.

Fourth, forbid officers from adding a plate to a hotlist, except in connection with a serious violent crime. This would include investigation of a murder but not pursuit of a traffic scofflaw.

Fifth, forbid officers from adding a plate on a hotlist based, in whole or in part, on: a person’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, immigration status, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation; their political beliefs, associations, or participation in First Amendment-protected activity; or their pursuit of reproductive, gender-affirming, or other health care. Connecticut and Washington forbid use of ALPR systems on these grounds, and Virginia forbids tracking a person based on their protected speech.

Sixth, require officers to log their entry of a plate into a hotlist. This must include the officer’s name and agency, the date of the entry, a narrative description of the reasons for the entry, any case numbers, and an upload of the warrant authorizing the entry. Oregon requires an officer to log “the specific law enforcement purpose of the entry,” and the officer’s name.

Limits on using hotlists

First, if the plate of a passing car does not match a hotlist, laws must require immediate deletion of all ALPR data about that car. New Hampshire state law requires deletion within three minutes. This is the most effective way to limit ALPRs to real-time identification of vehicles and drivers of interest to police, as opposed to amassing a dangerous database of the comings and goings of the entire driving public, available later for retrospective search by police.

Second, if the plate of a passing car does match a hotlist, then limit storage, search, and disclosure of its ALPR data to what is strictly necessary to the investigation that placed the car on the hotlist.

Third, require police officers, before stopping a car because of an apparent real-time match, to visually and independently confirm that the car’s plate number, plate issuing state, and other vehicle characteristics in fact do match the car on the hotlist. Many innocent motorists have been detained and menaced by police because of ALPR false positives. Confirmation is required by Kentucky, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington.

Strict Limits on Storage, Search, and Disclosure of ALPR Data

Again, state legislatures should simply ban police use of ALPRs, or at least police storage of ALPR data. Third best is harm reduction through strict limits on storage, search, and disclosure of ALPR data.

Storage limits

First, limit the storage period for ALPR data to days, not months, and then require deletion. More than 99% of the drivers who pass an ALPR are not on a hotlist. Tracking their movements anyway, just in case they are later relevant to a police investigation, is criminalization of the entire driving population. Thus, four states already require deletion after 21 days: Connecticut, Maine, Virginia, and Washington. Even Flock has reduced its default retention period to seven days.

By “delete,” we mean permanently erase it, so it is impossible for anybody to access it again. It is not enough to merely store it in a way that makes it harder to access, such as archiving it, or transferring it from one database to another. In the words of the Virginia statute: “System data shall be purged … in such a manner that such data is destroyed and not recoverable.”

Second, limit the types of ALPR data that can be stored: just a photo of the plate, the AI-based read of the plate number, the date and time, and the location. Conversely, ban retention of photos of people in the car, and of features of the car beyond the plate as well as AI-based reads of those photos (respectively, “facial recognition” and “vehicle fingerprints”).

Many states have enacted such rules. New Hampshire bans ALPRs from “photographing or recording or producing images of the occupants of a motor vehicle.” Missouri bans integration of facial recognition into ALPR systems. New Hampshire and Montana limit ALPRs to “the sole purpose of recording and checking license plates.” Minnesota provides that “data collected by an [ALPR] must be limited to” plate numbers; date, time, and location; and pictures of plate, vehicle, and surrounding area.

Search limits

First, laws should ban “geofence” searches, which are searches in which police use ALPRs to identify all of the drivers present at a particular time and place, based on police claims that one of them might be the suspect they are looking for. Even a warrant cannot justify such general searches, because the Fourth Amendment requires warrants to “particularly” describe the person or car being investigated. These dragnet searches of stored ALPR data are the modern-day equivalent of the colonial-era “writs of assistance,” against which our founders fought a revolution to end.

Second, laws should forbid officers from searching stored ALPR data, unless they first acquire a warrant from a judge based on probable cause and particularity. The constant revelations of bad police searches of ALPR data demonstrate the need for—at the very least—judicial control over this dangerous surveillance technology. A federal judge in Oklahoma recently held that the constitution requires this judicial control, because ALPR mass surveillance invades reasonable expectations of privacy. EFF has filed lawsuits making this demand in California and Wisconsin, along with local ACLU affiliates: SIREN and CAIR-CA v. San Jose, and Wisconsin Council of Churches v. Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay.

Three states (Minnesota, Vermont, and Virginia) require reasonable suspicion of a crime before searching ALPR data, and a fourth state (California) requires this from its highway patrol. This is a step in the right direction, but not enough: the decider must be a judge, and the test must be probable cause.

Third, officers should be prohibited from searching stored ALPR data, unless they are investigating a serious violent crime. On the flip side, ban searches for immigrants, protesters, or traffic scofflaws.

Some states have moved in this direction. Missouri limits use of ALPR data “criminal justice” and “lifesaving efforts.” North Carolina bans its use for traffic enforcement. Connecticut bans its use based on race and other protected classes, to identify First Amendment activity, for immigration enforcement, or because of access to reproductive or gender-affirming health care. Idaho bans its use for political activity.

Fourth, police officers must be required to log their searches of stored ALPR data concerning a particular car. This must include the officer’s name and agency, the date and time of search, a narrative description of the reasons for search, any case numbers, and an upload of the warrant authorizing the search. The officer must write the narrative in their own words. A drop-down menu of reasons is no substitute, because it is too easy for officers to dodge an explanation of the actual reasons by clicking a pre-written “reason.”

Many states require officers to log their searches of ALPR data, including California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Virginia. In Virginia, this must include an officer’s documentation of both their “specific purpose” to search, and the “associated call for service or case number.”

Disclosure limits

The “disclosure” limits below must broadly address sharing from an agency that collected ALPR data to another entity. This includes an agency opening its database to access and search by another entity. It also includes an agency transferring data from its database to another entity’s database.

