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Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF is a nonprofit digital rights group that advocates for privacy, free expression, and civil liberties online through litigation and policy work.

Known aliases

  • Deeplinks
  • EFF
  • Electronic Freedom Foundation

Current stories

productOne report1 publisher

Flock expects drones to supply nearly half its revenue as cities ban its plate readers

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley says drones will be nearly half of future revenue, per Fast Company, as cities ban its plate readers. Flock has roughly 175 drone first-responder customers among about 2,000 agencies running such programs.

Publishers:fastcompany.com

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption30
Hype gap+25
Incentives70
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Covington's Flock bill grew to $201,000 as software and drones joined the camera fee

Covington, Georgia has paid Flock $201,000 through August 2026, up from $40,000 in 2020, Wired reported. Add-ons now sit beside a maintenance fee that has itself risen, so the camera count no longer predicts the invoice.

Publishers:wired.com

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives65
Confidence66
productOne report1 publisher

Judges in two states authorized fake-tower tracking of a student who helped produce Don Lemon's coverage

Judges in two states signed cell-site simulator warrants to locate a 21-year-old who helped produce Don Lemon's coverage, Wired reported. The records it reviewed do not establish that agents ever deployed one.

Publishers:wired.com

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
productOne report1 publisher

Waymo staff watching a cabin camera called police over a gun that fired Orbeez

Waymo staff watching two teens through a cabin camera called 911 over a gun that fired water-filled Orbeez. Robotaxi cameras now feed both human reviewers and automated violation checks, so telling riders who is watching has become a design choice AV teams have to make on purpose.

Publishers:wired.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption55
Hype gap+20
Incentives55
Confidence50
securityOne report1 publisher

DraftKings model scored gamblers on how much they would lose after promotions, the Times reports

DraftKings scored customers on how much they were likely to lose after a promotion, the New York Times reported after interviewing over 40 former staff. A ProPublica reporter betting his own money saw the offers grow as his losses did.

Publishers:malwarebytes.com

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption40
Hype gap+20
Incentives45
Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher

Android's developer verification rule extends past Google Play in four countries on September 30

Google's Android developer verification starts September 30 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, covering apps from any channel on certified devices. Developers shipping outside Play, F-Droid included, now need a plan for verified identity in those markets.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives35
Confidence40
buildOne report1 publisher

Flock files a trademark claim to remove a map built from its own exposed ArcGIS token

Flock Safety, through the security firm Doppel, filed a trademark complaint to take down Joshua Michael's map of 335,701 devices. The complaint leaves open how, by Michael's account, a Flock website handed an ArcGIS access token to visitors who never logged in.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption65
Hype gap+20
Incentives60
Confidence55
productConfirmed7 publishers

Flock cuts plate-read retention to seven days, and admits defaults beat policy

The licence plate reader company is making most of its new safeguards mandatory on 1 January, after its chief executive conceded that optional abuse controls sat unused at two-thirds of agencies.

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 32%
Operator
Operator 47%
Investor
Investor 21%

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption35
Hype gap+35
Incentives70
Confidence65
investConfirmed4 publishers

Storm's Tornado Cash retrial slips to April 2027, and the developer question slips with it

The judge moved the second trial to April 26, 2027, on the defense's own request. The count that would actually settle non-custodial developer liability is still waiting on sentencing.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 47%
Operator
Operator 34%
Investor
Investor 19%

Reality

Evidence78
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives60
Confidence74
productConfirmed14 publishers

Meta's teen-safety settlement ships as a product spec, and pays $5.3B if rivals adopt it

Default 2-hour caps, a midnight-to-6am block and age assurance are now written down, with a contingent payment attached to Snap, TikTok and YouTube adopting the same defaults.

Perspective Coverage

15 publishers
Builder
Builder 23%
Operator
Operator 51%
Investor
Investor 26%

Reality

Evidence78
Adoption30
Hype gap+35
Incentives70
Confidence72
productConfirmed4 publishers

California requires a separate unranked feed for every user under 16

Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 child safety bills on 10 September, and the feed rules bar serving under-16s content ranked on their own history and profile. Europe's DSA requires only that a non-profiling option exist.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 33%
Operator
Operator 42%
Investor
Investor 25%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives58
Confidence60
investConfirmed3 publishers

California prices a knowing under-16 feed violation at $50,000 per minor from January 2027

California's under-16 feed ban starts on January 1, 2027, and the cheapest way to comply is an age signal built from a birth date the user typed at device setup. The EFF expects platforms to verify every adult instead.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 25%
Operator
Operator 42%
Investor
Investor 33%

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives55
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Meta's Muse offers better weekly summaries in exchange for a live bank connection

Sensor Tower counted more than 900,000 downloads of Meta's Muse in its first week. Wired's reviewer found an agent that browses competently while its ideas tab keeps pitching a live link to the bank.

Publishers:wired.com

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption35
Hype gap+30
Incentives60
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Meta's settlement with 52 states turns a two-hour daily cap into a teen product default

Techdirt reports that the deal embeds age gating across Meta's products and puts under-18 accounts on a daily clock with default content filters, and says TikTok and YouTube will be pressed to match it.

Publishers:techdirt.com

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+38
Incentives72
Confidence38
investOne report1 publisher

MIT Technology Review counts 1,050 deaths within range of the border's camera towers

Deaths were found inside the advertised range of nearly two-thirds of the roughly 600 towers mapped, and more than 110 of them sit within range of Anduril's autonomous systems installed since 2021.

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption78
Hype gap+18
Incentives58
Confidence62
productOne report1 publisher

Graciela Gomez Hernandez died a mile from a tower rated to track at seven miles

Times of San Diego found at least 138 sets of migrant remains inside the range of California's border cameras over four years, and an MIT Technology Review terrain analysis estimates more than half lay in open view.

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption78
Hype gap+18
Incentives65
Confidence56
productOne report1 publisher

Reporters built the border tower death map one Texas sheriff's office at a time

MIT Technology Review's 15-month investigation had to assemble its own dataset from other groups' records and sheriff reports in 17 Texas counties. Some of those counties charged between $300 and $1,300 to fill a request.

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−8
Incentives50
Confidence63
productOne report1 publisher

MIT Technology Review asks CBP for the tower audit it could have run since 2015

Reporters covered nearly 600 of the 800 towers the government says are operating, and they had to assemble the map themselves from outside sources. Death records follow no shared protocol, so their count of more than 1,050 deaths nearby is a floor.

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption78
Hype gap−18
Incentives58
Confidence62
productOne report1 publisher

MIT Technology Review counted more than 1,050 deaths inside the range of CBP's surveillance towers

The investigation found deaths inside the advertised range of nearly two-thirds of the towers it analysed, and most of them were not in blind spots. In the New Mexico case it follows closely, landfill workers made the call to Border Patrol.

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption82
Hype gap+18
Incentives55
Confidence62

Earlier coverage

  1. Copilot's DMCA win moves the notice-stripping question onto the developer who ships the code

    Product · September 18, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers

  2. California prices negligent child harm at up to $1m per child

    Leadership · September 11, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers