 Logo since July 2018 | |
| Abbreviation | EFF |
|---|---|
| Formation | June 10, 1990 (35 years ago) (1990-06-10) |
| Founders | |
| Type | Nonprofit |
| 04-3091431 | |
| Purpose | Digital rights |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, US |
Region | Worldwide |
| Membership | 40,000 |
| Website | eff |
TheElectronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profitdigital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promoteInternetcivil liberties.
It provides funds for legal defense in court, presentsamicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and newtechnologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to exposegovernment malfeasance, provides guidance to the government andcourts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preservepersonal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains adatabase and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potentiallegislation that it believes would infringe onpersonal liberties andfair use, and solicits a list of what it considers areabusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers are withoutmerit.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed in July 1990 byJohn Gilmore,John Perry Barlow andMitch Kapor. The foundation was a response to concerns that law enforcement and policymakers lacked sufficient knowledge about the internet to make decisions or policies that respected people's rights. The EFF was established to lobby fordigital rights.[1][2]
AmidOperation Sundevil, an attempt by theSecret Service to combat cybercrime, aFederal Bureau of Investigation agent visited Barlow at his home in April of 1990. After attending a conference hosted byHarper's, a hacker group sent Barlow and other personalitiesfloppy discs containingpirated, proprietarysource code forROM components made byApple.[3] Although Barlow was unaware of the reason for the FBI visit, Barlow spent time teaching the agent after he indicated that he did not have a good understanding of how computers and the internet worked.[2] Explaining his concern that the agent was investigating a crime the agent didn't understand, Barlow reflected thinking he "would first have to explain to him what guilt might be."[4]
Barlow posted an account of this experience toThe WELL online community.[5][6] Considering the FBI and Secret Services heavy-handed tactics during several high-profile raids and arrests, Barlow argued that a civil rights organization was self-evident given the context.[7]
After his post, Barlow was contacted by Mitch Kapor, who had had a similar experience. The pair agreed that there was a need to defend civil liberties on the Internet. Kapor agreed to fund any legal fees associated with such a defense and the pair contacted New York lawyers Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman about defending others who had attended the event.[1]
This generated a large amount of publicity which led to offers of financial support fromJohn Gilmore andSteve Wozniak. Barlow and Kapor continued to research conflicts between the government and technology and in June 1990, Barlow posted online the influential article titled "Crime & Puzzlement" in which Barlow announced his and Kapor's plans to create an organization to "raise and disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of the Constitution into Cyberspace."[5][non-primary source needed]
This generated further reaction and support for the ideas of Barlow and Kapor. In late June, Barlow held a series of dinners inSan Francisco with major figures in the computer industry to develop a coherent response to these perceived threats. Barlow considered that: "The actions of the FBI and Secret Service were symptoms of a growing social crisis: Future Shock. America was entering the Information Age with neither laws nor metaphors for the appropriate protection and conveyance of information itself."[8][non-primary source needed] Barlow felt that to confront this a formal organization would be needed; he hired Cathy Cook as press coordinator, and began to set up what would become the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formally founded on July 10, 1990, by Kapor and Barlow, who very soon after elected Gilmore, Wozniak, andStewart Brand to join them on the board of directors.[8][non-primary source needed] Initial funding was provided by Kapor, Wozniak, and an anonymous benefactor.[9][non-primary source needed][10][unreliable source?]
In 1990,Mike Godwin joined the organization as its first staff counsel. Then in 1991,Esther Dyson and Jerry Berman joined the EFF board of directors. By 1992, Cliff Figallo became the director of the original office, and in December 1992, Jerry Berman became the acting executive director of the organization as a whole, based in a new second office.[citation needed]
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The creation of the organization was motivated by the massivesearch and seizure onSteve Jackson Games executed by theUnited States Secret Service early in 1990. Similar but officially unconnected law-enforcement raids were being conducted across the United States at about that time as part of a state–federal task force calledOperation Sundevil.GURPS Cyberpunk, one of the game company's projects, was mistakenly labeled as a handbook for computer crime,[11][non-primary source needed] and the Secret Service raided the offices of Steve Jackson Games. Thesearch warrant for the raid was deemed hastily issued, and the games company soon after claimed unauthorized access as well as tampering of their emails. While phone calls were protected by legislation, digital emails were an early concept and had not been considered to fall under the right to personal privacy. TheSteve Jackson Games case was the EFF's first high-profile case, was the major rallying point around which the EFF began promoting computer- and Internet-related civil liberties.[12][failed verification]
The EFF's second big case wasBernstein v. United States led byCindy Cohn, in which programmer and professorDaniel J. Bernstein sued the government for permission to publish hisencryption software, Snuffle, and a paper describing it. More recently, the organization has been involved in defendingEdward Felten,Jon Lech Johansen andDmitry Sklyarov.[13][non-primary source needed]
The organization was originally located atMitch Kapor's Kapor Enterprises offices in Boston.[14] By the fall of 1993, the main EFF offices were consolidated into a single office in Washington DC,[14] headed by Executive Director Jerry Berman. During this time, some of the EFF's attention focused oninfluencing national policy,[14] to the dislike of some of the members of the organization.[14][15] In 1994, Berman parted ways with the EFF and formed theCenter for Democracy and Technology,[14] while Drew Taubman briefly took the reins as executive director.