First, ban disclosure of ALPR data to any federal or out-of-state agency. Federal and out-of-state agencies often lack the necessary protections of the driving public. Connecticut forbids disclosures to the federal government or agencies in 46 states, unless they have a warrant. California forbids disclosures, unless otherwise permitted by law.

Second, ban disclosure of ALPR data to another agency, unless it follows all of the rules above for an agency’s search of its own data (that is, the ban on geofence searches, the requirement of a warrant, the limitation to investigation of serious violent crimes, and the requirement of an audit trail).

Some states have taken steps in this direction. Utah requires, as a condition of disclosure to a government entity or a defendant in a criminal case, a court order finding reasonable suspicion of crime. Washington forbids disclosure “except as required in a judicial proceeding.” Minnesota and Virginia require the disclosing agency to find reasonable suspicion. Minnesota and Connecticut forbid disclosure unless the receiving agency follows the rules applicable to the disclosing agency.

Third, place strict limits on participation in a multi-agency disclosure network, such as Flock or Vigilant. Connecticut forbids participation “in a system or network that shares” ALPR data, unless it requires all participants to affirm in writing that they will not use or re-disclose that state’s data except in compliance with that state’s laws. Connecticut also forbids “bulk” data disclosure, and Maryland forbids data “upload” to another agency.

Fourth, ban disclosure of ALPR data for purposes of investigating acts and statuses that are lawful in-state. Three states (Illinois, New Jersey, and New Mexico) forbid disclosure to investigate immigration status. Two states (Illinois and New Mexico) forbid disclosure in investigate healthcare that is lawful in-state. One state (New Mexico) forbids disclosure to investigate protected assembly, petition, and speech.

Fifth, ban any sale of ALPR data. Six states do this: Arkansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. California forbids its highway patrol from doing so. New Mexico forbids any disclosure to a private entity (or indeed to any non-law enforcement agency). Data brokers are a menace to privacy and other human rights.

Transparency

State lawmakers must ensure that the public has access to ample information about the ALPR mass surveillance in their communities. Many people will use this information to resist ALPRs.

First, state laws should require local governments to provide at least 30 days of public notice before spending funds, accepting grants or private donations, or entering into any contract or pilot program for ALPR technology. All proposed vendor contracts and funding sources must be publicly disclosed prior to approval. This helps local officials to exercise their procurement power to reject ALPRs.

Second, laws should mandate the creation of a centralized, public-facing state registry of all police agencies using ALPRs, and the specific locations of all police ALPRs. Sources like DeFlock and EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance include crowd-sourced maps of ALPR technologies, but they are not exhaustive. This was one of the provisions in Minnesota Minn. Stat. § 13.824, which in part, requires police agencies to notify the state within 10 days of installing any ALPR, and requires a state agency to aggregate this information and publish a master list of the locations of all ALPRs (unless a judge determines that disclosure of a particular ALPR’s location poses a genuine security risk).

Third, mandate regular, independent, public audits of agency ALPR use, access logs, and query justifications to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and policies. Five states (Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Virginia, and Washington) require regular audits, ranging in frequency from monthly to biennial. Three states (Idaho, Maryland, and Washington) require audits of access logs. Minnesota requires an independent auditor and public access to the results.

Fourth, laws must require each agency operating an ALPR system to publish regular reports on its website detailing key operational metrics. Six states require such reports annually: Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Vermont. Arkansas requires them twice per year, and Oregon requires them monthly. These states variously require reporting of: the number of ALPRs, and a list of the locations of fixed ALPRs; the number of hotlists used, and a list of them; the number of plates scanned; the number of apparent matches to hotlists, and how many were actual matches; the number plate reads stored; and the number of searches of stored data, broken down by the purpose and agency of search.

Finally, any new ALPR legislation must maintain a proper balance between transparency and privacy in the use of public record acts (PRAs) to obtain ALPR information. Public records and public scrutiny of ALPR programs have shown that people are harmed by these systems. So lawmakers should not cut off access to public records that document these abuses. For example, the public should have access to operational policies, audit logs, vendor communications, and aggregate statistics. EFF opposes blanket exemptions from PRAs that block public oversight of APRs—such as recent bills in states like Arizona. The better approach to protecting individual location privacy is a flexible, case-by-case balancing test already provided by many PRAs. Also, when a document contains both exempt and non-exempt information—like an audit log that contains both motorists’ plate numbers and officers’ search reasons—open records laws should require disclosure of the latter while withholding of the former.

Additional Restrictions

State lawmakers should adopt three additional bans to curtail the footprint of police ALPR surveillance.

First, ban the placement of ALPRs or the collection of ALPR data near healthcare facilities, immigration services, schools, places of worship, courthouses, food banks, and other sensitive locations. Washington and Connecticut do this.

Second, ban police from purchasing ALPR data. Utah and Washington do so. Also, prohibit police from acquiring ALPR data from a private entity, except by means of a warrant. Washington does so. Utah took a step in this direction, requiring a court order based on reasonable suspicion. Absent this type of rule, police evade limits on seizing data from third parties by simply purchasing it from brokers.

Third, ban police and their vendors from using ALPRs or stored ALPR data to power predictive policing technology. EFF opposes such technology and urges state legislatures to ban it. ALPR companies have been providing law enforcement clients with an “analytics” feature, which ingests data from across police agencies, and produces a report of alleged crime trends, hotspots, and corridors. State legislators should prohibit this dangerous use of ALPR systems and data.

Enforcement

A law without strong enforcement is just a piece of paper. EFF recommends three kinds of enforcement measures, all of which appear in existing ALPR statutes.

First, all privacy laws need a “private right of action,” meaning ordinary people can sue a police department that breaks the law. An excellent model appears in the federal Wiretap Act. It expressly authorizes a lawsuit by “any person” whose personal information is processed “in violation of” this law. Privacy harm is harm, and so a person should have their day in court, even if they cannot prove a collateral harm, such as physical injury or economic loss. Moreover, the Wiretap Act provides a full arsenal of remedies to a successful plaintiff, including injunctive and declaratory relief, liquidated and actual damages, and attorney fees.

