This posted was drafted by EFF legal intern Alexandra Halbeck

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and most of the Western U.S., just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn’t abandon your Fourth Amendment rights in the phone’s contents. In United States v. Hunt, the court made clear that no longer having control of a device is not the same thing as surrendering the privacy of the information it contains. As a result, courts must separately analyze whether someone intended to abandon a physical phone and whether they intended to abandon the data stored within it. Given how much personal information our phones contain, it will be unlikely for courts to find that someone truly intended to give up their privacy rights in that data.

This approach mirrors what EFF urged in the amicus brief we filed in Hunt, joined by the ACLU, ACLU of Oregon, EPIC, and NACDL. We argued that a person may be separated from—or even discard—a device, yet still retain a robust privacy interest in the information it holds. Treating phones like wallets or backpacks ignores the reality of technology. Smartphones are comprehensive archives of our lives, containing years of messages, photos, location history, health data, browsing habits, and countless other intimate details. As the Supreme Court recognized in Riley v. California, our phones hold “the privacies of life,” and accessing those digital contents generally requires a warrant. This is an issue EFF has worked on across the country, and it is gratifying to see such an unambiguous ruling from an influential appellate court.

The facts of Hunt underscore why the court’s distinction between a device and its contents matters. In 2017, Dontae Hunt was shot multiple times and dropped an iPhone while fleeing for medical help. Police collected the phone from the crime scene and kept it as evidence. Nearly three years later—during an unrelated drug investigation—federal agents obtained a warrant and searched the phone’s contents. Hunt challenged both the warrantless seizure and the later search, arguing he never intended to abandon either the device or its data.

The court rejected the government’s sweeping abandonment theory and drew a crucial line for the digital age: even if police have legal possession of hardware, they do not have green light to rummage through its contents. The panel emphasized that courts must treat the device and the data as separate questions under a Fourth Amendment analysis.

In this specific case, because the government ultimately obtained a warrant before searching the device, that aspect of the case survived constitutional scrutiny—but crucially, only on that basis. The court also found that police acted reasonably in initially seizing the phone during the shooting investigation and keeping it as unclaimed property until a warrant could be obtained to search it.

Under Hunt, if officers find a phone that’s been misplaced, dropped during an emergency, or otherwise separated from its owner, they cannot leap from custody of the glass-and-metal shell to unfettered access to the comprehensive digital record inside. This decision ensures that constitutional protections don’t evaporate just because someone abandons their device, and that warrants still matter in the digital age. Our constitutional rights should follow our digital lives—no matter where our devices may end up.

It's easy to keep up with the fight for digital privacy and free expression. Our EFFector newsletter delivers bite-sized updates, stories, and actions you can take to stay informed and help out.

In this latest issue, we show how libraries and schools can safeguard their computers with Privacy Badger; highlight the dangers of unaccountable corporations and billionaires buying surveillance tech for police; and share news that EFF’s Executive Director, Cindy Cohn, will be stepping down in mid-2026 after more than two decades of leadership.

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Since 1990 EFF has published EFFector to help keep readers on the bleeding edge of their digital rights. We know that the intersection of technology, civil liberties, human rights, and the law can be complicated, so EFFector is a great way to stay on top of things. The newsletter is chock full of links to updates, announcements, blog posts, and other stories to help keep readers—and listeners—up to date on the movement to protect online privacy and free expression. 

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　「戦争の時代」から「平和の時代」へと歩み始めたはずの日本の戦後８０年。ＪＣＪは、８月９日に戦後８０年を考える集会・シンポジウムを東京・千代田区内で開いた。今回はあえて切り口を変えて、社会や経済の転換点にもスポットをあてた。　まず▽東京新聞福島特別支局記者の片山夏子さんが「福島第一原発事故後の原発作業員の取材を通して見えてきたこと」▽フリージャーナリストの斎藤貴男さんが、「新自由主義がもたらした『機会不平等』と、その後の社会の変化」について▽編集者・評論家でＪＣＪ代表委員の山..

This is the second instalment in a ten-part blog series documenting EFF's findings from the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. You can read additional posts here. 

During our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign, we set out to collect and spotlight the growing number of stories from people and organizations that have had abortion-related content removed, suppressed, or flagged by dominant social media platforms. Our survey submissions have revealed some alarming trends, including: if you don’t have a personal or second-degree connection at Meta, your chances of restoring your content or account are likely to drop significantly. 

Through the survey, we heard from activists, clinics, and researchers whose accounts were suspended or permanently removed for allegedly violating Meta’s policies on promoting or selling “restricted goods,” even when their posts were purely educational or informational. What the submissions also showed is a pattern of overenforcement, lack of transparency, and arbitrary moderation decisions that have specifically affected reproductive health and reproductive justice advocates. 