In 1995, under the auspices of Executive DirectorLori Fena, after some downsizing and in an effort to regroup and refocus on their base of support,the organization moved offices toSan Francisco, California.[14][15] There, it took up temporary residence atJohn Gilmore's Toad Hall, and soon afterward moved into the Hamm's Building at 1550 Bryant St. After Fena moved onto the EFF board of directors for a while, the organization was led briefly byTara Lemmey, followed by Barry Steinhardt (who had come from the closely allied Technology and Liberty Program at theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and eventually returned to the ACLU). Not long before EFF's move into new offices at 454 Shotwell St. in SF's Mission District, Mike Godwin departed, long-time Legal DirectorShari Steele was appointed executive director, and staff attorneyCindy Cohn became the legal director.
In the spring of 2006, the EFF announced the opening of an office again in Washington, D.C., with two new staff attorneys.[16] In 2012, the EFF began a fundraising campaign for the renovation of a building located at 815 Eddy Street in San Francisco, to serve as its new headquarters.[17][non-primary source needed] The move was completed in April 2013.[18][non-primary source needed] On April 1, 2015, Shari Steele stepped down as executive director.[19][non-primary source needed] Cindy Cohn became the new executive director, Corynne McSherry became the legal director, and Kurt Opsahl became the general counsel.
By the mid-1990s the EFF was becoming seriously concerned about the refusal of the US government to license any secure encryption product for export unless it usedkey recovery and claims that governments could not decrypt information when protected byData Encryption Standard (DES), continuing even after the public breaking of the code in the first of theDES Challenges. They coordinated and supported the construction of theEFF DES cracker (nicknamed Deep Crack), using special purpose hardware and software and costing $210,000.[20][21][non-primary source needed] This brought the record for breaking a message down to 56 hours on 17 July 1998 and to under 24 hours on 19 January 1999 (in conjunction withdistributed.net).
The EFF published the plans and source code for the cracker.[22] Within four years theAdvanced Encryption Standard was standardized as a replacement for DES.[23]
The EFF is a leading supporter of theEmail Privacy Act.[24][non-primary source needed]
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The EFF regularly brings and defends lawsuits at all levels of the US legal system in pursuit of its goals and objectives. The EFF has long taken a stance againststrategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) as attempts to stymie free speech and advocated for effective anti-SLAPP legislation.[25][failed verification][26][non-primary source needed] Many of the most significant technology law cases have involved the EFF, includingMGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.,Apple v. Does, and others.[non-primary source needed]
The EFF represented theInternet Archive inHachette v. Internet Archive.[27][28] Following theCOVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive introduced a digital book borrowing system which allows users to borrow digital copies of physical books the archive had in its physical location. The case was won by Hachette and the Internet Archive being forced to stop its digital book borrowing system.[29]
ThePatent Busting Project is an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) initiative challenging patents that the organization describes as illegitimate and suppress innovation or limit online expression. The initiative launched on April 19, 2004, and involves two phases: documenting the damage caused by these patents, and submitting challenges to theUnited States Patent and Trademark Office.[30]
The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the2004 United States presidential election.[31] Later, it funded the research of Hariprasad Vemuru who exposed vulnerabilities in a particular model.[32] Since 2008, the EFF has operated theOur Vote Live website and database. Staffed by hotline volunteers, it is designed to quickly document irregularities and instances of voter suppression as they occur on an election day.[33]
The EFF was active in the2016 United States presidential election because of onlinephishing related to thecontroversy over fabrication of election results.J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at theUniversity of Michigan, wrote an article that was published inMedium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states likeWisconsin,Michigan, andPennsylvania, exclusively states Hillary Clinton lost.[34] In retaliation against Halderman, a hacker sentanti-Semitic andracist emails to students at University of Michigan signed from Halderman. The EFF publicizes these controversies and promotes the reduction of online phishing.[35][non-primary source needed]
In the spring of 2018, the EFF joined theOpen Technology Institute (OTI), theCenter for Democracy & Technology, theACLU Foundation of Northern California and four academics in writingThe Santa Clara Principles: On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation. The document sets out the following guidelines for social networks.[36]
Six months later, the same organizations sought the support of roughly 80 others, includingArticle 19, in calling for Facebook to adopt the Santa Clara Principles.[37] This was later updated with a request for Facebook to warn users who have interacted with sock puppet law enforcement accounts.[38]
In 2019, the EFF and OTI delivered testimony about theOnline Harms White Paper in the United Kingdom. They commented that several proposals to increase the amount of regulation on social media were open to abuse.[39] Also in 2019, the EFF launched the website "TOSsed out" to document cases of moderation rules being applied inconsistently.[40][unreliable source?]Cindy Cohn underscored their commitment to upholding free speech online, writing that "once you've turned it on, whether through pressure or threats of lawsuits, the power to silence people doesn't just go in one direction."[41]
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In December 2022, the EFF and 56 other digital advocacy organizations called for internet infrastructure providers to stop policing the content of the websites they service.[42][non-primary source needed] The organizations argued that many providers can only moderate content by revoking access to an entire website, leaving end-users with little transparency or recourse. They expressed concern that governments may pressure infrastructure providers to deny service to opponents and marginalized groups, and that monopolistic infrastructure providers may take banned users offline altogether. The coalition believes that platforms and user-facing websites are better-positioned as moderators, because they can remove specific content, sanction accounts granularly, and offer reasoning and appeals for moderation decisions.[43][non-primary source needed][44]
The initiative was launched in the wake ofDrop Kiwi Farms, a campaign that convinced severalinternet service providers andDDoS protection firms to revoke service toKiwi Farms, a controversial forum.[45][non-primary source needed] After the forum returned behind anopen-source bot detection tool, the EFF stopped classifying DDoS protection services as infrastructure because they cannot determine whether a website stays online or not.[46][non-primary source needed]
The EFF organizes two sets of awards to promote work in accordance with its goals and objectives.
