Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties.

It provides funds for legal defense in court, presents amicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and new technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and fair use, and solicits a list of what it considers are abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers are without merit.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed in July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor. The foundation was a response to concerns that law enforcement and policymakers lacked sufficient knowledge about the internet to make decisions or policies that respected people's rights. The EFF was established to lobby for digital rights.

Amid Operation Sundevil, an attempt by the Secret Service to combat cybercrime, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent visited Barlow at his home in April of 1990. After attending a conference hosted by Harper's, a hacker group sent Barlow and other personalities floppy discs containing pirated, proprietary source code for ROM components made by Apple. Although Barlow was unaware of the reason for the FBI visit, Barlow spent time teaching the agent after he indicated that he did not have a good understanding of how computers and the internet worked. Explaining his concern that the agent was investigating a crime the agent didn't understand, Barlow reflected thinking he "would first have to explain to him what guilt might be."

Barlow posted an account of this experience to The WELL online community. Considering the FBI and Secret Services heavy-handed tactics during several high-profile raids and arrests, Barlow argued that a civil rights organization was self-evident given the context.

After his post, Barlow was contacted by Mitch Kapor, who had had a similar experience. The pair agreed that there was a need to defend civil liberties on the Internet. Kapor agreed to fund any legal fees associated with such a defense and the pair contacted New York lawyers Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman about defending others who had attended the event.

This generated a large amount of publicity which led to offers of financial support from John Gilmore and Steve Wozniak. Barlow and Kapor continued to research conflicts between the government and technology and in June 1990, Barlow posted online the influential article titled "Crime & Puzzlement" in which Barlow announced his and Kapor's plans to create an organization to "raise and disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of the Constitution into Cyberspace."^{[non-primary source needed]}

This generated further reaction and support for the ideas of Barlow and Kapor. In late June, Barlow held a series of dinners in San Francisco with major figures in the computer industry to develop a coherent response to these perceived threats. Barlow considered that: "The actions of the FBI and Secret Service were symptoms of a growing social crisis: Future Shock. America was entering the Information Age with neither laws nor metaphors for the appropriate protection and conveyance of information itself."^{[non-primary source needed]} Barlow felt that to confront this a formal organization would be needed; he hired Cathy Cook as press coordinator, and began to set up what would become the Electronic Frontier Foundation.