When accounts are taken down, appeals can take days, weeks, or even months (if they're even resolved at all, or if users are even given the option to appeal). For organizations and providers, this means losing access to vital communication tools and being cut off from the communities they serve. This is highly damaging since so much of that interaction happens on Meta’s platforms. Yet we saw a disturbing pattern emerge in our survey: on several occasions, accounts are swiftly restored once someone with a connection to Meta intervenes.

The Case Studies: An Abortion Clinic

The Red River Women's Clinic is an abortion clinic in Moorhead, MN. It was originally located in Fargo, North Dakota, and for many years was the only abortion clinic in North Dakota. In early January, the clinic’s director heard from a patient that she thought they only offered procedural/surgical abortions and not medication abortion. To clarify for other patients, they posted on the clinic’s page that they offered both procedural and medication abortions—attaching an image of a box of mifepristone. When they tried to boost the post, the ad was flagged and their account was suspended.

They appealed the decision and initially got the ad approved, yet the page was suspended again shortly after. But this time, multiple appeals and direct emails went unanswered, until they reached out to a digital rights organization that was able to connect with staff at Meta that stepped in. Only then was their page restored, with Meta noting that their post did not violate the policies but warning that future violations could lead to permanent removal.

While this may have been a glitch in Meta’s systems or a misapplication of policy, the suspension of the clinic’s Facebook account was detrimental for them. “We were unable to update our followers about dates/times we were closed, we were unable to share important information and news about abortion that would have kept our followers up to date, there was a legislative session happening and we were unable to share events and timely asks for reaching out to legislators about issues,” shared Tammi Kromenaker, Director of Red River Women's Clinic. The clinic was also prevented from starting an Instagram page due to the suspension. “Facebook has a certain audience and Instagram has another audience,” said Kromenaker, “we are trying to cater to all of our supporters so the loss of FB and the inability to access and start an Instagram account were really troubling to us.” 

The Case Studies: RISE at Emory University

RISE, a reproductive health research center at Emory University, launched an Instagram account to share community-centered research and combat misinformation related to reproductive health. In January of this year, they posted educational content about mifepristone on their instagram. “Let's talk about Mifepristone + its uses + the importance of access”, read the post. Two months later, their account was suddenly suspended, flagging the account under its policy against selling illegal drugs. Their appeal was denied, which led to the account being permanently deleted. 

Screenshot submitted by RISE to EFF

“As a team, this was a hit to our morale” shared Sara Redd, Director of Research Translation at RISE. “We pour countless hours of person-power, creativity, and passion into creating the content we have on our page, and having it vanish virtually overnight took a toll on our team.” For many organizational users like RISE, their social media accounts are a repository for resources and metrics that may not be stored elsewhere. “We spent a significant amount of already-constrained team capacity attempting to recover all of the content we’d created for Instagram that was potentially going to be permanently lost. [...] We also spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to understand what options we might have available from Meta to appeal our case and/or recover our account; their support options are not easily accessible, and the time it took to navigate this issue distracted from our existing work.”  

Meta restored the account only after RISE was able to connect with someone there. Once RISE logged back in, they confirmed that the flagged post was the one about mifepristone. The post never sold or directed people where to buy pills, it simply provided accurate information about the use and efficacy of the drug. 

This Shouldn’t Be How Content Moderation Works

Meta spokespersons have admitted to instances of “overenforcement” in various press statements, noting that content is sometimes incorrectly removed or blurred even when it doesn’t actually violate policy. Meta has insisted to the public that they care about free speech, as a spokesperson mentioned to The New York Times: “We want our platforms to be a place where people can access reliable information about health services, advertisers can promote health services and everyone can discuss and debate public policies in this space [...] That’s why we allow posts and ads about, discussing and debating abortion.” In fact, their platform policies directly mention this: 

Note that advertisers don’t need authorization to run ads that only:

• Educate, advocate or give public service announcements related to prescription drugs

Additionally: 

Note: Debating or advocating for the legality or discussing scientific or medical merits of prescription drugs is allowed. This includes news and public service announcements. 

Meta also has policies specific to “Health and Wellness,” where they state: 

When targeting people 18 years or older, advertisers can run ads that:

• Promote sexual and reproductive health and wellness products or services, as long as the focus is on health and the medical efficacy of the product or the service and not on the sexual pleasure or enhancement. And these ads must target people 18 years or older. This includes ads for: [...]
• Family planning methods, such as:
  • Family planning clinics
  • In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) or any other artificial insemination procedures
  • Fertility awareness
  • Abortion medical consultation and related services

But these public commitments don’t always match users’ experiences. 

Take the widely covered case of Aid Access, a group that provides medication abortion by mail. This year, several of their Instagram posts were blurred and removed on Instagram, including one with tips for feeling safe and supported at home after taking abortion medication. But only after multiple national media outlets contacted Meta for comment on the story were the posts and account restored.

