EFF update

In late September, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government’s plans to introduce a new digital ID scheme in the country to take effect before the end of the Parliament (no later than August 2029). The scheme will, according to the Prime Minister, “cut the faff” in proving people’s identities by creating a virtual ID on personal devices with information like people’s name, date of birth, nationality or residency status, and photo to verify their right to live and work in the country. 

This is the latest example of a government creating a new digital system that is fundamentally incompatible with a privacy-protecting and human rights-defending democracy. This past year alone, we’ve seen federal agencies across the United States explore digital IDs to prevent fraud, the Transportation Security Administration accepting “Digital passport IDs” in Android, and states contracting with mobile driver’s license providers (mDL). And as we’ve said many times, digital ID is not for everyone and policymakers should ensure better access for people with or without a digital ID. 

But instead, the UK is pushing forward with its plans to rollout digital ID in the country. Here’s three reasons why those policymakers have it wrong. 

Digital ID allows the state to determine what you can access, not just verify who you are, by functioning as a key to opening—or closing—doors to essential services and experiences. 

Mission Creep 

In his initial announcement, Starmer stated: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It's as simple as that.” Since then, the government has been forced to clarify those remarks: digital ID will be mandatory to prove the right to work, and will only take effect after the scheme's proposed introduction in 2028, rather than retrospectively. 

The government has also confirmed that digital ID will not be required for pensioners, students, and those not seeking employment, and will also not be mandatory for accessing medical services, such as visiting hospitals. But as civil society organizations are warning, it's possible that the required use of digital ID will not end here. Once this data is collected and stored, it provides a multitude of opportunities for government agencies to expand the scenarios where they demand that you prove your identity before entering physical and digital spaces or accessing goods and services. 

The government may also be able to request information from workplaces on who is registering for employment at that location, or collaborate with banks to aggregate different data points to determine who is self-employed or not registered to work. It potentially leads to situations where state authorities can treat the entire population with suspicion of not belonging, and would shift the power dynamics even further towards government control over our freedom of movement and association. 

And this is not the first time that the UK has attempted to introduce digital ID: politicians previously proposed similar schemes intended to control the spread of COVID-19, limit immigration, and fight terrorism. In a country increasing the deployment of other surveillance technologies like face recognition technology, this raises additional concerns about how digital ID could lead to new divisions and inequalities based on the data obtained by the system. 

These concerns compound the underlying narrative that digital ID is being introduced to curb illegal immigration to the UK: that digital ID would make it harder for people without residency status to work in the country because it would lower the possibility that anyone could borrow or steal the identity of another. Not only is there little evidence to prove that digital ID will limit illegal immigration, but checks on the right to work in the UK already exist. This is nothing more than inflammatory and misleading; Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey noted this would do “next to nothing to tackle channel crossings.”

Inclusivity is Not Inevitable, But Exclusion Is 

While the government announced that their digital ID scheme will be inclusive enough to work for those without access to a passport, reliable internet, or a personal smartphone, as we’ve been saying for years, digital ID leaves vulnerable and marginalized people not only out of the debate and ultimately out of the society that these governments want to build. We remain concerned about the potential for digital identification to exacerbate existing social inequalities, particularly for those with reduced access to digital services or people seeking asylum. 

The UK government has said a public consultation will be launched later this year to explore alternatives, such as physical documentation or in-person support for the homeless and older people; but it’s short-sighted to think that these alternatives are viable or functional in the long term. For example, UK organization Big Brother Watch reported that about only 20% of Universal Credit applicants can use online ID verification methods. 

These individuals should not be an afterthought that are attached to the end of the announcement for further review. It is essential that if a tool does not work for those without access to the array of essentials, such as the internet or the physical ID, then it should not exist.

Digital ID schemes also exacerbate other inequalities in society, such as abusers who will be able to prevent others from getting jobs or proving other statuses by denying access to their ID. In the same way, the scope of digital ID may be expanded and people could be forced to prove their identities to different government agencies and officials, which may raise issues of institutional discrimination when phones may not load, or when the Home Office has incorrect information on an individual. This is not an unrealistic scenario considering the frequency of internet connectivity issues, or circumstances like passports and other documentation expiring.

Any identification issued by the government with a centralized database is a power imbalance that can only be enhanced with digital ID.

Attacks on Privacy and Surveillance 

Digital ID systems expand the number of entities that may access personal information and consequently use it to track and surveil. The UK government has nodded to this threat. Starmer stated that the technology would “absolutely have very strong encryption” and wouldn't be used as a surveillance tool. Moreover, junior Cabinet Office Minister Josh Simons told Parliament that “data associated with the digital ID system will be held and kept safe in secure cloud environments hosted in the United Kingdom” and that “the government will work closely with expert stakeholders to make the programme effective, secure and inclusive.” 

But if digital ID is needed to verify people’s identities multiple times per day or week, ensuring end-to-encryption is the bare minimum the government should require. Unlike sharing a National Insurance Number, a digital ID will show an array of personal information that would otherwise not be available or exchanged. 

This would create a rich environment for hackers or hostile agencies to obtain swathes of personal information on those based in the UK. And if previous schemes in the country are anything to go by, the government’s ability to handle giant databases is questionable. Notably, the eVisa’s multitude of failures last year illustrated the harms that digital IDs can bring, with issues like government system failures and internet outages leading to people being detained, losing their jobs, or being made homeless. Checking someone’s identity against a database in real-time requires a host of online and offline factors to work, and the UK is yet to take the structural steps required to remedying this.

Moreover, we know that the Cabinet Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will be involved in the delivery of digital ID and are clients of U.S.-based tech vendors, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS). The UK government has spent millions on AWS (and Microsoft) cloud services in recent years, and the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA)—first introduced in 2020 and of which provides discounts for cloud services by contracting with the UK government and public sector organizations as a single client—is still active. It is essential that any data collected is not stored or shared with third parties, including through cloud agreements with companies outside the UK.

