EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center

03/06/2026

EPIC Law Fellows Abigail Kunkler and Mayu Tobin-Miyaji will participate in a virtual roundtable titled “Resisting surveillance union busting: global strategies for collective worker power during” this year’s RightsCon, an annual international human rights and technology conference.

The session’s schedule isn’t yet finalized, but RightsCon will run from May 5 to 8, both in-person in Lusaka, Zambia, and online.

Register here to attend the conference:

Registration is now open for RightsCon 2026 (Zambia and online, May 5-8)! Here you can find all the information to get your tickets, discounts, and more!

03/05/2026

This week, EPIC filed an amicus brief in what is set to be the Supreme Court’s first landmark Fourth Amendment case in seven years, Chatrie v. United States. The case will clarify whether geofence searches—a powerful and secretive form of location tracking—are constitutional.

Geofence searches pose a serious privacy concern, even when they are accompanied by a search warrant. They permit government officers to reach back in space and time to identify anybody whose digital device was within a certain place at a certain time. Geofence searches are enabled by the rich location history databases that tech companies have been able to amass given the lack of strong federal data privacy protections. They often expose innocent people to government investigation merely because they were near the scene of a crime and have also resulted in wrongful convictions.

EPIC’s brief, written on behalf of 14 professors, argues that geofence searches require a warrant that must meet exceedingly high standards to comply with the Fourth Amendment. The brief makes three primary arguments.

First, the Court should recognize that, under the analysis established in Carpenter v. United States, geofence searches require a warrant to be constitutional. Carpenter established that people have a heightened privacy interest in records of their location data in the digital age. Pre-internet Fourth Amendment doctrines finding that police do not need a warrant to access personal data held by third parties do not apply.

Second, the brief dives into the issue of consent because the government is arguing and judges in lower courts have found that people waive their Fourth Amendment rights when they voluntarily choose to allow companies like Google to track their locations. The brief explains the many reasons why this is untrue, such as the fact that people cannot be expected to read and understand privacy policies and companies use dark patterns to manipulate them into sharing their locations.

Finally, the brief explains why just getting a broad warrant, like the police did in this case, does not satisfy the Fourth Amendment. If any geofence warrant is to be constitutional, it needs to be drawn exceedingly narrowly to minimize its privacy impacts.

For more information, including a link to litigation documents and other amicus briefs in the case, check out our case page.

Whether the government’s use of a geofence warrant to place Chatrie’s phone at the scene of a crime violated the Fourth Amendment.

03/04/2026

Today, EPIC sent a letter to Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger urging the Governor to sign a bill banning the sale of precise geolocation data. The bill (SB 338) would put a stop to some of the most harmful abuses of our personal data happening today.

The harms of overcollection and widespread sale of location data have recently come to the forefront amid reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased software that allows the agency to track millions of Americans via their cellphone. ICE also purchased a social media and phone surveillance tool that tracks phones and the movement of their owners without a warrant. Signing SB 338 into law would protect Virginians from businesses profiting off of the sale of people’s sensitive data.

Read our letter here: https://epic.org/epic-urges-virginia-governor-to-sign-bill-banning-sale-of-location-data/

03/04/2026

EPIC Advisory Board members Woody Hartzog and Neil Richards make a strong case for the Massachusetts Legislature to pass the Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act in WBUR's Cognoscenti today.

The heart of the privacy bill that the Massachusetts legislature is now considering is a simple but firm rule that companies should collect and use only the personal information that they need to provide services for consumers, write Woodrow Hartzog and Neil Richards.

03/03/2026

Happy National Consumer Protection Week! 🎉 Consumer Privacy is one of our top priorities here at EPIC, and we’ve played a leading role in developing the FTC’s authority to address emerging privacy issues.

Here's a sampling of what we've been up to in the consumer privacy space recently ⬇️

1. Urging the FTC to broaden its quantitative and qualitative conceptions of the privacy injuries caused by unlawful data practices: https://epic.org/epic-oti-urge-ftc-not-to-ignore-full-scope-of-data-driven-harms/;

2. Calling on the FTC to crack down on hidden surveillance pricing: https://epic.org/epic-joins-groups-urging-ftc-to-crack-down-on-hidden-surveillance-pricing/;

3. Urging HUD to withdraw a proposed rule that would eliminate a regulation critical to combatting discrimination as automated decision-making tools continue to proliferate in the housing sector: https://epic.org/epic-urges-hud-to-rescind-rulemaking-that-would-completely-withdraw-huds-disparate-impact-rule/;

4. And so much more! https://epic.org/issues/consumer-privacy/

03/02/2026

EPIC Senior Counsel Sara Geoghegan will speak Wednesday at noon as part of “Increased Surveillance, Decreased Access to Reproductive Care,” a panel convened by the The George Washington University Law School's Reproductive Data Privacy Initiative.

Last month, EPIC published “Beyond HIPAA: Reimagining How Privacy Laws Apply to Health Data to Maximize Equity in the Digital Age,” a report authored by Geoghegan that details the current health privacy crisis and what we can do about it.

