Austin organizers turned out to rebuke the city’s misguided contract with Flock Safety— and won. This successful pushback from the community means at the end of the month Austin police will no longer be able to use the surveillance network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) across the city. Two years ago Austin City Council approved this controversial contract, despite strong local opposition. We knew then that these AI-driven surveillance systems weren’t just creepy, they are prone to misuse and mistakes which have a real human toll. In the years since, this concern has materialized time and time again, and now the risks have heightened with the potential of using the data against immigrants and people seeking trans or reproductive healthcare. Most recently Texas authorities were implicated in a 404 media report on the use of these cameras to target abortion seekers.  Today's victory in Austin is a tribute to what happens when a coalition of activist groups come together in common cause Just a few days before the scheduled vote, an audit of the Austin Police Department program also revealed that over 20% of ALPR database searches lacked proper documentation or justification, in violation of department policy. The audit also revealed contract language allowed for data retention beyond council-mandated limits on retention and potential sharing with outside agencies.  Fortunately, more than 30 community groups, including Electronic Frontier Alliance member EFF-Austin,  joined forces to successfully prevent contract renewal. EFF-Austin Executive Director Kevin Welch told us that, "Today's victory in Austin is a tribute to what happens when a coalition of activist groups come together in common cause and stand in solidarity against the expansion of the surveillance state.” He went on to say, “But the fight is not over. While the Flock contract has been discontinued, Austin still makes use of ALPRs via its contract with Axon, and [the] council may attempt to bring this technology back [...] That being said, real progress in educating elected officials on the dangers of these technologies has been made.”  This win in a city as large as Austin lends momentum to the larger trend across the country where local communities are pushing back against ALPR surveillance. EFF continues to stand with these local efforts, and encourages other organizers to reach out at organizing [at] eff.org in the fight against local surveillance. Speaking to this trend, Kevin added, “As late as Monday, it didn't look like we had the votes to make this victory happen. While these are dark times, there are still lights burning in the dark, and through collective action, we can burn bright."

EFF submitted comments to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subcomponent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), urging them to abandon a proposal to collect social media identifiers on forms for immigration benefits. This collection would mark yet a further expansion of the government’s efforts to subject immigrants to social media surveillance, invading their privacy and chilling their free speech and associational rights for fear of being denied key immigration benefits. Specifically, the proposed rule would require applicants to disclose their social media identifiers on nine immigration forms, including applications for permanent residency and naturalization, impacting more than 3.5 million people annually. USCIS’s purported reason for this collection is to assist with identity verification, as well as vetting and national security screening, to comply with Executive Order 14161. USCIS separately announced that it would look for “antisemitic activity” on social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits, which appears to be related to the proposed rule, although not expressly included it. Additionally, a day after the proposed rule was published, Axios reported that the State Department, the Department of Justice, and DHS confirmed a joint collaboration called “Catch and Revoke,” using AI tools to review student visa holders’ social media accounts for speech related to “pro-Hamas” sentiment or “antisemitic activity.” If the proposed rule sounds familiar, it’s because this is not the first time the government has proposed the collection of social media identifiers to monitor noncitizens. In 2019, for example, the State Department implemented a policy requiring visa and visa waiver applicants to the United States to disclose the identifiers they used on some 20 social media platforms over the last five years—affecting over 14.7 million people annually. EFF joined a large contingent of civil and human rights organizations in objecting to that collection. That policy is now the subject of ongoing litigation in Doc Society v. Blinken, a case brought by two documentary film organizations, who argue that the rule affects the expressive and associational rights of their members by impeding their ability to collaborate and engage with filmmakers around the world. EFF filed two amicus briefs in that case. What distinguishes this proposed rule from the State Department’s existing program is that most, if not all, of the noncitizens who would be affected currently legally reside in the United States, allowing them to benefit from constitutional protections. In our comments, we explained that surveillance of even public-facing social media can implicate privacy interests by aggregating a wealth of information about both an applicant for immigration benefits, and also people in their networks, including U.S. citizens. This is because of the quantity and quality of information available on social media, and because of its inherent interconnected nature. We also argued that the proposed rule appears to allow for the collection and consideration of First Amendment-protected speech, including core political speech, and anonymous and pseudonymous speech. This inevitably leads to a chilling effect because immigration benefits applicants will have to choose between potentially forgoing key benefits or self-censoring to avoid government scrutiny. That is, to help ensure that a naturalized citizenship application is not rejected, for example, an applicant may avoid speaking out on social media about American foreign policy or expressing views about other political topics that may be considered controversial by the federal government—even when other Americans are free to do so. We urge DHS and USCIS to abandon this dangerous proposal.

