EFF in the Press: 2025 in Review

by · Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists don’t just do the hard, endless work of defending our digital civil liberties — they also spend a lot of time and effort explaining that work to the public via media interviews. 

EFF had thousands of media mentions in 2025, from the smallest hyperlocal outlets to international news behemoths. Our work on street-level surveillance — the technology that police use to spy on our communities — generated a great deal of press attention, particularly regarding automated license plate readers (ALPRs). But we also got a lot of ink and airtime for our three lawsuits against the federal government: one challenging the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's illegal data sharing, a second challenging the State Department's unconstitutional "catch and revoke" program, and the third demanding that the departments of State and Justice reveal what pressure they put on app stores to remove ICE-tracking apps.

Other hot media topics included how travelers can protect themselves against searches of their devices, how protestors can protect themselves from surveillance, and the misguided age-verification laws that are proliferating across the nation and around the world, which are an attack on privacy and free expression.

On national television, Matthew Guariglia spoke with NBC Nightly News to discuss how more and more police agencies are using private doorbell cameras to surveil neighborhoods. Tori Noble spoke with ABC’s Good Morning America about the dangers of digital price tags, as well as with ABC News Live Prime about privacy concerns over OpenAI’s new web browser.

 

In a sampling of mainstream national media, EFF was cited 33 times by the Washington Post, 16 times by CNN, 13 times by USA Today, 12 times by the Associated Press, 11 times by NBC News, 11 times by the New York Times, 10 times by Reuters, and eight times by National Public Radio. Among tech and legal media, EFF was cited 74 times by Privacy Daily, 35 times by The Verge, 32 times by 404 Media, 32 times by The Register, 26 times by Ars Technica, 25 times by WIRED, 21 times by Law360, 21 times by TechCrunch, 20 times by Gizmodo, and 14 times by Bloomberg Law.

Abroad, EFF was cited in coverage by media outlets in nations including Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Palestine, the Philippines, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. 

EFF staffers spoke to the masses in their own words via op-eds such as: 

And we ruled the airwaves on podcasts including: 

We're grateful to all the intrepid journalists who keep doing the hard work of reporting accurately on tech and privacy policy, and we encourage them to keep reaching out to us at press@eff.org.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.