At least three states enforce their ALPR statute with some version of a private right of action. These are good first steps but need improvement. Washington comes closest: it allows suit to enforce all ALPR rules and provides all remedies. Unfortunately, the plaintiff must prove “injury,” which may shut the courthouse doors to some people whose data is unlawfully processed. Connecticut allows suit by a person “aggrieved” by violation of some ALPR rules. But a person should be able to enforce all rules, and should not have to prove they were aggrieved. Oregon allows suit against a police vendor that “intentionally or with gross negligence” uses or discloses ALPR data in an unlawful manner. But this does not allow any suit against police, or even against a vendor that systematically violates the rules through ordinary negligence.

Second, privacy laws applicable to the police commonly ensure enforcement through the “exclusionary rule.” This means that if evidence is gathered in violation a privacy law, it must be excluded from court proceedings. This is sometimes called “suppression” or “inadmissibility.” The federal Wiretap Act has a strong version of this rule, clearly excluding evidence derived from violations of all rules. The so-called “good faith” exception has weakened many exclusionary rules, so ALPR statutes should expressly reject this exception (though some courts have interpreted some statutory exclusionary rules to have no good faith exception).

At least three states enforce their ALPR statute with some version of the exclusionary rule. Again, these are good first steps but need improvement:

• Virginia comes closest: “Any evidence obtained as a result of a violation” of some of the ALPR rules “is not admissible.” A better rule would apply to all ALPR rules.
• Connecticut provides that ALPR data “may be admissible … provided such data was collected or otherwise acquired or held or stored in accordance with the provisions of this section” (or obtained pursuant to warrant). A more clear exclusionary rule would “exclude evidence unlawfully processed,” as opposed to “admit evidence lawfully processed.” The exclusionary rule should also extend to data unlawfully used or disclosed (and not just to data unlawfully collected or stored).
• Washington provides that information obtained from “a knowing violation” of some of the statute’s rules is “inadmissible.” But the exclusionary rule should apply to all substantive limits (not just some), and to all violations (not just knowing ones).

Third, police agencies and their private contractors that recurringly violate ALPR rules should be forbidden from using ALPRs at all. In New Hampshire, if an agency “repeated[ly]” violates the ALPR statute, the state department of justice may “seek an injunction banning [its] use” of ALPRs. In New Mexico, if a vendor “fails to comply with” that state’s ALPR law, it “may be subject to … suspension of authorization or termination of access.”

Some states impose workplace discipline or criminal penalties on officers who violate ALPR laws, including Connecticut, Idaho, and Missouri. This is no substitute for the three types of strong enforcement measures above. ALPRs are a systemic problem requiring institution-wide enforcement of legal constraints, and not just episodic sanctions against individual officers.

Conclusion

Mass surveillance ALPRs fundamentally threaten digital rights, making an outright statewide ban on police ALPRs the only effective way to fully protect privacy and safety.  The next best thing a legislature can do is limit ALPRs to real-time comparison of passing cars to hotlists, by banning storage of ALPR data beyond a few minutes. If a legislature allows storage, it must impose a tight deletion deadline (days and not months), and strict limits on search and disclosure. A legislature must also ensure transparency and enforcement. 

For convenience here is a concise list of EFF’s state legislative goals.

Guide Includes Easy, Quick Ways To Identify and Protect Against Online Threats

SAN FRANCISCO – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published “Online Privacy for Parents and Youth,” a new guide to help families protect themselves online. 

"Parents don’t need to be technology experts to help their children navigate the digital world safely” said EFF Public Interest Technology Director Babette Ngene. “At EFF, we believe in empowering families with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about their digital lives. It’s about meeting families where they are and giving parents the guidance they need to have meaningful conversations with their children about digital safety, based on what works best for their families.” 

EFF launches this crucial resource as state and local governments consider enacting well-meaning but ill-advised laws that cut young people off from essential information and experiences, particularly harming vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline. Such laws also entail age gating, which compromises the privacy of all internet users and stifles young users’ ability to learn, grow, and express themselves. 

“Deciding how to help your young people use the internet—including engaging with video games, social media, web search, and everything else—is a complicated topic that touches on many different skillsets and ideas,” said EFF Senior Security and Privacy Activist Thorin Klosowski. “But ultimately it's up to families – not governments – to decide when and how to engage with these sorts of questions.” 

Each young person has unique needs, and, just like their wardrobe, that changes as they age. Parents can engage in thoughtful planning to find the best, most efficient solutions that evolve along with their children.  

EFF’s guide is about helping parents explore their concerns and identify the threats their children face – like trusting AI chatbots or sharing personal information with strangers – and then determine steps they and their children can take to mitigate those risks while still using the games, educational materials, and communication platforms that help them grow. 

The guide also compiles links to parental control setup documentation for a variety of popular devices and platforms, and advises parents on quick, easy tasks they can perform to advance their children’s online privacy. 

For the guide: https://ssd.eff.org/module/online-privacy-for-parents-and-youth

Contact:  ThorinKlosowskiSenior Security and Privacy Activistthorin@eff.org

In a victory for data privacy, a federal court in New York definitively ruled that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) violated the law when it disclosed millions of federal employee records to DOGE agents. In a summary judgment ruling issued on October 20, 2026, the court found that OPM violated two provisions of the Privacy Act—one restricting disclosure of personal records between agencies and another requiring agencies to protect the security and confidentiality of records.

Since the case was filed, many DOGE agents have left the government and OPM has rescinded their database access. However, OPM should still clean up the cybersecurity mess it created. The court will decide the remedy at a later date.

"By virtue of the Court’s summary judgment ruling, OPM’s decision to grant DOGE Agents broad access to its systems of recordings containing [personally identifiable information (PII)] has been held unlawful," Judge Denise Cote wrote.