And even if the UK government published comprehensive plans to ensure data minimization in its digital ID, we will still strongly oppose any national ID scheme. Any identification issued by the government with a centralized database is a power imbalance that can only be enhanced with digital ID, and both the public and civil society organizations in the country are against this.

Ways Forward

Digital ID regimes strip privacy from everyone and further marginalize those seeking asylum or undocumented people. They are pursued as a technological solution to offline problems but instead allow the state to determine what you can access, not just verify who you are, by functioning as a key to opening—or closing—doors to essential services and experiences. 

We cannot base our human rights on the government’s mere promise to uphold them. On December 8th, politicians in the country will be debating a petition that reached almost 3 million signatories rejecting mandatory digital ID. If you’re based in the UK, you can contact your MP (external campaign links) to oppose the plans for a digital ID system. 

The case for digital identification has not been made. The UK government must listen to people in the country and say no to digital ID.

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Legal Intern Alexandra Rhodes contributed to this blog post. 

EFF filed an amicus brief urging the Arizona District Court to protect public school students’ freedom of speech and privacy by holding that the use of a school-issued laptop or email account does not categorically mean a student is “on campus.” We argued that students need private digital spaces beyond their school’s reach to speak freely, without the specter of constant school surveillance and punishment.  

Surveillance Software Exposed a Bad Joke Made in the Privacy of a Student’s Home 

The case, Merrill v. Marana Unified School District, involves a Marana High School student who, while at home one morning before school started, asked his mother for advice about a bad grade he received on an English assignment. His mother said he should talk to his English teacher, so he opened his school-issued Google Chromebook and started drafting an email. The student then wrote a series of jokes in the draft email that he deleted each time. The last joke stated: “GANG GANG GIMME A BETTER GRADE OR I SHOOT UP DA SKOOL HOMIE,” which he narrated out loud to his mother in a silly voice before deleting the draft and closing his computer.  

Within the hour, the student’s mother received a phone call from the school principal, who said that Gaggle surveillance software had flagged a threat from her son and had sent along the screenshot of the draft email. The student’s mother attempted to explain the situation and reassure the principal that there was no threat. Nevertheless, despite her reassurances and the student’s lack of disciplinary record or history of violence, the student was ultimately suspended over the draft email—even though he was physically off campus at the time, before school hours, and had never sent the email.  

After the student’s suspension was unsuccessfully challenged, the family sued the school district alleging infringement of the student’s right to free speech under the First Amendment and violation of the student’s right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Public School Students Have Greater First Amendment Protection for Off-Campus Speech 

The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the First Amendment rights of public school students in a handful of cases. 

Most notably, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Court held that students may not be punished for their on-campus speech unless the speech “materially and substantially” disrupted the school day or invaded the rights of others. 

Decades later, in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. by and through Levy (2021), in which EFF filed a brief, the Court further held that schools have less leeway to regulate student speech when that speech occurs off campus. Importantly, the Court stated that schools should have a limited ability to punish off-campus speech because “from the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off-campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day.” 

The Ninth Circuit has further held that off-campus speech is only punishable if it bears a “sufficient nexus” to the school and poses a credible threat of violence. 

In this case, therefore, the extent of the school district’s authority to regulate student speech is tied to whether the high schooler was on or off campus at the time of the speech. The student here was at home and thus physically off campus when he wrote the joke in question; he wrote the draft before school hours; and the joke was not emailed to anyone on campus or anyone associated with the campus.  

Yet the school district is arguing that his use of a school-issued Google Chromebook and Google Workspace for Education account (including the email account) made his speech—and makes all student speech—automatically “on campus” for purposes of justifying punishment under the First Amendment.  

Schools Provide Students with Valuable Digital Tools—But Also Subject Them to Surveillance 

EFF supports the plaintiffs’ argument that the student’s speech was “off campus,” did not bear a sufficient nexus to the school, and was not a credible threat. In our amicus brief, we urged the trial court at minimum to reject a rule that the use of a school-issued device or cloud account always makes a student’s speech “on campus.”   

Our amicus brief supports the plaintiffs’ First Amendment arguments through the lens of surveillance, emphasizing that digital speech and digital privacy are inextricably linked.  

As we explained, Marana Unified School District, like many schools and districts across the country, offers students free Google Chromebooks and requires them to have an online Google Account to access the various cloud apps in Google Workspace for Education, including the Gmail app.  

Marana Unified School District also uses three surveillance technologies that are integrated into Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education: Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly. These surveillance technologies collectively can monitor virtually everything students do on their laptops and online, from the emails and documents they write (or even just draft) to the websites they visit.  

School Digital Surveillance Chills Student Speech and Further Harms Students 

In our amicus brief, we made four main arguments against a blanket rule that categorizes any use of a school-issued device or cloud account as “on campus,” even if the student is geographically off campus or outside of school hours.  

First, we pointed out that such a rule will result in students having no reprieve from school authority, which runs counter to the Supreme Court’s admonition in Mahanoy not to regulate “all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day.” There must be some place that is “off campus” for public school students even when using digital tools provided by schools, otherwise schools will reach too far into students’ lives.  

Second, we urged the court to reject such an “on campus” rule to mitigate the chilling effect of digital surveillance on students’ freedom of speech—that is, the risk that students will self-censor and choose not to express themselves in certain ways or access certain information that may be disfavored by school officials. If students know that no matter where they are or what they are doing with their Chromebooks and Google Accounts, the school is watching and the school has greater legal authority to punish them because they are always “on campus,” students will undoubtedly curb their speech. 

