The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the press and discovered by the public in late 2005, EFF has been at the forefront of the effort to stop it and bring government surveillance programs back within the law and the Constitution.

History of NSA Spying Information since 2005 (See Hepting v. AT&T, EFF filed the first case against a cooperating telecom for violating its customers' privacy. After Congress expressly intervened and passed the FISA Amendments Act to allow the Executive to require dismissal of the case, Hepting was ultimately dismissed by the US Supreme Court.

In September of 2014, EFF, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, joined the legal team for Anna Smith, an Idaho emergency neonatal nurse, in her challenge of the government's bulk collection of the telephone records of millions of innocent Americans. In so-called “third party doctrine,” the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information they entrust to others.

First Unitarian v. NSA: EFF’s case challenging the NSA’s phone metadata surveillance

Jewel v. NSA: EFF’s case challenging the NSA’s dragnet surveillance

Hepting v. AT&T: EFF’s case that challenged AT&T’s complicity in illegal NSA spying

Smith v. Obama: EFF's appeal with the ACLU of an Idaho nurse's challenge to the NSA's phone metadata surveillance.