"The record also provides no support for a finding that it was the pursuit of a modernization agenda that prompted OPM to grant sweeping and expedited access to a score of DOGE Agents to its systems of records containing PII," she added.

OPM maintains databases of highly sensitive personal information about tens of millions of federal employees, retirees, and job applicants. Starting in January 2025, OPM disclosed data to the U.S. DOGE Service, initially led by Elon Musk. This disclosure violates the federal Privacy Act of 1974, a watershed anti-surveillance statute that prevents the federal government from abusing our personal information.

EFF sued OPM and DOGE because this data disclosure violates the Privacy Act. We represent unions of federal employees – the American Federation of Government Employees and the Association of Administrative Law Judges – and individual employees. We seek injunctive and declaratory relief. We filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Our co-counsel are Lex Lumina LLP, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and The Chandra Law Firm LLC.

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Related Cases: American Federation of Government Employees v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management

This post was co-written by Andi Cao, an EFF legal intern.

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are mass surveillance. They photograph every passing car and log where and when it was captured, building a searchable record of where nearly everyone drives. Cities should not buy them, and cities that already have them should shut them down.

Where these systems still operate, courts and state legislatures must reduce their harms by (among other things) requiring police to get a warrant before searching stored ALPR data. A warrant requirement would not make mass surveillance acceptable, but it would require police to justify a search to a judge before accessing records of people’s movements. Without this independent judicial check on police power, officers have been searching this data for improper reasons (many exposed by EFF) that violate our fundamental rights.

A warrant requires a judge to find probable cause and specificity—many warrantless police searches of ALPR data lack both. Officers have searched this data to profile Romani people, monitor protesters, investigate an abortion, find immigrants for deportation, track a man who complained about a deputy, stalk romantic partners, and even for no stated reason beyond “LMAO.” A warrant requirement would force law enforcement to justify these searches before accessing sensitive location records, not leave the people they target to discover and challenge the abuse after the harm is done.

What a Warrant Requires

Warrants are a check on police power. Before officers can search a person or their property, the Fourth Amendment requires them to convince a neutral judge, under oath, that probable cause exists, meaning a fair probability the search will turn up evidence of a crime. The warrant must also describe with particularity what will be searched, so police cannot go on a fishing expedition. Critically, the officer who wants to search is not the person who decides whether the search is justified.

That is why warrants are required for so many kinds of police surveillance. For example, police generally need a warrant to wiretap phone calls, to search the contents of a cell phone, and to obtain historical cell phone location records.

Stored ALPR data reveals sensitive information about the private details of our lives: where we go, when, and with whom. That’s why we believe police searches of stored ALPR data should also require a warrant. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Oklahoma agreed.

What Goes Wrong Without a Warrant: San Jose, California

San Jose demonstrates the harmful consequences of letting law enforcement search stored ALPR data without a warrant. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California represent SIREN and CAIR-California in a lawsuit challenging this practice.

The first problem is the sheer number of times that SJPD officers search stored ALPR data: 261,711 times between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025, about 692 searches a day. That scale is the result of having no warrant requirement, which would greatly reduce this kind of casual police surveillance.

Inevitably, officers abuse this unchecked power. In September, San Jose’s police chief disclosed an example from five months earlier: the department had fired an officer who used its ALPR system to track a woman who had accused his cousin of domestic violence, and then shared her location information with his cousin. The abusive search of stored ALPR data came to light only after the woman told police that her alleged assailant had implied he was tracking her.  A warrant requirement would have prevented this.

Of course, similar problems appear nationwide. For each example below, consider how things could have turned out differently if the officer had to put the reason for the search in a sworn warrant application and handed it to a judge.

Racial profiling of Romani people

More than 80 law enforcement agencies searched the Flock network using terms that unfairly stereotype Romani people, often without mentioning any crime. For example, the Grand Prairie (Texas) Police Department searched for “g*psy” six times using a Flock feature that identifies vehicles traveling together, in effect targeting a whole community without naming a crime.

No judge should sign that warrant. Ethnicity is not evidence of a crime, and a search aimed at an entire ethnic group is the opposite of particular: it targets people for who they are, not evidence that they committed a crime.

Surveillance of protesters

EFF found that more than 50 agencies ran hundreds of protest-related searches of ALPR data in 2025. For example, the Tempe (Arizona) Police Department ran three searches tied to the No Kings protest across 425 networks, with no identified crime.

This lacks probable cause and targets activity that is protected by the First Amendment.

Investigating an abortion

In 2025, a Texas sheriff’s office searched more than 83,000 Flock cameras, including cameras in Washington and Illinois, where abortion is legal, listing the reason as “had an abortion, search for female.” Records later obtained by EFF show deputies had opened a “death investigation” after the woman’s partner, who was later charged in connection with assaulting her, reported her self-managed abortion.

In a state where abortion is legal, a judge would not grant a warrant for a search like this.

Finding immigrants for deportation

San Francisco police let out-of-state agencies search the city’s ALPR data (which itself violates California law), and at least 19 of those searches were marked as related to ICE (though San Francisco is a sanctuary city). This problem is widespread. One investigation found more than 4,000 cases in which police departments around the country searched stored ALPR data on behalf of federal law enforcement, including for immigration investigations. Some agencies even connect their ALPR systems to an “Immigration Violator” hotlist populated by ICE, which includes plates tied to administrative warrants issued by ICE agents without any judge involved.

Here too, a judge in a state where police may not help enforce immigration law would not issue a warrant for these searches.

Retaliation against a critic

In May 2025, Navy veteran Napoleon Jones lawfully recorded a police traffic stop of another person in Sussex, Wisconsin. Jones alleges that a Waukesha County deputy retaliated by stopping and arresting him. He was released five hours later without citations or charges, and the deputy’s supervisor concluded the stop was illegal. Jones filed a complaint against the deputy the next day.