Third, we argued that such an “on campus” rule will exacerbate existing inequities in public schools among students of different socio-economic backgrounds. It would distinctly disadvantage lower-income students who are more likely to rely on school-issued devices because their families cannot afford a personal laptop or tablet. This creates a “pay for privacy” scheme: lower-income students are subject to greater school-directed surveillance and related discipline for digital speech, while wealthier students can limit surveillance by using personal laptops and email accounts, enabling them to have more robust free speech protections. 

Fourth, such an “on campus” rule will incentivize public schools to continue eroding student privacy by subjecting them to near constant digital surveillance. The student surveillance technologies schools use are notoriously privacy invasive and inaccurate, causing various harms to students—including unnecessary investigations and discipline, disclosure of sensitive information, and frustrated learning. 

We urge the Arizona District Court to protect public school students’ freedom of speech and privacy by rejecting this approach to school-managed technology. As we said in our brief, students, especially high schoolers, need some sphere of digital autonomy, free of surveillance, judgment, and punishment, as much as anyone else—to express themselves, to develop their identities, to learn and explore, to be silly or crude, and even to make mistakes.  

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Mobile Fortify, the new app used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use face recognition technology (FRT) to identify people during street encounters, is an affront to the rights and dignity of migrants and U.S. citizens alike. That's why a coalition of privacy, civil liberties and civil rights organizations are demanding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shut down the use of Mobile Fortify, release the agency's privacy analyses of the app, and clarify the agency's policy on face recognition. 

As the organizations, including EFF, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the Project on Government Oversight, write in a letter sent by EPIC: 

ICE’s reckless field practices compound the harm done by its use of facial recognition. ICE does not allow people to opt-out of being scanned, and ICE agents apparently have the discretion to use a facial recognition match as a definitive determination of a person’s immigration status even in the face of contrary evidence.  Using face identification as a definitive determination of immigration status is immensely disturbing, and ICE’s cavalier use of facial recognition will undoubtedly lead to wrongful detentions, deportations, or worse.  Indeed, there is already at least one reported incident of ICE mistakenly determining a U.S. citizen “could be deported based on biometric confirmation of his identity.”

As if this dangerous use of nonconsensual face recognition isn't bad enough, Mobile Fortify also queries a wide variety of government databases. Already there have been reports that federal officers may be using this FRT to target protesters engaging in First Amendment-protected activities. Yet ICE concluded it did not need to conduct a new Privacy Impact Assessment, which is standard practice for proposed government technologies that collect people's data. 

While Mobile Fortify is the latest iteration of ICE’s mobile FRT, EFF has been tracking this type of technology for more than a decade. In 2013, we identified how a San Diego agency had distributed face recognition-equipped phones to law enforcement agencies across the region, including federal immigration officers. In 2019, EFF helped pass a law temporarily banning collecting biometric data with mobile devices, resulting in the program's cessation. 

We fought against handheld FRT then, and we will fight it again today. 

In the past few years, governments across the world have rolled out different digital identification options, and now there are efforts encouraging online companies to implement identity and age verification requirements with digital ID in mind. This blog is the third in a short series that explains digital ID and the pending use case of age verification. Here, we cover alternative frameworks on age controls, updates on parental controls, and the importance of digital privacy in an increasingly hostile climate politically. You can read the first two posts here, and here.

Observable harms of age verification legislation in the UK, US, and elsewhere:

As we witness the effects of the Online Safety Act in the UK and over 25 state age verification laws in the U.S, it has become even more apparent that mandatory age verification is more of a detriment than a benefit to the public. Here’s what we’re seeing:

• Scope creep is already occurring with various website shutdowns and excessive requests from various websites.
• Data is being handed to age assurance providers with questionable privacy policies.
• Older teenagers (voting age is set to be 16 in the UK) are having their ability to communicate online blocked on various platforms.
• Adults aren’t able to use the internet to access content that is lawfully available to them if they do not agree to third-party usage of their information.

It’s obvious: age verification will not keep children safe online. Rather, it is a large proverbial hammer that nails everyone—adults and young people alike—into restrictive parameters of what the government deems appropriate content. That reality is more obvious and tangible now that we’ve seen age-restrictive regulations roll out in various states and countries. But that doesn’t have to be the future if we turn away from age-gating the web.

Keeping kids safe online (or anywhere IRL, let’s not forget) is a complex social issue that cannot be resolved with technology alone.

The legislators responsible for online age verification bills must confront that they are currently addressing complex social issues with a problematic array of technology. Most of policymakers’ concerns about minors' engagement with the internet can be sorted into one of three categories:

• Content risks: The negative implications from exposure to online content that might be age-inappropriate, such as violent or sexually explicit content, or content that incites dangerous behavior like self-harm. 
• Conduct risks: Behavior by children or teenagers that might be harmful to themselves or others, like cyberbullying, sharing intimate or personal information or problematic overuse of a service.
• Contact risks: The potential harms stemming from contact with people that might pose a risk to minors, including grooming or being forced to exchange sexually explicit material.

Parental controls—which already exist!—can help.

These three categories of possible risks will not be eliminated by mandatory age verification—or any form of techno-solutionism, for that matter. Mandatory age checks will instead block access to vital online communities and resources for those people—including young people—who need them the most. It’s an ineffective and disproportionate tool to holistically address young people’s online safety. 

However, these can be partially addressed with better-utilized and better-designed parental controls and family accounts. Existing parental controls are woefully underutilized, according to one survey that collected answers from 1,000 parents. Adoption of parental controls varied widely, from 51% on tablets to 35% on video game consoles. Making parental controls more flexible and accessible, so parents better understand the tools and how to use them, could increase adoption and address content risk more effectively than a broad government censorship mandate.  

