EFF Celebrates 36th Anniversary, Says 'We Need You in the Fight'
1 19"We need you in the fight," says the American legal expert in privacy, surveillance, AI, and Internet freedom of speech who became the EFF's new executive director in March.
As EFF celebrates the anniversary of its founding 1990, "Each headline is different, but they tell one story: Many of the threats that once seemed hypothetical are now reality, and EFF's work to ensure technology supports rights, justice, freedom, and innovation for all people has never been more critical." Governments and large corporations possess surveillance capabilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Ever greater concentrations of power are shaping speech, creativity, markets, and democratic institutions. Governments are increasingly seeking to control the internet and people's ability to access information and communicate freely. Our community's work is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives...
These are perilous times. It is also a moment of extraordinary possibility. The future of AI has not been written and we can work together to get it right. We can make sure our laws reflect the needs of the modern digital age. We can build the technologies that empower rather than marginalize communities. For me, the work starts with recognizing that digital rights are not a siloed policy issue. We must fight and win on the digital terrain to organize, speak freely, access healthcare, find work, receive an education, and participate fully in democracy. We can and must reject a false choice between innovation and civil liberties, and build power across movements to make sure technology truly works for people...
EFF's founders understood something remarkably prescient: Technology and civil liberties would become inseparable. Now we all live digital lives, and the important digital rights issues that EFF has worked on since 1990 have become kitchen-table issues all around the world. EFF's founders understood that how technology is built, developed, used, and controlled deeply intersects with rights, justice, freedom, and democracy. EFF's unique combination of world-class lawyers, activists, and public interest technologists pursue change simultaneously in the courts, legislatures, companies, and our communities, and pierce through false choices. This integrated, intersectional approach, grounded in deep legal, policy, and technical expertise, is a linchpin in fighting and winning against some of the most powerful forces in the world — both governments and trillion-dollar companies.
We defend people against unlawful government data collection and challenge license plate and face surveillance in our communities. We shape AI law and policy to protect civil liberties and support creativity and innovation. We push companies to strengthen encryption, fight to ensure you have the right to own what you buy, and build public interest technologies like Privacy Badger and Certbot that millions of people rely on every day. This work matters because it all answers the same question: Will technology empower or control us?
Major battles the executive director sees on the horizon"
- "Challenge increasingly sophisticated government and corporate surveillance systems that endanger our rights, democracy, safety and security."
- "Preserve strong encryption and online anonymity."
- "Ensure AI is developed and used in ways that respect fundamental rights and works for those who build it, use it, and are affected by it."
- "Confront the concentrations of power that limit access to new creativity and defend the rights of developers to build and innovate."
"To meet these challenges, we must not only utilize the powerful levers of successful litigation, smart policy interventions, and effective public interest technology tools. We must also build a broader movement that recognizes that fights on the digital terrain are integral to all our fights for rights and justice... Together, our EFF community can help broaden the public conversation about technology's role in society and continue building the collective power necessary to shape the future rather than react to it....
"I'm looking forward to meeting more of you at my first EFFecting Change livestream on August 12 with Cory Doctorow, and hope this conversation is just the beginning of finding new ways to work together..."
The blog post ends by noting that "We need you and others in the fight. Please renew your membership, become a recurring monthly supporter, and introduce someone new to EFF by snagging them a gift membership.
"Everything we accomplish — every lawsuit, every policy victory, every public interest technology tool, every campaign — is possible because people like you are committed to ensuring technology strengthens freedom, privacy, creativity, and opportunity for everyone.
"The future we want and need will be built by people and movements working together to ensure technology empowers rather than oppresses.
"Let's build that future together."
1 comments
Disillusioned with EFF (Score: 5, Interesting)
by swillden ( 191260 ) on <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Saturday July 11, 2026 @02:12PM (#66233204)
I had some interactions with EFF a few years ago that left me sad. They definitely do a lot of good work, but I had thought they would be pretty good at understanding complex technical issues and their nuanced interaction with social and political issues, but my experience was quite the opposite. They're a pretty blunt hammer, mostly focused on rejecting any technological change regardless of its benefits. Even that would be okay if they were at least able to articulate sound objections, but that also didn't seem to be the case.
I was working on Android and participating in the ISO 18013-5 mobile driving license standardization process. I thought it would be a good idea to consult with ACLU and EFF, partly to get their buy-in, but mostly to get their feedback. I thought they might have concerns that I could help to address either in the standard (though, honestly, the European members of the ISO committee were already going above and beyond with privacy protection and abuse protection -- the Germans in particular are incredibly paranoid about such things -- and that's good!) or in the Android infrastructure I was building.
ACLU was great, at least for a while. The reason it was great was because the ACLU representative I was working with was Jon Callas [wikipedia.org] (former. CTO of Silent Circle and PGP Corp, Chief Scientist of PGP Inc.). Jon is brilliant, with a deep and abiding interest in privacy. He was generally impressed [brookings.edu] with the approach we were taking, and had some good insights for tweaks we could make to tighten it up. Unfortunately Jon only worked with the ACLU for a couple of years, and we struggled to find anyone to engage at all after his departure. I'm not sure he wants to share publicly his reasons for separating, so I won't go into that (though I will point out Jon's article, linked above, is not an official ACLU position).
EFF... not so much. The EFF folks seemed not even to be able to understand what we were building. They kept comparing it to e-Verify (which they think is unambiguously bad) but were unable to articulate precisely what the problems with e-Verify were, or how those might translate to mDLs. I was actively seeking feedback on concerns that I could try to mitigate through good design and implementation. Their response was just a blanket "no, this is all bad" with no thought behind it, and no consideration for the individual privacy improvements that electronic delivery with selective disclosure provide as compared to plastic cards that just lay all of your personal information out there.
My discussions with police were actually far more productive than my discussions with EFF. The cops recommended pro-privacy tweaks that I incorporated -- their concern wasn't actually privacy, mind you, but liability, both financial and legal. The chiefs I spoke with were very concerned that there not be any circumstance in which a police officer might need to touch your phone, because they didn't want to deal with the crap that would ensue when phones were broken, or illegally searched. They were significantly more tech savvy than you might expect, too, and of course they deeply understood highway stops and other police interactions.
But EFF was just frustrating and useless. Which is too bad because I had always had a lot of respect for them and the work they do. I still do, I guess... I just understand now that they have morphed into a typical lawyer-based civil rights organization. Which is good! We absolutely need those! But they lack the technical sophistication I understand they had when founded.