Advancing digital rights in Europe
What we do
DFF funds three types of activities: litigation, pre-litigation, and post-litigation. We accept grant applications through regular calls for applications, which are announced on our grants page.
DFF facilitates events and develops resources to support organisations and individuals in pursuing litigation to advance digital rights.
Our Grantmaking Case Studies
Defend Digital Me undertook both a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office and a judicial review of the UK Department for Education, aiming to stop its attendance tracker trial programme....
Háttér Society are preparing for litigation challenging the blocking of access to online LGBTQI+ content in Hungary. This relates to the adoption in 2021 of legislation that bans access of...
front-LEX is requesting the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to outlaw the European Border and Coast Guard Agency’s (Frontex’s) policy of systematically sharing the geolocation data of...
CIJ is preparing for litigation enforcing the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) to address gender-based censorship by Meta platforms and other Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). CIJ found that Meta...
Partners Serbia are challenging the illegal acquisition of automatic facial recognition equipment by education and health institutions in Serbia. The litigation will start with motions for the initiation of an...
Association Stronger Together Skopje believe that the North Macedonia Ministry of Health’s data system, MojTermin leads to medical data of patients being processed and accessed by all medical professionals, without...
In January 2019, the EU’s European Commission granted adequacy to Japan for its data protection laws, allowing personal data to flow freely between the EU and Japan. The adequacy decision...
In Serbia, the Law on Social Card was adopted in 2021, establishing an electronic register containing the data of beneficiaries of social protection schemes, and enabling automated processing of data...
Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) and I Have Rights, a refugee law clinic based in Samos, Greece, are preparing for litigation challenging the technology and surveillance infrastructure of the Samos...
The Greek law on retention of electronic communications metadata (Law 3917/2011) was not revised following a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidating the EU...
Our Community Strengthening & Support Projects
Our goal is to initiate a process that challenges the structural causes of oppression in order to work towards a digital rights field in which all groups in society have their voices heard and which works to protect the digital rights of all.
DFF launched an initiative to support the work of racial, social, and economic justice organisations in the digital context.
Our aim is to increase awareness of the potential of the EU Charter of fundamental rights in the defence and protection of digital rights, to conduct capacity building, and to strengthen the knowledge and ability of different stakeholders in enforcing digital rights using strategic litigation.
DFF develops resources, organises convenings, meetings and workshops that help to improve the strategic litigation skills of the community of organisations and individuals working on digital rights in Europe.
Resources
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News
From our blog
An inside look into DFF’s past and future events on collective redress
Illustration by Kruthika NS As technologies such as mass data collection, profiling, and AI-driven decision-making continue to spread, tech-driven harms are increasingly taking on a collective dimension and disproportionately impacting marginalised communities. To effectively confront the extensive and large-scale digital
DFF’s New Leadership Model – redistributing decisions and power
Illustration by Kruthika NS We are excited to announce that after a period of collective visioning and work, DFF has officially moved away from a traditional single director hierarchy to a new distributed leadership model. We have recognised for several
Energised, Inspired and Elated after our 2024 Strategic Litigation Retreat
Over the course of three days at the end of June, tucked away at the foot of the German Alps in a hotel that previous served as a healing sanctuary, we held another edition of our strategic litigation retreats. Fifteen wonderful participants from
Upcoming events
This in-person invite-only event is part of our Community Strengthening and Support (CSS) programmatic work. The aim of the two-day workshop is to provide a space for the digital rights community to further reflect about the collective dimension of digital rights and to situate collective redress within broader collective action efforts aiming to counter tech-driven fundamental rights violations, particularly those disproportionately affecting marginalised communities.