The EFF-chaired Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) has had a big year! EFA is a loose network of local groups fighting for digital rights in the United States. With an ever-increasing roster of allies across the country, including significant growth on university campuses, EFA has also undergone a bit of a facelift. With the new branding comes more resources to support local organizing and popular education efforts around the country. 

If you’re a member of a local or state group in the United States that believes in digital rights, please learn more at our FAQ page. EFA groups include hackers, advocates, security educators, tech professionals, activists young and old, and beyond. If you think it would make a good fit, please fill out an application here. The Alliance has scores of members, which all did great work this year. This review highlights just a few.

A new look for EFA 

[steal a few images from the rebrand blog here?] 

This past July, the organizing team completed the much needed EFA rebrand project with a brand new website. Thanks to the work of EFF’s Engineering and Design team, organizers now have up-to-date merch, pamphlets, and useful organizer toolkits for alliance members with a range of levels of organizing experience. Whether your group wants to lead advocacy letters to groups needing basic press strategies or organizing on college campuses we have resources to help. We also updated our allies directory to better showcase our local members, and make it easier for activists to find groups and get involved. We also put together a bluesky starter kit to make it easy to follow members into the new platform. This is a major milestone in our effort to build useful resources for the network, which we will continue to maintain and expand in the years ahead. 

More local groups heeded the call:

The alliance continued to grow, especially on college campuses, creating opportunities for some fun cross-campus collaborations in the year ahead. This year, nine local groups across eight states joined up: 

  • Stop Surveillance City, Seattle, WA: Stop Surveillance City is fighting against mass surveillance, criminalization and incarceration, and further divestment from people-centered policies. They advocate for investment in their communities and want to increase programs that address the root causes of violence. 
  • Cyber Security Club @FSU, Tallahassee, FL: The Cyber Security Club is a student group sharing resources to get students started in cybersecurity and competing in digital Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions. 
  • UF Student Infosec Team (UFSIT), Gainesville, FL: UFSIT is the cybersecurity club at the University of Florida. They are student-led and passionate about all things cybersecurity, and their goal is to provide a welcoming environment for students to learn more about all areas of information security, including penetration testing, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, digital forensics, and more. 
  • NICC, Newark, NJ: NICC is the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s official information & cybersecurity club. As a student-run organization, NICC started as a way to give NJIT students interested in cybersecurity, ethical hacking, and CTFs a group that would help them learn, grow, and hone their skills. 
  • DC919, Raleigh, NC: DEF CON Group 919 is a community group in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina, providing a gathering place for hacking discussions, conference support, and workshop testing. 
  • Community Broadband PDX, Portland, OR: Their mission is to guide Portlanders to create a new option for fast internet access: publicly-owned and transparently operated, affordable, secure, fast, and reliable broadband infrastructure that is always available to every neighborhood and community. 
  • DC215, Philadelphia, PA: DC215 is another DEF CON group advancing knowledge and education with those interested in science, technology, and other areas of information security through project collaborations, group gatherings, and group activities to serve their city. 
  • Open Austin, Austin, TX: Open Austin's mission is to end disparities in Austin in access to technology. It envisions a city that respects and serves all people, by facilitating issues-based conversations between government and city residents, providing service to local community groups that leverage local expertise, and advocating for policy that utilizes technology to improve the community. 
  • Encode Justice Georgia: Encode Justice GA is the third Encode Justice to join EFA, mostly made up of high school students learning the tools of organizing by focusing on issues like algorithmic machine-learning and law enforcement surveillance. 

Alliance members are organizing for your rights: 

This year, we talked to the North Carolina chapter of Encode Justice, a network that includes over 1,000 high school and college students across over 40 U.S. states and 30 countries. A youth-led movement for safe, equitable AI, their mission is mobilizing communities for AI policies that are aligned with human values. The NC chapter is has led educational workshops, policy memos, and legislative campaigns on both the state and& city council level, while lobbying officials and building coalitions with other North Carolinians.

Local groups continued to take on fights to defend constitutional protections against police surveillance overreach around the country. We caught up with our friends at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) in New York, which litigates and advocates for privacy, working to push back against local government mass surveillance. STOP worked to pass the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act in the New York City Council and used the law to uncover previously unknown NYPD surveillance contracts. This year they made significant strides in their campaign to ‘Ban the Scan’ (face recognition) in both the state assembly and the city council.

Another heavy hitter in the alliance, Lucy Parsons Labs , took the private-sector Atlanta Police Foundation to court to seek transparency over its functions on behalf of law enforcement agencies, arguing that those functions should be open to the same public records requests as the government agencies they are being used for. 

Defending constitutional rights against encroachments by police agencies is an uphill battle, and our allies in San Diego’s TRUST Coalition were among those fighting to protect Community Control Over Police Surveillance requirements previously passed by their city council.

We checked-in with CCTV Cambridge on their efforts to address digital equity with their Digital Navigator program, as well as highlighting them for Digital Inclusion Week 2024. CCTV Cambridge does work across all demographics in their city. For example, they implemented a Youth Media Program where teens get paid while developing skills to become professional digital media artists. They also have a Foundational Technology program for the elderly and others who struggle with increasing demands of technology in their lives. 

 [steal an image from chris’ blog here?] 

This has been a productive year organizing for digital rights in the Pacific Northwest. We were able to catch up with several allies in Portland, Oregon, at the PDX People’s Digital Safety Fair on the campaign to bring high-speed broadband to their city, which is led by Community Broadband PDX and the Personal TelCo Project. With six active EFA members in Portland and three in neighboring Washington state, we awere excited to watch the growing momentum for digital rights in the region.  

Citizens Privacy Coalition crowdfunded a documentary on the impacts of surveillance in the Bay Area, called "Watch the Watchers." The film features EFF's Eva Galperin and addresses how to combat surveillance across policy, technological guardrails, and individual action. 

Allies brought knowledge to their neighbors: 

The Electronic Frontiers track at the sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book-oriented Dragon*Con in Atlanta celebrated its 25th anniversary, produced in coordination with EFA member Electronic Frontiers Georgia. The digital rights component to Dragon*Con had its largest number of panels yet on a wide variety of digital rights issues, from vehicle surveillance to clampdowns against first amendment-protected activities. Members of EF-Georgia, EFF, and allied organizations presented on a variety of topics, including:  

More of this year’s Dragon*Con panels can be found at EF-Georgia’s special Dragon*Con playlist. 

EFF-Austin led the alliance in recorded in-person events, with monthly expert talks in Texas and meet-ups for people in their city interested in privacy, security, and skills in tech. They worked with new EFA member Open Austin to talk about how Austinites can get involved through civic-minded technology efforts. Other discussions included: 

Forging ahead into 2025: 

In complicated times, the EFA team is committed to building bridges for local groups and activists, because we build power when we work together, whether to fight for our digital rights, or to educate our neighbors on the issues and the technologies they face. In the coming year, a lot of EFA members will be focused on defending communities that are under attack, spreading awareness about the role data and digital communications play in broader struggles, and cultivating skills and knowledge among their neighbors.

To learn more about how the EFA works, please check out our FAQ page, and apply to join us. 

Past EFA members profiles: 

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2024.

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