The EFF Awards, until 2022 called the EFF Pioneer Awards, are awarded annually to recognize individuals who in its opinion are "leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier."[47] In 2017, the honorees wereChelsea Manning,Mike Masnick and Annie Game.[48]
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The EFF Cooperative Computing Awards are a series of four awards meant "to encourage ordinary Internet users to contribute to solving huge scientific problems", to be awarded to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with a significant record number of decimal digits. The awards are funded by an anonymous donor.[49][50]The awards are:
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EFF publishes through several outlets such as the online periodicalEFFector,[54] as well as its websites, blogs, and on social networking services.[non-primary source needed]
EFF's first book was published in 1993 asThe Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, a beginners' how-to manual by contractedtechnical writer Adam Gaffin, and made available for free download in many formats.MIT Press published it in paperback form in 1994 asEverybody's Guide to the Internet (ISBN 9780262571050). The online edition was updated regularly throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and translated into dozens of languages.[non-primary source needed]
The organization's second book,Protecting Yourself Online (ISBN 9780062515124), an overview of digital civil liberties, was written in 1998 by technical writer Robert B. Gelman and EFF Communications Director Stanton McCandlish, and published byHarperCollins.[non-primary source needed]
A third book,Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics & Chip Design (ISBN 9781565925205), focusing on EFF's DES Cracker project, was published the same year byO'Reilly Media.[non-primary source needed]
A digital book,Pwning Tomorrow, ananthology ofspeculative fiction, was produced in 2015 as part of EFF's 25th anniversary activities, and includes contributions from 22 writers, includingCharlie Jane Anders,Paolo Bacigalupi,Lauren Beukes,David Brin,Pat Cadigan,Cory Doctorow,Neil Gaiman,Eileen Gunn,Kameron Hurley,James Patrick Kelly,Ramez Naam,Annalee Newitz,Hannu Rajaniemi,Rudy Rucker,Lewis Shiner,Bruce Sterling, andCharles Yu.[55][non-primary source needed]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation'sblog,DeepLinks, is a major section of its main website at EFF.org.[non-primary source needed]
The EFF sent a video message of support to global grassroots movementCryptoParty.[56][non-primary source needed]
EFF'sHow to Fix the Internet podcast won a 2024Anthem Award.[57]
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The EFF has developed some software and browser add-ons, includingSwitzerland,HTTPS Everywhere, andPrivacy Badger.[citation needed]
The EFF conducted a project named Secure Messaging Scorecard which "evaluated apps and tools based on a set of seven specific criteria ranging from whether messages were encrypted in transit to whether or not the code had been recently audited."[58][non-primary source needed] As of April 21, 2017[update], a revised version is under development.[58][non-primary source needed]
As of September 2025[update],Charity Navigator has given the EFF an overall rating of 100% as a four-star (out of four) charity.[59]
In 2011, the EFF received $1 million fromGoogle as part of a settlement of a class action related to privacy issues involvingGoogle Buzz.TheElectronic Privacy Information Center and seven other privacy-focused nonprofits protested that the plaintiffs' lawyers and Google had, in effect, arranged to give the majority of those funds "to organizations that are currently paid by Google to lobby for or to consult for the company". An additional $1 million was obtained fromFacebook in a similar settlement.[60]
Theagitprop art group Psychological Industries has independently issued buttons withpop culturetropes such as the logo of the Laughing Man from theanime seriesGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (with the originalThe Catcher in the Rye quotation replaced with the slogan ofAnonymous), a bleedingroller derby jammer, and the "We Can Do It!" woman (often misidentified asRosie the Riveter) on a series of buttons on behalf of the EFF.[61]
In late June 2014 the EFF flew ablimp owned by, and in conjunction with,Greenpeace over theNSA'sBluffdale-basedUtah Data Center in protest against its purported illegal spying.[62][63]
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