Recently, Android made its parental controls easier to set up. It rolled out features that directly address content risk by assisting parents who wish to block specific apps and filter out mature content from Google Chrome and Google Search. Apple also updated its parental controls settings this past summer by instituting new ways for parents to manage child accounts and giving app developers access to a Declared Age Range API. Where parents can declare age range and apps can respond to declared ranges established in child accounts, without giving over a birthdate. With this, parents are given some flexibility like age-range information beyond just 13+. A diverse range of tools and flexible settings provide the best options for families and empower parents and guardians to decide and tailor what online safety means for their own children—at any age, maturity level, or type of individual risk.

Privacy laws can also help minors online.

Parental controls are useful in the hands of responsible guardians. But what about children who are neglected or abused by those in charge of them? Age verification laws cannot solve this problem; these laws simply share possible abuse of power with the state. To address social issues, we need more efforts directed at the family and community structures around young people, and initiatives that can mitigate the risk factors of abuse instead of resorting to government control over speech.

While age verification is not the answer, those seeking legislative solutions can instead focus their attention on privacy laws—which are more than capable of assisting minors online, no matter the state of their at-home care. Comprehensive data privacy, which EFF has long advocated for, is perhaps the most obvious way to keep the data of young people safe online. Data brokers gather a vast amount of data and assemble new profiles of information as a young person uses the internet. These data sets also contribute to surveillance and teach minors that it is normal to be tracked as they use the web. Banning behavioral ads would remove a major incentive for companies to collect as much data as they do and be able to sell it to whomever will buy it from them. For example, many age-checking tools use data brokers to establish “age estimation” on emails used to sign up for an online service, further incentivizing a vicious cycle of data collection and retention. Ultimately, privacy-encroaching companies are rewarded for the years of mishandling our data with lucrative government contracts.

These systems create much more risk online and offline for young people in terms of their privacy over time from online surveillance and in authoritarian political climates. Age verification proponents often acknowledge that there are privacy risks, and dismiss the consequences by claiming the trade off will “protect children.” These systems don’t foster safer online practices for young people; they encourage increasingly invasive ways for governments to define who is and isn’t free to roam online. If we don’t re-establish ways to maintain online anonymity today, our children’s internet could become unrecognizable and unusable for not only them, but many adults as well. 

Actions you can take today to protect young people online:

• Use existing parental controls to decide for yourself what your kid should and shouldn’t see, who they should engage with, etc.
• Discuss the importance of online privacy and safety with your kids and community.
• Provide spaces and resources for young people to flexibly communicate with their schools, guardians, and community.
• Support comprehensive privacy legislation for all.
• Support legislators’ efforts to regulate the out-of-control data broker industry by banning behavioral ads.

Join EFF in opposing mandatory age verification and age gating laws—help us keep your kids safe and protect the future of the internet, privacy, and anonymity.

Interviewer: Jillian York

Laura Vidal is a Venezuelan researcher and writer focused on digital rights, community resilience, and the informal ways people learn and resist under authoritarian pressure. She holds a Doctorate in Education Sciences and intercultural communication, and her work explores how narratives, digital platforms, and transnational communities shape strategies of care, resistance, and belonging, particularly in Latin America and within the Venezuelan diaspora. She has investigated online censorship, disinformation, and digital literacy and is currently observing how regional and diasporic actors build third spaces online to defend civic space across borders. Her writing has appeared in Global Voices, IFEX, EFF, APC and other platforms that amplify underrepresented voices in tech and human rights.

Jillian York: Hi Laura, first tell me who you are. 

Laura Vidal: I am an independent researcher interested in digital security and how people learn about digital security. I'm also a consultant and a person of communications for IFEX and Digital Action. 

JY: Awesome. And what does free speech mean to you? 

LV: It means a responsibility. Free speech is a space that we all hold. It is not about saying what you want when you want, but understanding that it is a right that you have and others have. And that also means keeping the space as safe as possible and as free as possible for everybody to express themselves as much as possible safely. 

JY: We've known each other for nearly 20 years at this point. And like me, you have this varied background. You're a writer, you've shifted toward digital rights, you pursued a PhD. Tell me more about the path that led you to this work and why you do it. 

LV: Okay, so as you know well, we both started getting into these issues with Global Voices. I started at Global Voices as a translator and then as an author, then as an editor, and then as a community organizer. Actually, community organizer before editor, but anyways, because I started caring a lot about the representation of Latin America in general and Venezuela in particular. When I started with Global Voices, I saw that the political crisis and the narratives around the crisis were really prevalent. And it would bother me that there would be a portrait that is so simplistic. And at that time, we were monitoring the blogosphere, and the blogosphere was a reflection of this very interesting place where so many things happened. 

And so from there, I started my studies and I pursued a PhD in education sciences because I was very interested in observing how communities like Global Voices could be this field in which there was potential for intercultural exchange and learning about other cultures. At the end, of course, things were a lot more complicated than that. There are power imbalances and backgrounds that were a lot more complex, and there was this potential, but not in the way I thought it would be. Once my time in Global Voices was up and then I started pursuing research, I was very, very interested in moving from academia to research among communities and digital rights organizations and other non profits. I started doing consultancies with The Engine Room, with Tactical Tech, Internews, Mozilla and with other organizations in different projects. I've been able to work on issues that have to do with freedom of expression, with digital security and how communities are formed around digital security. And my big, big interest is how is it that we can think about security and digital rights as something that is ours, that is not something that belongs only to the super techies or the people that are super experts and that know very well this, because this is a world that can be a bit intimidating for some. It was definitely intimidating for me. So I really wanted to study and to follow up on the ways that this becomes more accessible and it becomes part of, becomes a good element to digital literacy for everyone. 

JY: That really resonates with me. I hadn't heard you articulate it that way before, but I remember when you were starting this path. I think we had that meeting in Berlin. Do you remember? 