In the weeks that followed, officers reportedly ran more than 100 Flock searches against Jones, including some run by the deputy he had complained about. Deputies testified that a lieutenant ordered the searches in connection with Jones’s complaint.

No judge should authorize tracking a man for criticizing the police.

Stalking romantic partners

The Institute for Justice (IJ) has documented dozens of cases in which officers allegedly used ALPRs to track current, potential, and former romantic partners. For example, a Lufkin, Texas, officer was indicted on 100 felony counts after allegedly searching for his ex-girlfriend and people she knew more than 10,000 times. Likewise, a Milwaukee officer allegedly tracked a woman he was dating and her ex nearly 180 times over two months. IJ found that most of these cases surfaced only after victims reported the officer.

We hope that no officer would write “tracking the location of my ex-girlfriend” on a warrant application, and even if they did so, a judge would not authorize such a search.

Searches for “LMAO”

Sometimes officers do not even provide a real reason to search stored ALPR data. EFF found officers logging search reasons such as “LOL,” “LMAO,” “idk,” and random keyboard mashing. These entries are supposed to document why a search complies with an agency’s own use policies. A Goshen (Indiana) Police Department officer searched 6,474 networks, representing data from 82,413 cameras, with “idk” as the reason.

An officer who asked a judge for a warrant to track someone for “LMAO” would be laughed out of the courtroom.

The Solution

The best way to eliminate these abusive searches is to end ALPR mass surveillance. Where these systems remain, however, courts and state legislatures must require police to get a warrant before searching stored ALPR data. Warrants are the time-tested way to put an independent judicial check on police use of a dangerous surveillance technology. Officers must establish probable cause and specifically describe the proposed search before accessing the data, while existing exceptions for genuine emergencies still apply.

These protections must also cover real-time tracking. An ALPR “hotlist” is a list of license plates that trigger an alert when a camera spots a matching plate. Officers can stalk potential romantic partners by putting them on a hotlist, as a Florida deputy allegedly did with a woman he met on the set of a TV show. Thus, state legislators should require officers to get a warrant before putting a person on an ALPR hotlist (as well as a warrant to search stored ALPR data).

Related Cases: SIREN and CAIR-CA v. San Jose

Exciting news for Safari users: Privacy Badger is now available on Safari for macOS! You’ll need Safari version 26.5 or higher to use it.

Whether you want to protect yourself from data brokers or just don’t want Big Tech profiting off your browsing data, Privacy Badger is here to help. More than 4 million people already use EFF’s free tracker-blocking extension to take a stand against online surveillance. Safari users can now join them and EFF in the fight for a better web.  

Install Privacy Badger

Support the Fight Against Online Tracking

Safari support has been one of Privacy Badger’s most requested features for years. Thanks to recent improvements in Safari's extension support, we’ve finally made it happen for Safari version 26.5 and higher. Privacy Badger is now available on all major desktop browsers. And before you ask, yes, we will look into supporting Safari for iOS once we've ironed out any issues on macOS.

Why Install Privacy Badger on Safari? 

Most websites contain invisible tracking code that lets companies collect, share, and profit from your personal data. Some of those companies are data brokers that sell your information to anyone willing to pay. Creepy ads are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the harms of online tracking: Once your information enters the data broker ecosystem, it’s nearly impossible to know who buys it or what they’re doing with it. Privacy Badger blocks online trackers to prevent your browsing data from being used against you.  

Privacy Badger goes beyond Safari’s built-in privacy features to provide additional protection against online tracking. In its default browsing mode, Safari limits the information that trackers can access but still allows them to load. Privacy Badger blocks trackers from loading in the first place, preventing them from tracking you using techniques that bypass Safari’s protections. 

Privacy Badger works well by itself, and will continue to enhance your privacy when installed along side an ad blocker or with Safari’s Advanced settings to block trackers in all windows. Since Privacy Badger automatically learns to block trackers, Privacy Badger will block trackers that other tools don’t know about or choose not to block. 

For example, Privacy Badger blocks tracking from widgets like embedded tweets, comments sections, and video players. These widgets can share your data even if you never click on them. Privacy Badger prevents these trackers from loading and replaces them with click-to-activate placeholders. 

Beyond tracker blocking, Privacy Badger automatically sends the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal to tell websites not to sell or share your personal information. The GPC signal is already legally binding in a growing number of states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  

All these features (and more) work together to help keep your browsing activity private on Safari. 

Try It Out and Spread the Word 

If you use Safari on macOS, give Privacy Badger a try. You’ll install Privacy Badger through the App Store on your macOS device. Installing extensions is a little more complicated on Safari than other browsers, so follow Apple’s directions here if you’re having trouble.  

This is our first release of Privacy Badger for Safari, and we will keep improving it based on your feedback. If you run into any problems, let us know by emailing extension-devs@eff.org, or by opening an issue on GitHub. And if blocking harmful trackers causes issues on a website you visit, you can disable Privacy Badger for that specific site while keeping it enabled and protecting you everywhere else. You can also let us know about broken sites by using the “Report broken site” button found next to the “Disable for this site” button in Privacy Badger’s popup window. 

When you use Privacy Badger, you join EFF and millions of other users in the fight for a better web. Help spread the word by telling your friends and family who use Safari that they can use Privacy Badger too!  

Install Privacy Badger 

Support the Fight Against Online Tracking 

Free Tracker Blocker Used by Millions Will Protect Even More Users' Privacy

SAN FRANCISCO—Privacy Badger, the award-winning tracker blocker made by the member-supported digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is now available for Safari on macOS.  

Safari users can download the free browser extension today and join the more than 4 million people using Privacy Badger to take a stand against data brokers and online surveillance. Users will need Safari version 26.5 or higher to use it.

Ranked as one of the best ad tracker blockers by The Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, PC Mag and more, Privacy Badger is different from other blocking extensions. Created by EFF to stop companies from spying on you online, Privacy Badger automatically learns to block hidden trackers on the web, along with additional privacy-protecting features. 