So the question becomes: If Meta admits its enforcement isn’t perfect, why does it still take knowing someone, or having the media involved, to get a fair review? When companies like Meta claim to uphold commitments to free speech, those commitments should materialize in clear policies that are enforced equally, not only when it is escalated through leveraging relationships with Meta personnel.

“Facebook Jail” Reform

There is no question that the enforcement of these content moderation policies on Meta platforms and the length of time people are spending in “content jail” or “Facebook/Instagram jail” has created a chilling effect. 

“I think that I am more cautious and aware that the 6.1K followers we have built up over time could be taken away at any time based on the whims of Meta,” Tammi from Red River Women’s Clinic told us. 

RISE sees it in a slightly different light, sharing that “[w]hile this experience has not affected our fundamental values and commitment to sharing our work and rigorous science, it has highlighted for us that no information posted on a third-party platform is entirely one’s own, and thus can be dismantled at any moment.”

At the end of the day, clinics are left afraid to post basic information, patients are left confused or misinformed, and researchers lose access to their audiences. But unless your issue catches the attention of a journalist or you know someone at Meta, you might never regain access to your account.

These case studies highlight the urgent need for transparent, equitable, and timely enforcement that is not dependent on insider connections, as well as accountability from platforms that claim to support open dialogue and free speech. Meta’s admitted overenforcement should, at minimum, be coupled with efficient and well-staffed review processes and policies that are transparent and easily understandable. 

It’s time for Meta and other social media platforms to implement the reforms they claim to support, and for them to prove that protecting access to vital health information doesn’t hinge on who you know.

This is the second post in our blog series documenting the findings from our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. Read more in the series: https://www.eff.org/pages/stop-censoring-abortion   

The Mexican government passed a package of outrageously privacy-invasive laws in July that gives both civil and military law enforcement forces access to troves of personal data and forces every individual to turn over biometric information regardless of any suspicion of crime.   

The laws create a new interconnected intelligence system dubbed the Central Intelligence Platform, under which intelligence and security agencies at all levels of government—federal, state and municipal—have the power to access, from any entity public or private, personal information for “intelligence purposes,” including license plate numbers, biometric information, telephone details that allow the identification of individuals, financial, banking, and health records, public and private property records, tax data, and more. 

You read that right. Banks’ customer information databases? Straight into the platform. Hospital patient records? Same thing. 

The laws were ostensively passed in the name of gathering intelligence to fight high-impact crime. Civil society organizations, including our partners RD3 and Article 19 Mexico, have raised alarms about the bills—as R3D put it, these new laws establish an uncontrolled system of surveillance and social control that goes against privacy and free expression rights and the presumption of innocence.  

In a concept note made public recently, RD3 breaks down exactly how bad the bills are. The General Population Act forces every person in Mexico to enroll in a mandatory biometric ID system with fingerprints and a photo. Under the law, public and private entities are required to ask for the ID for any transaction or access to services, such as banking, healthcare, education, and access to social programs. All data generated through the ID mandate will feed into a new Unique Identity Platform under the Disappeared Persons Act.  

The use of biometric IDs creates a system for tracking activities of the population—also accessible through the Central Intelligence Platform.  

The Telecommunications Act requires telecom companies to create a registry that connects people’s phone numbers with their biometric ID held by the government and cut services off to customers who won’t go along with the practice.  

It gets worse. 

The Intelligence Act explicitly guarantees the armed forces, through the National Guard, legal access to the Central Intelligence Platform, which enables real-time consultation of interconnected databases across sectors.  

Companies, both domestic and international, must either interconnect their databases or hand over information on request. Mexican authorities can share that information even with foreign governments. It also exempts judicial authorization requirements for certain types of surveillance and classifies the entire system as confidential, with criminal penalties for disclosure. All of this is allowed without any suspicion of a crime or prior judicial approval.  

We urge everyone to pay close attention to and support efforts to hold the Mexican government accountable for this egregious surveillance system. RD3 challenged the laws in court and international support is critical to raise awareness and push back.  As R3D put it, "collaboration is vital for the defense of human rights," especially in the face of uncontrolled powers set by disproportionate laws.  

We couldn’t agree more and stand with our Mexican allies. 

YouTube配信企画 ありがとうやんばるチャンネル第36回（【高江】高江座り込み18周年報告集会ー第22回ー）がアップされました。 （1時間48分04秒） 制作:「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会 https://youtu.be/PHpBKDmlYJM 内容 2025年9月7日（日）東村農民研修施設において高江座り込み18周年報告集会を開催 １）開会挨拶：清水暁（「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会） ２）高江の現状：梅澤安巳（「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会） ３）講演：「団結してたたかう　軍事主義と帝国主義に反対する　グアハン（グアム）と沖縄の連帯」 モネッカ・フローレス（プルテヒ・グアハン） ４）閉会挨拶：儀保昇（「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会） 司会：KEN子 引き続き、高江をはじめ、これまで繋がってきた島々の現状を載せていきたいと考えています。 よろしくお願いいたします。 「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会

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