Learn more and register for the in-person event here:

EPIC Senior Counsel Sara Geoghegan will speak March 4 at noon as part of “Increased Surveillance, Decreased Access to Reproductive Care,” a panel convened by the George Washington University Law School’s Reproductive Data Privacy Initiative.

03/01/2026

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong released a memorandum this week detailing how existing state laws can be applied to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence.

The document includes guidance regarding civil rights laws, privacy and data security laws, the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, and antitrust laws.

“In addition to creating additional protections for families through legislative action, the Office of the Attorney General has at its disposal the most effective tools available to ensure the safety of Connecticut families and accountability for wrongdoers,” the report reads.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong released a memorandum this week detailing how existing state laws can be applied to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence.

02/27/2026

📬 February’s edition of The Alert is live! Our monthly newsletter is the best way to stay up to date on all things EPIC, from lawsuits to legislation.

In this issue you’ll find:

• Our letter urging the FTC to block Meta’s plan to add facial recognition to its smart glasses;
• A rundown of the four states that have already introduced bills based on our new model legislation, the Age-Appropriate Design Code;
• The latest on our fight against surveillance pricing;
• And more!

Didn't receive The Alert in your inbox this morning? Take a look at this month's issue here ⬇️

EPIC sent letters to the Federal Trade Commission and state enforcers urging them to promptly investigate

02/26/2026

As the FTC holds a workshop today on consumer injuries, EPIC and New America's Open Technology Institute are calling on the Commission “to take a more comprehensive view of consumer harm in the data-driven economy.”

The FTC often evaluates the costs and benefits of particular business practices to inform regulatory and enforcement decisions. But as EPIC and OTI explain, “prevailing judicial, statutory, and regulatory frameworks tend to assess data-related injury too narrowly.”

“[M]odern data practices frequently produce consequences that are diffuse, delayed, or structural—such as loss of control over personal information, discrimination, reputational harms, or chilling effects on speech—and not captured in this limited conception,” we explain.

“[T]he Commission has too often held to an arbitrary conception of “substantial injury” and harm that is both in tension with the FTC Act and ineffective at protecting consumers in the digital era,” we add. “This has contributed to a systematic under-recognition of privacy harms in the Commission’s regulatory and enforcement decisionmaking, which in turn has allowed unfair and otherwise harmful data practices to flourish.”

The FTC’s workshop on consumer injuries runs until 4:45 ET:

The Workshop on Consumer Injuries and Benefits in the Data-Driven Economy will bring together economists, academics, and other experts to examine how the age...

02/26/2026

This week, EPIC joined a group of national consumer protection and privacy groups to urge the FTC to crack down on hidden surveillance pricing by requiring companies to tell consumers when they are using the invasive practice.

Surveillance pricing uses consumers’ personal data so companies can identify the maximum price each specific individual is willing to pay for a good or service.

Businesses have already begun using surveillance pricing in alarming ways, such as charging people in Asian-American-majority ZIP codes more for test prep services or inflating flight costs when it’s clear the consumer is traveling for a funeral.

This push is EPIC’s latest effort to urge lawmakers to regulate surveillance pricing, which is a major threat to privacy and fairness in the marketplace. People have a right to know whether they are paying more than others for the same products and services.

Learn more:

This week, EPIC joined a group of national consumer protection and privacy groups to urge the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on hidden surveillance pricing. The groups called on the FTC to initiate a rulemaking that would require companies to tell consumers when they are using surveillance p...

02/25/2026

This month, Kentucky joined the growing list of states that have introduced legislation based on EPIC’s Model Age-Appropriate Design Code.

The Kentucky Kids Code focuses on protecting kids from companies’ harmful design choices, promoting safer and more privacy-protective platform design that gives kids more control over their online experiences.

Like EPIC’s Model AADC, it provides strong safeguards while taking a careful approach to withstand litigation challenges.

Read more about this legislation as well as similar legislation recently introduced in Georgia and Kansas:

The Kentucky Kids Code (HB 633), based on EPIC’s Model Age-Appropriate Design Code, was introduced to the Kentucky House of Representatives this month. The legislation focuses on protecting kids from companies’ harmful design choices, promoting safer and more privacy-protective platform design t...

02/25/2026

Earlier this month, EPIC called on the Department of Housing and Urban Development to withdraw a proposed rule that would eliminate HUD’s discriminatory effects regulation. The regulation at risk is a crucial tool used to combat discrimination, particularly as automated decision-making tools continue to proliferate in the housing sector.

The disparate impact rule is critical to address facially neutral policies and practices that nonetheless have a discriminatory effect on protected classes such as race and gender. For example, technologies like tenant screening algorithms operate without any explicit discriminatory intent but disproportionately affect housing availability for poor communities of color.

Learn more here:

On February 13, 2026, EPIC submitted comments calling on HUD to withdraw its notice of proposed rulemaking that entirely removes HUD’s discriminatory effects regulation and leaves core questions regarding interpretability of the disparate impact standard under the Fair Housing Act to the courts. T...