LV: Yeah. In like 2017. Many meetings in Berlin, and we were talking about so many things. 

JY: Yeah, and I just, I remember like, because we've seen each other plenty of times over the past few years, but not as much as we used to….It's interesting, right, though, because we've both been in this space for so long. And we've seen it change, we've seen it grow. You know, I don't want to talk about Global Voices too much, but that was our entry point, right?

LV: It was. 

JY: And so that community—what did it mean for you coming from Venezuela? For me, coming from the US, we’ve both come from our home countries and moved to other countries…we have similar but different life paths. I guess I just see myself in you a little bit.

LV: That’s flattering to me. 

JY: I admire you so much. I've known you for 17 years.

LV: It's definitely mutual. 

JY: Thank you. But a lot of that comes from privilege, I recognize that.

LV: But it's good that you do, but it's also good that you use privilege for good things. 

JY: That's the thing: If you have privilege, you have to use it. And that's what I was raised with. My mother works for a non-profit organization. And so the idea of giving back has always been part of me. 

LV: I get it. And I also think that we are all part of a bigger chain. And it's very easy to get distracted by that. I definitely get distracted by those values, like the idea of being validated by a community. Coming from academia, that's definitely the case, that you really need to shine to be able to think that you're doing some work. And then also coming into the maturity of thinking, we're part of a chain. We're doing something bigger. Sometimes we are kind of going all places and we're making mistakes as a whole, but we're all part of a bigger system. And if you're part of the chain, if you have certain privileges and you can push forward the rest of the chain, that's what it is for. 

JY: Tell me about an experience that shaped your views on free expression, like a personal experience. 

LV: I'm thinking of the experience of writing about Venezuela while being abroad. That has been a very complicated, complex experience because I left Venezuela in 2008. 

JY: That's the year we met. 

LV: Exactly. I was in Budapest [for the Global Voices Summit] in 2008. And then I left Venezuela a few months later. So this experience about freedom of expression…when I left, it wasn't yet the time of the big exodus. This exodus translates today into a huge Venezuelan community all around the world that had to leave, not because they wanted to, but because they had basically no choice. It was very complicated to talk about the crisis because immediately you will get hit back. I will never forget that even in that summit that we keep discussing, the Budapest Summit of Global Voices, whenever I would talk about Venezuela, people would shut me down—people that were not Venezuelans. It was the big beginning of what we call the “Venezuelansplaining”. Because it was this political movement that was very much towards the left, that it was very much non-aligned…

JY: You had that in common with Syria. 

LV: Yeah. And so at the same time, they [the Venezuelan government] were so good at selling themselves as this progressive, non-aligned, global majority movement, feminist, you see…to me, it was shocking to see a lot of feminist groups aligning with the government, that it was a government led by a big, strong man, with a lot of discourse and very little policy change behind it. However, it was the ones that for the first time were talking about these issues from the side of the state. So from the outside, it really looked like this big government that was for the people and all the narratives of the 1960s, of the American interventions in the South that were definitely a reality, but in the case of Venezuela in the 2010s and now it is a lot more complex. And so whenever I would talk about the situation in Venezuela, it was very easy to shut me down. At first, I literally had somebody telling me, somebody who's not from Venezuela, telling me “You don't know what you're talking about. I cannot hear what you say about Venezuela because you're a privileged person.”

And I could totally take the idea of privilege, yes, but I did grow up in that country. He didn’t know it, and I did, and he definitely didn’t know anything about me. It was very easy to be shut down and very easy to self-censor because after that experience, plus writing about it or having opinions about it and constantly being told “you're not there, you cannot speak,” I just started not talking about it. And I think my way of responding to that was being able to facilitate conversations about that. 

And so I was very happy to become the editor of the Americas of Global Voices back then, because if I couldn't write about it because of these reasons—which I guess I understand—I will push others to talk about it. And not only about Venezuela, but Latin America, there are so many narratives that are very reductive, really simplistic about the region that I really wanted to really push back against. So that's why I see freedom of expression as this really complex thing, this really, really complicated thing. And I guess that's why I also see it not only as a right too, but also as a responsibility. Because the space that we have today is so messy and polluted with so many things that you can claim freedom of expression just to say anything, and your goal is not to express yourself, but to harm other people, vulnerable people in particular. 

JY: What do you think is the ideal online environment for free expression? What are the boundaries or guardrails that should be put in place? What guides you? 

LV: I'm not even sure that something guides me completely. I guess that I'm guided by the organizations that observe and defend the space, because they're constantly monitoring, they're constantly explaining, they're talking to people, they have an ear on the ground. It is impossible to think of a space that can be structured and have certain codes. We are a really complicated species. We had these platforms that we started seeing as this hope for people to connect, and then they ended up being used to harm. 

I guess that's also why the conversations about regulations are always so complicated, because whenever we push for legislation or for different kinds of regulations, those regulations then take a life of their own and everybody's able to weaponize them or manipulate them. So yes, there are definitely guidelines and regulations, but I think it's a pendular movement. You know, it's recognizing that the space in which people communicate is always going to be chaotic because everybody will want to have their say. But at the same time, it's important to keep observing and having guidelines. I will go with you, having UN guidelines that translate from organizations that observe the space. I hate to answer saying that I have no guidelines, but at the same time, I guess it's also the idea of the acceptance that it's a chaotic space. And for it to be healthy, we need to accept that it's going to be. It cannot be very structured. It cannot function if it's too structured because there will not be free expression. 

JY: I get that. So ultimately then, where do you stand on regulation? 

LV: I think it's necessary; at some point we need rules to go by and we need some rules of the game. But it cannot be blindly, and we cannot think that regulations are going to stay the same over time. Regulations need to be discussed. They need to evolve. They need to be studied. Once they're in place, you observe how they're used and then how they can be adjusted. It's like they need to be as alive as the spaces of expression are. 