"Most websites contain invisible tracking code that lets companies collect, share, and profit from your personal data," said Lena Cohen, Staff Technologist at EFF. "Creepy ads are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the harms of online tracking: Once your information enters the data broker ecosystem, it’s nearly impossible to know who buys it or what they’re doing with it. Safari support has long been one of Privacy Badger’s most requested features and EFF is excited to be able to make this important tool available to Safari users to fight back for a better web." 

On Safari, Privacy Badger goes beyond the browser’s built-in privacy features to provide additional protection against online tracking. In its default browsing mode, Safari limits the information that trackers can access, but it still allows them to load. Privacy Badger blocks online trackers from loading in the first place, preventing them from tracking you using techniques that bypass Safari’s protections. 

With today's launch, Privacy Badger is now available on all major desktop browsers. 

As the leading nonprofit defending online civil liberties, EFF is committed to fighting mass surveillance in the courts, through activism, and by making free, privacy-protecting tools like Privacy Badger. Now, even more people can join the movement against online tracking, by installing Privacy Badger themselves, telling their friends and family who use Safari about it, or by supporting Privacy Badger today. 

For more on Privacy Badger for Safari on macOS: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/announcing-privacy-badger-safari-macos

For more on the dangers of online tracking: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/online-tracking-out-control-privacy-badger-can-help-you-fight-back 

For more on how Privacy Badger works: https://privacybadger.org/ 

Contact: press@eff.org

Tags: Privacy BadgerAd trackersSurveillance Advertising

Barry Steinhardt, a lifelong privacy champion and an early leader in the battle for digital civil liberties who served as EFF’s president in 1998-99, died last week at age 73. 

A Connecticut native, Steinhardt led the Vermont and Pennsylvania affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming associate director of the national ACLU. There, he helped spearhead the fight to overturn much of the Communications Decency Act, resulting in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Reno v. ACLU ruling in 1997. 

When the internet was still young, Steinhardt became one of the first attorneys to specialize in the intersection of technology and privacy. In early 1998 he took a leave of absence from the ACLU to become EFF’s president, and then returned to the ACLU in 1999. 

In 2002 he founded the ACLU’s Program on Technology and Liberty. After retiring from the ACLU, he continued on as a senior advisor to London-based Privacy International. 

Steinhardt chaired the 2003 Computer Freedom and Privacy Conference and served on a wide variety of significant panels and boards, including the Department of Transportation’s Negotiated Rule Making on national driver’s license standards, the Advisory Committee to the US Census, and the Blue Ribbon Panel on Genetics of the National Conference of State Legislatures. He also was selected to be a member of the US delegation to the G-8 Government and Private Sector Tokyo conference on Cyber Crime and served as an advisor to the Czech Helsinki Committee.  

“Barry led many critical technology and civil liberties fights and was an important mentor to me and others in the field,” said EFF Executive Director Nicole Ozer. “Barry’s influential work across strategy to defend and advance privacy rights and safeguard people against surveillance has made its mark on the law and policy of our digital world and protected the rights and safety of people across the United States and around the world.”   

No one should have to choose between speaking freely and protecting their immigration status. Yet that’s precisely the choice the Trump administration’s mass surveillance of online speech forces on noncitizens living in the U.S.   

Last fall, we sued on behalf of three major labor unions to stop this surveillance program. And just this month, we won our first major ruling: A federal district court denied the government’s motion to dismiss our lawsuit. This means the case can move forward—a win for free speech and a critical step in protecting our First Amendment rights online. We’ve already explained why this is a big deal for our clients, so let's take a closer look at the court’s reasoning.  

Our Lawsuit 

 Since taking power, the Trump administration has used AI and other automated tools to broadly surveil the social media and online speech of visa and green card holders, with the goal of identifying and punishing people who express views it opposes. The government is targeting a broad range of views, including criticism of the Trump administration; support for Palestine or criticism of Israel; “rationalizing or making light of” Charlie Kirk’s murder; and anything nebulously “hostile” to American culture, founding principles, “traditional American views,” or “our way of life.”  

It has paired that surveillance with a public intimidation campaign. High-ranking officials have explicitly threatened to punish noncitizens for their online speech, then followed through with a series of terrifying viewpoint-driven enforcement actions. This has led to a significant chilling effect on speech, not just for noncitizens, but also for their families, coworkers, and friends. 

In response, three major labor unions—the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—sued the Departments of State and Homeland Security alleging that this viewpoint-based surveillance program violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).  The unions are represented by EFF, Muslim Advocates (MA), and the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic (MFIA). 

The government moved to dismiss our lawsuit, arguing first that federal immigration law prevents federal district courts from hearing the case, and second, that the unions don’t have “standing” to sue. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York rejected both arguments and allowed the case to proceed. At this stage in the litigation, the court accepted all of the facts in our complaint as true and analyzed the law based on those facts. We will now prove these facts as the case proceeds. 

Federal Immigration Law Doesn’t Block Our Lawsuit 

 The government first argued that the court had no power to hear our case at all. It pointed to three provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that restrict when federal courts can review immigration matters. The district court disagreed and rejected each provision in turn. 

The first provision, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9), is often called the “zipper clause.” It bars federal courts from hearing challenges that arise from efforts to deport someone, except through review of an individual’s final removal order. The government claimed the zipper clause applies here because our lawsuit is really an effort to stop it from initiating adverse immigration actions. 

 The district court wholly rejected this argument. Relying on the Second Circuit’s decision in Ozturk v. Hyde, it held that the zipper clause bars only challenges to a particular individual’s removal proceedings, not a lawsuit like ours that challenges the constitutionality of the surveillance program itself. That the surveillance program might affect someone’s immigration proceeding down the line doesn’t turn our lawsuit into a removal challenge. 

