The HOPE conference is not only back for another year, but also back in Manhattan for the first time since 2018! EFF is thrilled to be there with talks and a table in the expo hall where you can chat with our team, learn about the latest in the fight for privacy and free expression online, and even pick up a special gift as a token of our thanks when you become a member or donate!
As in past years, EFF staff attorneys are ready to help support the community. If you have legal concerns regarding an upcoming talk or sensitive information security research you are conducting, please email info@eff.org and we will do our best to get you the help that you need.
EFF Talks
Field Notes From a Year of OPSEC for Liberation Movements
Throughout 2025, EFF facilitated digital privacy and security trainings for more than 2000 people. The issue spaces at hand ranged from animal rights activism, abortion access, immigration legal defense groups, and many many more. Although the particular characteristics of the various audiences differed, one thing remained true: traditional sources of information security were either inaccessible to these groups or fundamentally unable to meet their unique needs. In this talk, EFF senior staff technologist Daly Barnett will present field notes collected from the trainings conducted throughout 2025. This high-level survey will cover the types of digital privacy and security threats facing various liberation movement workers in America today, as well as the mitigation strategies they are walked through. For fellow hackers and technologists, this is not only an indispensable insight into the actual impacts of surveillance technology and digital security threats facing today’s activists, but also a blueprint for how they might be able to provide movement workers with much needed help.
Crystal Ballroom - Friday, August 14 @ 2:00 pm
Daly Barnett - EFF Senior Staff Technologist
Privacy’s Defender: My 30 Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance
In this talk that parallels her recently released book of the same title, Cindy Cohn (former executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet Internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders. No promises, but she may be joined on stage by a key client or two.
Grand Ballroom - Friday, August 14 @ 3:00 pm
Cindy Cohn - Former EFF Executive Director
How Advertising Libraries in Mobile Apps Enable a Massive Location Surveillance Apparatus
Last year at HOPE, William discussed the dangers of location data brokers tracking billions of people through mobile apps and selling their location to the highest bidder. This year, he’ll dive deeper into how and why mobile apps betray our location privacy. Advertising libraries included in a vast array of apps can transmit location data from your device sensors to surveillance tools available to the government and sold on the open market. While parts of this data pipeline remain shrouded by corporate secrecy, we can shine light on its starting point through analysis of the SDKs powering advertisements and harvesting location data in our mobile apps. You will learn the findings from looking at these components at EFF’s Threat Lab, techniques that are used to investigate apps, and conclusions about what is needed to stop mobile advertising from fueling the location surveillance industry.
Crystal Ballroom - Friday, August 14 @ 8:00 pm
William Budington - EFF Senior Staff Technologist, Lena Cohen - EFF Staff Technologist
Ask EFF, 2026 Edition
In 2026, a confluence of corporate and government forces work together to deploy new and frightening surveillance technologies to monitor and restrict the rights of ordinary people. As tools made available to law enforcement and ICE track the movements of our devices, FLOCK cameras gather an endless stream of information from the automobiles indispensable to most Americans. But 2026 is also the year that the users started to fight to “Take Back CTRL,” and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been with them every step of the way. From suing cities which deploy automated license plate readers, to raising awareness around the practices of data brokers, to developing technologies that enable users to avoid trackers, EFF combines legal, activist, and technological strategies to help in the fight. They’re back at HOPE this year with staff members across the organization to answer your questions and help you more effectively engage in the struggle for digital rights. In this troubling time, they will discuss some of the new opportunities they see to empower ourselves against the forces of technological oppression.
Grand Ballroom - Saturday, August 15 @ 12:00 pm
EFF's Daly Barnett, William Budington, Lena Cohen, & Rory Mir
More about HOPE 26: HOPE 26 will be the seventeenth Hackers On Planet Earth event. It will take place from August 14-16, 2026, at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City. This promises to be a memorable event. It is open to all hackers, makers, tinkerers, experimenters, artists, educators and anyone else with an interest in exploring and improving the world we live in, and sharing knowledge with others. HOPE is an all-ages event with multiple simultaneous sessions and many other things to do throughout the weekend.