JY: Yes. What countries do you think or entities do you think are doing the best job of this right now? I feel that the EU is maybe trying its hardest, but it's not necessarily enough. 

LV: And I think it's also a little bit dangerous to think of whatever the European Union does as an example. There have been so many cases of copy-paste legislation that has nothing to do with the context. When we talk about privacy, for example, the way that Europe, the way that France and Germany understand privacy, it's not the way that Colombia, for example, understands privacy. It's very different. Culturally, it's different. You can see that people understand legislation, thinking about privacy very differently. And so this kind of way, which I think is like, I will even dare to say is a bit colonial, you know? Like, we set the example, we put the rules and you should follow suit. And why? I like the effort of the European Union as an entity. The fact that so many countries that have been at war for so long managed to create a community, I'm impressed. The jury's still out on how that's working, but I'm still impressed. 

JY: Do you think that because—maybe because of Global Voices or our experience of moving countries, or our friendships—having a global worldview and seeing all of these different regulations and different failures and different successes makes it more complex for us than, say, somebody who's working only on policy in the EU or in the US or in the UK? Do you think it's harder for us then to reconcile these ideas, because we see this broader picture?

LV: That's a really good point. I'm not sure. I do believe very strongly in the idea that we should be in contact. As with everything that has to do with freedom of expression, initiatives, and the fight for spaces and to protect journalists and to regulate platforms, we should be looking at each other's notes. Absolutely. Is there a way to look at it globally? I don't know. I don't think so. I think that I was very much a believer of the idea of a global world where we're all in contact and the whole thing of the global village. 

But then when you start exchanging and when you see how things play out—whenever we think about “globalities”—there's always one overpowering the rest. And that's a really difficult balance to get. Nothing will ever be [truly] global. It will not. We're still communicating in English, we're still thinking about regulations, following certain values. I'm not saying that's good or bad. We do need to create connections. I wouldn't have been able to make friendships and beautiful, beautiful relations that taught me a lot about freedom of expression and digital security had I not spoken this language, because I don't speak Arabic, and these Egyptian friends [that I learned from early on] don't speak Spanish. So those connections are important. They're very important. But the idea of a globality where everybody is the same…I see that as very difficult. And I think it goes back to this idea that we could have perfect regulation or perfect structures—like, if we had these perfect structures, everything would be fine. And I think that we're learning very painfully that is just not possible. 

Everything that we will come up with, every space that we will open, will be occupied by many other people's powers and interests. So I guess that the first step could be to recognize that there's this uneasy relation of things that cannot be global, that cannot be completely horizontal, that doesn't obey rules, it doesn't obey structures…to see what it is that we're going to do. Because so far, I believe that there's been so many efforts towards equalizing spaces. I have been thinking about this a lot. We tend to think so much about solutions and ways in which we all connect and everything. And at the end, it ends up emptying those words of their meaning, because we're reproducing imbalances, we reproduce power relations. So, I don't know how to go back to the question, because I don't think that there's an ideal space. If there was an ideal space, I don't think that we'd be human, you know? I think that part of what will make it realistic is that it moves along. So I guess the ideal place is, it will be one that is relatively safe for most, and especially that it will have special attention to protect vulnerable groups. 

If I could dream of a space with regulations and structures that will help, I think that my priority would be structures that at least favor the safety of the most vulnerable, and then the others will find their ground. I hope this makes sense. 

JY: No, it does. It does. I mean, it might not make sense to someone who is purely working on policy, but it makes sense to me because I feel the same way. 

LV: Yeah, I think a policy person will already be like looking away, you know, like really hoping to get away from me as soon as possible because this woman is just rambling. But they have this really tough job. They need to put straight lines where there are only curves. 

JY: Going back for a moment to something you mentioned, learning from people elsewhere in the world. That Global Voices meeting changed my life.

LV: It changed my life too. I was 26.

JY: I was 26 too! I’d been living in Morocco until just recently, and I remember meeting all of these people from other parts of the region, and beginning to understand through meeting people how different Morocco was from Syria, or Egypt. How the region wasn’t a monolith.

LV: And that’s so important. These are the things I feel that we might know intellectually, but when you actually “taste” them, there are no words you can express when you realize the complexity of people that you didn’t think of as complex as you. That was the year I met Mohamed El Gohary. I will never forget that as critical as I was of the government of Venezuela back then, never in a million years would I have imagined that they would be like they are now. I used to work in a ministry, which means that I was very much in contact with people that were really big believers of [Chavismo’s] project, and I would listen to them being really passionate and see how people changed their lives because they had employment and many other things they lacked before: representation in government among them. All of those projects ended up being really short-term solutions, but they changed the perspective of a lot of people and a lot of people that believed so wholeheartedly in it. I remember that most of the Latin America team, we were very shaken by the presentations coming from Advox, seeing the blogs and the bloggers were in prison. I remember Gohary asking me “have you had any platforms blocked, or shutdowns, or have any newspapers been closed?” I said no, and he said “that’s coming.”

JY: I remember this. I feel like Tunisia and Egypt really served as examples to other countries of what states could do with the internet. And I think that people without a global view don’t recognize that as clearly.

LV: That's very true. And I think we still lack this global view. And in my opinion, we lack a global view that doesn't go through the United States or Europe. Most of the conveners and the people that put us in contact have been linked or rooted in Western powers. And connections were made, which is good. I would have never understood these issues of censorship had it not been for these Egyptian friends that were at Global Voices. That's very important. And ever since, I am convinced that you can grow through people from backgrounds that are very different from yours, because you align on one particular thing. And so I've always been really interested in South, quote unquote, “South-South” relationships, the vision Latin America has of Africa. And I really dislike saying Africa as if it was one thing. 

