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2025 in Review
Each December we take a moment to publish a series of blog posts that look back at the things we’ve accomplishes in fighting for your rights and privacy the past 12 months. But this year I’ve been thinking not just about the past 12 months, but also over the past 25 years I’ve spent at EFF. As many folks know, I’ve decided to pass the leadership torch and will leave EFF in 2026, so this will be the last time I write one of these annual reviews. It’s bittersweet, but I’m filled with pride, especially about how we stick with fights over the long run.
EFF has come a long way since I joined in 2000. In so many ways, the work and reputation we have built laid the groundwork for years like 2025 – when freedom, justice and innovation were under attack from many directions at once with tech unfortunately at the center of many of them. As a result, we launched our Take Back CRTL campaign to put the focus on fighting back.
In addition to the specific issues we address in this year-end series of blog posts, EFF brought our legal expertise to several challenges to the Trump Administration’s attacks on privacy, free speech and security, including directly bringing two cases against the government and filing multiple amicus briefs in others. In some ways, that’s not new: we’ve worked in the courts to hold the government accountable all the way back to our founding in1990.
In this introductory blog post, however, I want to highlight two topics that attest to our long history of advocacy. The first is our battle against the censorship and privacy nightmares that come from requirements that internet users to submit to age verification. We’ve long known that age verification technologies, which aim to block young people from viewing or sharing information that the government deems “harmful” or “offensive,” end up becoming tools of censorship. They often rely on facial recognition and other techniques that have unacceptable levels of inaccuracy and that create security risks. Ultimately, they are surveillance systems that chill access to vital online communities and resources, and burden the expressive rights of adults and young people alike.
The second is automated license plate readers (ALPR), which serve as a mass surveillance network of our locations as we go about our day. We sued over this technology in 2013, demanding public access to records about their use and ultimately won at the California Supreme Court. But 2025 is the year that the general public began to understand just how much information is being collected and used by governments and private entities alike, and to recognize the dangers that causes. Our investigations team filed another public records requests, revealing racist searches done by police. And 12 years later after our first lawsuit, our lawyers filed another case, this time directly challenging the ALPR policies of San Jose, California. In addition, our activists have been working with people in municipalities across the country who want to stop their city’s use of ALPR in their communities. Groups in Austin, Texas, for example, worked hard to get their city to reject a new contract for these cameras.
These are just two issues of many that have engaged our lawyers, activists, and technologists this year. But they show how we dig in for the long run and are ready when small issues become bigger ones.
The more than 100 people who work at EFF spent this last year proving their mettle in battles, many of which are nowhere near finished. But we will push on, and when those issues breach public consciousness, we’ll be ready.
We can only keep doggedly working on these issues year after year because of you, our members and supporters. You engage on these issues, you tell us when something is happening in your town, and your donations power everything we do. This may be my last end-of-the-year blog post, but thanks to you, EFF is here to stay. We’re strong, we’re ready, and we know how to stick with things for the long run. Thanks for holding us up.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.
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