Massachusetts' Highest Court Upholds Cell Tower Dump Warrant

This blog post was drafted with help from former EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann.Massachusetts’ highest court has upheld the collection of mass cell tower data, despite recognizing that this data not only provides investigators with “highly...

Data Brokers and True the Vote are the Real Villains of "2000 Mules" Movie

2000 Mules is a movie which claims to expose election fraud with phone app location data. While these claims have already been thoroughly debunked, the movie also deserves condemnation for performing wildly invasive research on thousands of...

How to Disable Ad ID Tracking on iOS and Android, and Why You Should Do It Now

The ad identifier - aka “IDFA” on iOS, or “AAID” on Android - is the key that enables most third-party tracking on mobile devices. Disabling it will make it substantially harder for advertisers and data brokers to track and profile you, and will...

SafeGraph’s Disingenuous Claims About Location Data Mask a Dangerous Industry

On Tuesday, Motherboard reported that data broker SafeGraph was selling location information “related to visits to clinics that provide abortions including Planned Parenthood facilities.” This included where people came from and where they went...

An EFF Investigation: Mystery GPS Tracker On A Supporter’s Car

Being able to accurately determine your location anywhere on the planet is a useful technological trick. But when tracking isn’t done by you, but to you—without your knowledge or consent—it’s a violation of your privacy. That’s why at EFF we’ve...

In 2021, the Police Took a Page Out of the NSA’s Playbook: 2021 in Review

With increasing frequency, law enforcement has been using unconstitutional, suspicionless digital dragnet searches in an attempt to identify unknown suspects in criminal cases. Whether these searches are for everyone who was near a building where...

EFF Files New Lawsuit Against California Sheriff for Sharing ALPR Data with ICE and CBP

The Marin County Sheriff illegally shares the sensitive location information of millions of drivers with out-of-state and federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Sheriff...

Why Data-Sharing Mandates Are the Wrong Way To Regulate Tech

The tech companies behind the so-called “sharing economy” have drawn the ire of brick-and-mortar businesses and local governments across the country. For example, take-out apps such as GrubHub and UberEats have grown into a hundred-billion-dollar...

It’s Time for Google to Resist Geofence Warrants and to Stand Up for Its Affected Users

EFF would like to thank former intern Haley Amster for drafting this post, and former legal fellow Nathan Sobel for his assistance in editing it.The Fourth Amendment requires authorities to target search warrants at particular places or...

Data Brokers are the Problem

Why should you care about data brokers? Reporting this week about a Substack publication outing a priest with location data from Grindr shows once again how easy it is for anyone to take advantage of data brokers’ stores to cause real harm. This...