But the vision that we need to have is...I love, there's a writer that I love, Ryszard Kapuściński, and he wrote a book about Africa. He's a Polish journalist and he wrote about the movements of independence because he was the only journalist that the newspaper had for internationals. He would go to every place around, and it was the 60s. So there were like independence movements all around. And at the end, he wrote this big summary of his experiences in “Africa.” And the first page says, other than for the geographic name that we put to it, Africa doesn't exist. This is a whole universe. This is a whole world. And so the vision, this reductionist vision that a lot of us in Latin America have come through these, you know, glasses that come from the West. So to me, when I see cases in which you have groups from Venezuela, collaborating with groups in Senegal because the shutdowns that happen in both countries rhyme, I am passionately interested in these connections, because these are connections of people that don't think are similar, but they're going through similar, very similar things, and they realize how similar they are in the process. That was my feeling with [other friends from Egypt] and Gohary. The conversations that we had, the exchanges that we had, let's say at the center of our table, our excuse was this idea of freedom on the internet and how digital security will work. But that was the way that we could dialogue. And to me, it was one proof of how you grow through the experiences of people that you mistakenly think are not like you. 

JY: Yes. Yeah, no, exactly, And that was really, that was my experience too, because in the U.S. at the time, obviously there were no restrictions on the internet, but I moved to Morocco and immediately on my first day there, I had a LiveJournal. I think I've written about this many times. I had LiveJournal, which was my blogging platform at the time, and I went to log in and the site was blocked. And LiveJournal was blocked because there had been a lot of blogs about the Western Sahara, which was a taboo topic at the time, still is in many ways. And so I had to, I had to make a decision. Do I figure out a circumvention tool? I had an American friend who was emailing me about how to get around this, or maybe we had a phone call. And so I ended up, I ended up becoming a public blogger because of censorship. 

LV: That's so interesting because it is the reaction. Somebody says, I like, I didn't want to talk, but now that you don't want me to, now I will. 

JY:  Yeah, now I will. And I never crossed the red lines while I was living there because I didn't want to get in trouble. And I wrote about things carefully. But that experience connected me to people. That's how I found Global Voices. 

I want to ask you another question. When we met in Portugal in September, we discussed the idea that what’s happening in the U.S. has made it easier for people there to understand repression in other countries…that some Americans are now more able to see creeping authoritarianism or fascism elsewhere because they’re experiencing it themselves. What are your thoughts on that?

LV: So what pops in my mind is this, because I always find this fantasy very interesting that things cannot happen in certain countries, even if they've already happened. There are a lot of ideas of, we were talking about having the European Union as an example. And yes, the United States were very much into, you know, this idea of freedom of the press, freedom of expression. But there was also this idea, this narrative that these kinds of things will never happen in a place like the United States, which I think is a very dangerous idea, because it gets you to not pay attention. And there are so many ways in which expression can be limited, manipulated, weaponized, and it was a long time coming, that there were a lot of pushes to censor books. When you start seeing that, you push for libraries to take certain books out, you really start seeing like the winds blowing in that direction. And so now that it has become probably more evident, with the case of the Jimmy Kimmel show and the ways that certain media have been using their time to really misinform, you really start seeing parallels with other parts of the continent. I think it's very important, this idea that we look at each other. I will always defend the idea that we need to be constantly in dialogue and not necessarily look for examples.

Let’s say from Mexico downward, this idea of “look at this thing that people are doing in the States”—I don’t think that has ever served us, and it won’t serve us now. It is very important that we remain in dialogue. Because one thing that I found beautiful and fascinating that is happening among Venezuelan journalists is that you will see media that would  be competing with one in other circumstances are  now working together. They wouldn't survive otherwise. And also countries in the region that wouldn't look at each other before, they are working together as well. So you have Venezuelan journalists working with Nicaraguan journalists and also human rights defenders really looking at each other's cases because authoritarian regimes look at each other. We were talking about Egypt as an example before. And we keep seeing this but we're not paying enough attention. When we see events, for example, how they are regional, and that is really important. We need to talk amongst ourselves. We understand the realities of our regions, but it is so important that there's always somebody invited, somebody looking at other regions, how is it playing out, what are people doing. Latin America is a really great place where people should be looking at when thinking about counter-power and looking for examples of different ways of resistance. And unfortunately, also where things can go. How are technologies being used to censor? 

In the case of Venezuela, you had newspapers being progressively harassed. Then they wouldn't find paper. Then they had to close down. So they pushed them online where they're blocking them and harassing them. So it is a slow movement. It's very important to understand that this can happen anywhere. Everyone is at risk of having an authoritarian regime. This idea, these regressive ideas about rights, they are happening globally and they're getting a lot of traction. So the fact that we need to be in contact is crucial. It is crucial to really go beyond the narratives that we have of other countries and other cultures and to think that is particular to that place because of this and that. I think if there's a moment in which we can understand all of us as a whole group, as a region, like from the whole of the Americas, it is now. 

JY: That's such a good point. I agree. And I think it's important both to look at it on that semi-local scale and then also scale it globally, but understand like the Americas in particular, yeah, have so much in common. 

LV: No. I really believe that if there was something that I will be pushing forward, it's this idea that, first of all, these borders that are imagined, they're artificial, we created it to protect things that we have accumulated. And we, like the whole of the continent, have this history of people that came to occupy other people's lands. That's their origin story. All of the continent. Yeah. So maybe trying to understand that in terms of resistance and in terms of communities, we should be aware of that and really think about communities of counter power, resistance and fight for human rights should be, I guess they should have its own borders, you know, like not American groups or Nicaraguan groups or Colombian groups, like really create some sort of I guess, way to understand that these national borders are, they're not serving us. We really need to collaborate in ways that go really beyond that. Fully understanding the backgrounds and the differences and everything, but really connecting in things in ways that make sense. I don't think that one human rights defense community can go against its own state. They are outnumbered. The power imbalance is too big. But these groups in combination, looking at each other and learning from each other, being in contact, collaborating, it makes, well, you know, it's just simple math. It will make for more of us working together. 