 The court similarly rejected the government’s argument that § 1252(g) and § 1252(f)(1) prevent federal courts from hearing this case. Our suit, the court explained, “challenges the constitutionality of a government policy that is collateral to any active removal proceedings,” so § 1252(g) doesn’t apply. And § 1252(f)(1) only limits what kind of relief a court can give. So while the court may not be able to stop a particular person’s removal proceedings, it can still block “an unlawful surveillance program that suppresses free speech.” 

 The Unions Have Standing to Sue 

 To sue in federal court, a plaintiff must show that it has “standing” to bring its claims. This requires a plaintiff to show an “injury in fact” that is, among other things, “concrete.” That’s often a high bar in surveillance cases, where plaintiffs can’t easily see what the government is doing behind the scenes. And the Supreme Court has held that a person’s mere subjective fear of surveillance is too speculative to confer standing.  

Even so, our plaintiffs cleared the bar. The court held that the unions alleged concrete injuries, including a chill on members’ speech that is objectively reasonable, not just subjectively felt. It found that the unions had established standing in two ways: “organizational standing,” based on the unions’ own injuries, and “associational standing,” based on injuries the unions’ members have suffered. 

Organizational Standing 

The court first held that our plaintiffs had successfully alleged an injury to the unions themselves (injury was the only aspect of organizational standing the government disputed). The surveillance program has harmed the unions’ ability to carry out their core responsibilities, including “organizing their members and advocating for the unions’ goals.” The court made two key points: 

1. Unions Are Injured When Members Go Silent 

As we explained in our complaint, the surveillance program has caused members to step back from union leadership roles; stop participating in union activities online and in person; remove their names from union webpages; and avoid filling out bargaining surveys. Members who might otherwise spread the unions’ message and raise awareness of union issues are staying quiet, hampering the unions’ ability to organize. The court said this amounts to a concrete injury for purposes of standing. 

2. Surveillance Doesn’t Need to Target Pro-Union Speech  

 The court also rejected the government’s claim that members’ retreat from union activities was “essentially an overreaction,” because the surveillance doesn't target pro-union views. The court said this misunderstands the issue: “the question is whether the Government’s conduct would deter a person of ordinary firmness from engaging in protected activity, not whether the specific expression a member forgoes is itself among the viewpoints the Government disfavors.” 

Here, the surveillance program monitors noncitizens’ online activity indiscriminately, and members “cannot reliably predict which of their activities will be captured” and attributed to a disfavored viewpoint. What’s more, the court noted, the unions’ organizing often happens alongside the very advocacy the government is alleged to target, “including pro-Palestine and anti-ICE activism on college campuses.” That makes members’ retreat from union activity a foreseeable consequence of the program. 

Associational Standing  

 The court also held that the unions established associational standing to sue on behalf of their members. Of the three requirements for associational standing, the government challenged only two. It argued that members lacked sufficiently concrete injuries to sue in their own right, and that the claims aren’t “germane” to the unions’ purpose. 

The court disagreed and found associational standing for every claim but one: members’ right to receive information. That claim survives anyway, because the unions’ organizational standing covers it. Along the way, the court made several important rulings. 

 1. The Ongoing Surveillance Is a Present Injury 

 As a threshold matter, the government argued that our case is a “pre-enforcement challenge,” meaning we sued before the government actually punished anyone. That would trigger a different test, and the government argued we failed it because we hadn’t alleged a sufficiently imminent threat of prosecution. 

The court disagreed, explaining that “Plaintiffs’ allegations are of an ongoing surveillance program that is actively chilling the speech of their members and otherwise causing harm.” That chilling effect is a First Amendment injury even if there isn’t a direct prohibition on speech. And when government conduct is actively chilling speech right now, a challenge to it isn’t pre-enforcement. 

 2. Surveillance + Public Threats Reasonably Chills Speech 

 The court rejected the government’s argument that we alleged only a generalized, subjective, speculative fear of surveillance, explaining that “the chilling effect” of the program can “itself be an injury when the plaintiffs are surveilled.” Here, plaintiffs have alleged that their members are under active surveillance, which has had objective chilling effects on their speech. And the government is targeting certain disfavored viewpoints, making it “viewpoint discrimination” that is “presumptively unconstitutional.” 

The chill is also objectively reasonable, the court held, because the government has extensively publicized the surveillance program through public statements and social media posts, making clear that noncitizens who post disfavored views will be targeted for removal. Notably, the court agreed with us that the “threat of adverse immigration consequences, under a government whose harsh immigration crackdowns has been heavily publicized and reported on, is certainly enough to deter a person of ordinary firmness from the exercise of First Amendment rights.” This is a concrete injury sufficient for standing. 

3. Demanding Social Media Handles Also Causes Harm 

Under the surveillance program, applicants for certain immigration benefits must disclose all social media handles they have used during the preceding five years and, in some instances, maintain public social media accounts. The district court held that this too amounts to a First Amendment injury, undermining the rights to anonymity and freedom of association.  

The judge pointed to one CWA member we identified, a lawful permanent resident with a pending naturalization application who is subject to the five-year disclosure requirement. The member has deleted one social media account, set another to private, and removed past posts expressing disfavored views. These allegations, the court said, show an actual and objectively reasonable injury due to the government’s surveillance program.

4. General, Public Threats Can Still Be Coercive 

We also argued that the Trump administration is waging a campaign of coercive threats to suppress disfavored speech, which the First Amendment prohibits. The court agreed that this campaign can be an actionable injury of its own. 

Notably, the court held that it didn’t matter that the government’s statements were not specifically targeted at certain individuals, and were instead made on social media or to the public. In this case, the court explained, “the number, severity, and high-profile examples of action upon those threats are such that a reasonable person would perceive the communication as coercive.” 

That means it’s reasonable that the unions’ members “would, and did, limit their public speech on disfavored viewpoints” in response. That the threats were made to the general public “does not diminish this injury,” as the very purpose of the challenged surveillance program is to intimidate noncitizens into silence.  