As part of multi-pronged effort towards deregulation, the Federal Trade Commission has asked the public to identify any and all “anti-competitive” regulations. Working with our friends at Authors Alliance, EFF answered, calling attention to a set of anti-competitive regulations that many don’t  recognize as such: the triennial exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the cumbersome process on which they depend. Copyright grants exclusive rights to creators, but only as a means to serve the broader public interest. Fair use and other limitations play a critical role in that service by ensuring that the public can engage in commentary, research, education, innovation, and repair without unjustified restriction. Section 1201 effectively forbids fair uses where those uses require circumventing a software lock (a.k.a. technological protection measures) on a copyrighted work. Congress realized that Section 1201 had this effect, so it adopted a safety valve—a triennial process by which the Library of Congress could grant exemptions. Under the current rulemaking framework, however, this intended safety valve functions more like a chokepoint. Individuals and organizations seeking an exemption to engage in lawful fair use must navigate a burdensome, time-consuming administrative maze. The existing procedural and regulatory barriers ensure that the rulemaking process—and Section 1201 itself—thwarts, rather than serves, the public interest. The FTC does not, of course, control Congress or the Library of Congress. But we hope its investigation and any resulting report on anti-competitive regulations will recognize the negative effects of Section 1201 and that the triennial rulemaking process has failed to be the check Congress intended. Our comments urge the FTC to recommend that Congress repeal or reform Section 1201. At a minimum, the FTC should advocate for fundamental revisions to the Library of Congress’s next triennial rulemaking process, set for 2026, so that copyright law can once again fulfill its purpose: to support—rather than thwart—competitive and independent innovation. You can find the full comments here.

Utah cannot stifle young people’s First Amendment rights to use social media to speak about politics, create art, discuss religion, or to hear from other users discussing those topics, EFF argued in a brief filed this week. EFF filed the brief in NetChoice v. Brown, a constitutional challenge to the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act. The law prohibits young people from speaking to anyone on social media outside of the users with whom they are connected or those users’ connections. It also requires social media services to make young people’s accounts invisible to anyone outside of that same subgroup of users. The law requires parents to consent before minors can change those default restrictions. To implement these restrictions, the law requires a social media service to verify every user’s age so that it knows whether to apply those speech-restricting settings. The law therefore burdens the First Amendment rights of both young people and adults, the friend-of-the-court brief argued. The ACLU, Freedom to Read Foundation, LGBT Technology Institute, TechFreedom, and Woodhull Freedom Foundation joined EFF on the brief. Utah, like many states across the country, has sought to significantly restrict young people’s ability to use social media. But “Minors enjoy the same First Amendment right as adults to access and engage in protected speech on social media,” the brief argues. As the brief details, minors use social media for to express political opinions, create art, practice religion, and find community. Utah cannot impose such a severe restriction on minors’ ability to speak and to hear from others on social media without violating the First Amendment. “Utah has effectively blocked minors from being able to speak to their communities and the larger world, frustrating the full exercise of their First Amendment rights,” the brief argues. Moreover, the law “also violates the First Amendment rights of all social media users—minors and adults alike—because it requires every user to prove their age, and compromise their anonymity and privacy, before using social media.” Requiring internet users to provide their ID or other proof of their age could block people from accessing lawful speech if they don’t have the right form of ID, the brief argues. And requiring users to identify themselves infringes on people’s right to be anonymous online. That may deter people from joining certain social media services or speaking on certain topics, as people often rely on anonymity to avoid retaliation for their speech. Finally, requiring users to provide sensitive personal information increases their risk of future privacy and security invasions, the brief argues.