JY: Absolutely. At EFF, we have a team that works on issues in Latin America, and some are based in Latin America. And it’s been interesting, because I came to EFF from having worked in a Middle East perspective, and my colleague Katitza Rodriguez, who started just a year or two before me came from a Latin American perspective, and apart from our EU work, those remain the two regional strongholds of EFF’s international work. And we’ve bridged that. I remember a couple of years ago having calls between Colombians and Palestinians because they were experiencing the same censorship issues online.

LV: That’s what I dream of.

JY: That's the sort of bridging work that you and I kind of came up in. And I think that like that experience for me, and similarly for Katitza, and then bringing that to EFF. And so we had these ties. And I think of everything you’ve said, one of the things that struck me the most is that this is a generational thing. We’re all Gen X, or early Millennials, or whatever you want to call it. I know it differs globally, but we all grew up under similar circumstances in terms of the information age, and I think that shaped our worldview in a way that—if we’re open to it—our generation thinks uniquely from the ones before and after us, because we lived a little bit in both worlds. I think it’s a really unique experience.

LV: I feel really excited to hear you say this because at times I feel that I'm thinking about this and it looks like it sounds like very weird ideas, but we are definitely part of this generation that lived the transition to online worlds and we are living in these—I love to call them digital third spaces. We're constantly negotiating our identities. We are creating new ones. We're creating homes that are “in the air.” Because yes, you are in Berlin now and I'm in France and other friends are in Venezuela, others are in Colombia and so on. But we are in this kind of commonplace, in this space where we meet that is neither nor. And it is a place that has let me understand borders very differently and understand identity very differently. And I think that is the door that we have to go through to understand how community and collaboration cross regionally and beyond borders. It's not only necessary, it's more realistic. 

JY: Absolutely, I agree. Let me ask you the last question: Who's your free expression hero? Or somebody who's inspired you. Somebody who really changed your world. 

LV: I am so proud of the Venezuelan community. So proud. They're all people that are inspiring, intelligent, dynamic. And if I had to pick one with a lot of pain, I would say Valentina Aguana. She works with Connexion Segura y Libre. She's like twenty-something. I love to see this person in her twenties. And very often, especially now that you see younger generations going to places that we don't understand. I love that she's a young person in this space, and I love how well she understands a lot of these things. I love very much how she integrates this idea of having the right to do things. That was very hard for me when I was growing up. It was very hard when I was her age to understand I had the right to do things, that I had the right to express myself. Not only does she understand that her work is devoted to ensuring that other people have the right as well, and they have the space to do that safely. 

JY: I love that. Thank you so much Laura.

Update: Cindy's conversation with Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders on their book "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship" has been moved to January 24, 2026 at 11 AM PT. More info below!

One of our favorite—and most important—things that we do at EFF is to work toward a better future. It can be easy to get caught up in all the crazy things that are happening in the moment, especially with the fires that need to be put out. But it’s just as important to keep our eyes on new technologies, how they are impacting digital rights, and how we can ensure that our rights and freedoms expand over time.

That's why EFF is excited to spotlight two free book events this December that look ahead, providing insight on how to build this better future. Featuring EFF’s Executive Director Cindy Cohn, we’ll be exploring how stories, technology, and policy shape the world around us. Here’s how you can join us this year and learn more about next year’s events:

Exploring Progressive Social Change at The Booksmith - We Will Rise Again 

December 2 | 7:00 PM Pacific Time | The Booksmith, San Francisco 

We’re celebrating the release of We Will Rise Again, a new anthology of speculative stories from writers across the world, including Cindy Cohn, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, Reo Eveleth, Andrea Dehlendorf, and Vida Jame. This collection explores topics ranging from disability justice and environmental activism to community care and collective worldbuilding to offer tools for organizing, interrogating the status quo, and a blueprint for building a better world.

Join Cindy Cohn and her fellow panelists at this event to learn how speculative fiction helps us think critically about technology, civil liberties, and the kind of world we want to create. We hope to see some familiar faces there! 

RSVP AND LEARN MORE

AI, Politics, and the Future of Democracy - Rewiring Democracy (NEW DATE!)

January 24, 2026 | 11:00 AM Pacific Time | Virtual

We’re also geared up to join an online discussion with EFF Board Member Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders about their new book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. In this time when AI is taking up every conversation—from generative AI tools to algorithmic decision-making in government—this book cuts through the hype to examine the ways that the technology is transforming every aspect of democracy, for good and bad. 

Cindy Cohn will join Schneier and Sanders for a forward-looking conversation about what’s possible, and what’s at stake, as AI weaves itself into our governments and how to steer it in the right direction. We’ll see you online for this one! 

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Announcing Cindy Cohn's New Book, Privacy's Defender

In March we’ll be kicking off the celebration for Cindy Cohn’s new book, Privacy’s Defender, chronicling her thirty-year battle to protect everyone’s right to digital privacy and offering insights into the ongoing fight for our civil liberties online. Stay tuned for more information about our first event at City Lights on Tuesday, March 10!

The celebration doesn’t stop there. Look out for more celebrations for Privacy’s Defender throughout the year, and we hope we’ll see you at one of them. Plus, you can learn more about the book and even preorder it today! 

PREORDER PRIVACY'S DEFENDER

You can keep up to date on these book events, and more EFF happenings when you sign up for our EFFector newsletter and check out our full event calendar.