5. Free Speech is Central to Union Functioning 

The court also found that the unions met the second prong of associational standing. It held that the unions’ interests in protecting their members’ rights to speak freely, organize, and advocate, are “germane” to the unions’ missions. The court put it plainly:

The freedom of Plaintiffs’ members to speak, associate, and appear publicly is not incidental to union work, but rather is the mechanism through which unions recruit, organize, communicate, and bargain. A program alleged to silence members and drive them from the unions’ rolls therefore strikes at the unions’ representational function itself.

Next Steps 

When the government surveils what people post online and threatens to punish them for their viewpoints, the result is exactly what our clients have experienced. Members have deleted their accounts, scrubbed posts, and withdrawn from union activities. 

The government must now answer our complaint and we will move forward with the discovery process, in which we anticipate getting more information from the government about its surveillance program. We look forward to continuing to prove our case. 

Today, EFF joined the ACLU of Wisconsin in filing a petition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, asking it to rule that the state’s constitution requires a warrant for retrospective searches of ALPR databases used by law enforcement in four cities: Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay. We represent a religious organization, the Wisconsin Council of Churches, as well as an individual pastor in Green Bay.

As the petition explains:

Right now, Automated License Plate Readers (“ALPRs”) are recording the movements of vast numbers of Wisconsin drivers as they seek medical care, attend 12-step recovery meetings, attend religious services, participate in protests, attend political meetings, and engage in many other private, sensitive activities. Law enforcement entities throughout Wisconsin collect, store, share, and aggregate this ALPR data. Then they search it, retrospectively tracking the movements of individuals and entire communities in ways that would have been prohibitively costly, if not outright impossible, before the advent of ALPR technology.

We all deserve to be free of warrantless mass surveillance. We all deserve to live in a country where surveillance vendors cannot help police upend our system of individualized suspicion. Religious organizations and officials like our clients have a heightened interest in protecting their location privacy because of the range of expressive associations their work entails, including facilitating gatherings for religious worship, as well as offering pastoral care, confidential counseling, and community support. Likewise, the people who visit houses of worship have a strong right to privacy against police monitoring of when they pray, seek addiction counseling, or attend a domestic violence survivor meeting.

This is our second lawsuit challenging warrantless ALPR searches, following SIREN v. San Jose. Earlier this month, a federal court in Oklahoma became the first to rule that ALPRs are a “type of indiscriminate mass surveillance” and suppress evidence from a warrantless ALPR search. We hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court will agree.

Read the Wisconsin Supreme Court petition

Read the press release

Related Cases: Wisconsin Council of Churches v. Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha & Green Bay

EFF legal intern Gabrielle Ladun was the principal author of this post. 

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) has published a summary of findings from its audit of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) facial recognition technology. While the detailed findings are classified, the summary states that the OIG’s audit uncovered a “significant weakness” in the technology’s ability to protect the privacy of passenger data. This has massive privacy implications for the millions of passengers who travel and don’t opt out of the TSA’s biometric surveillance technology verification process. 

TSA uses facial comparison technology for identity verification of airline passengers. A camera takes a photo of passengers to verify that their provided identification matches their live photo. Although TSA states that it is “committed to protecting traveler privacy,” the audit highlights that this has not been the case.  

The OIG found that TSA’s Credential Authentication Technology 2’s (CAT-2) vendor “was able to access and extract sensitive passenger information, including driver’s license and passport images, during system troubleshooting and enhancements, without TSA’s knowledge.”  

The OIG further admonished the agency:  

TSA lacked clear policies, did not track when this data was extracted, could not verify that extracted information was properly deleted, and did not notify passengers when their biometric and biographic information may have been stored. As a result, although passenger information was generally protected during routine operations, weaknesses in vendor oversight created a risk that sensitive personal information could be retained or exposed. 

We hope the TSA will fix these issues. The OIG summary states: 

We issued one finding and three recommendations to strengthen controls, improve oversight, and ensure transparency and the proper handling of passenger data. TSA concurred with all three recommendations. Two recommendations are open and resolved, and one remains open and unresolved. 

Why EFF Opposes the Government’s Use of Facial Recognition Technology 

EFF has a long history of opposing governmental use of facial recognition technology. As the OIG’s audit underscores, this technology presents privacy risks associated with unsecured data, unauthorized access, and data breaches. The government’s use of this technology also creates a mass surveillance system and facilitates the creation of warrantless biometric records for unconsenting parties.  

The biometric data captured by this technology is not without errors. There have been multiple instances of law enforcement agencies using facial recognition technology to misidentify and arrest innocent individuals.  

Reminder: Opting Out of TSA Photos Is Possible 

Given that facial recognition technology is prone to mistakes, combined with the OIG’s audit revealing significant privacy weaknesses, it is imperative that travelers remember that opting out is possible. TSA’s own website emphasizes that travelers who wish to decline to have their photo taken for facial comparison can do so without any delay, disruption, or recourse.  

Considering the data protection weaknesses exposed by the OIG’s audit, EFF will continue to oppose this governmental system of mass surveillance and spread awareness to ensure that no one is forced to relinquish their biometric data without consent. 

No one should have to think twice before criticizing the government online. But a mass surveillance program known as "Catch and Revoke" was created to make millions do just that. EFF and other defenders of free speech are fighting back. In our latest EFFector newsletter, we're talking about a key court win for our lawsuit challenging this unconstitutional surveillance program.

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For over 35 years, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This issue covers our Opt Out October guides for ditching Big Tech, a win in the fight against anti-VPN laws, and a court ruling allowing the lawsuit against "Catch and Revoke" to move forward.

Prefer to listen in? EFFector is now available on all major podcast platforms. This time we're talking to EFF's Lisa Femia about how the government is using AI to suppress protected speech online—and the important lawsuit she and others are working on to stop it. You can find the episode and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice:

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