Center for Democracy & Technology

Since the opening kick, much of the FIFA World Cup chatter has taken place online. But not all banter has remained friendly. A lot has been written about content moderation, but with the World Cup now underway, the debate over what can or should be permitted online, and whose responsibility it is to determine the rules of engagement, is in the spotlight again. Players missing penalties have seen reams of hate speech directed their way.

On 26 May, the European Commission launched a public consultation seeking input for its draft Trusted Flaggers’ guidelines under Article 22 of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The guidelines aim to provide clarity on the functioning of the trusted flagger mechanism for organisations seeking to become designated trusted flaggers and for the Digital Services Coordinators responsible for their designation and oversight.

Today, CDT submitted comments opposing the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed overhaul of the rules governing federal financial assistance. The proposal would replace independent scientific judgment with political control, undermining the merit-based research system that has driven American scientific leadership for decades.

On July 9th, President Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and accepted the resignation of its lone remaining Republican, leaving the agency with zero sitting commissioners four months before the midterms. The White House cited last month’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which overturned decades of precedent limiting the president’s power to remove leaders of independent agencies, as its legal basis.

On June 29, CDT filed comments calling on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to withdraw proposed amendments to regulations on equal access to housing under HUD’s Community Planning and Development programs.

Today, 9 July, the European Parliament voted to revive the interim derogation from the ePrivacy Directive, commonly known as “Chat Control 1.0” (Regulation (EU) 2021/1232), which provides the legal basis for the voluntary, indiscriminate scanning of private communications for known and new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and for the solicitation of children.

Congress is closer than ever to rewriting the rules for young people online.

Senators Grassley and Klobuchar have re-introduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), to address competition concerns with market concentration in the online platform marketplace. The new bill is similar to a version of the bill that saw action in two Congresses ago, but has been revised in significant respects.

CDT Europe is publishing a joint statement with civil society organisations and individual signatories calling on the EU institutions to regulate spyware technologies after the 2026 Citizen Lab revelations. On 3 July 2026, a forensic analysis by the Citizen Lab revealed that Stelios Kouloglou, former Member of the European Parliament and investigative journalist, was targeted and infected with Pegasus spyware, developed by NSO Group, on or around 21 October 2022, and again on 6 and 7 March 2023.

As you move through the world with a phone in your pocket, you likely leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs. If you have enabled location services for a wide range of common apps or services like Google Maps or a weather app, this trail could be a timestamped record of where you slept for the night, which doctor’s office you visited, or what protest march you joined.