According to its leading statement upon its website, The Electronic Frontier Foundation is "a nonprofit group of passionate people - lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries - working to protect your digital rights." The organization"s mission statement unabashedly asserts the fascinating but controversial idea that "If America's Founding Fathers had anticipated the digital frontier, there would be a clause in the Constitution protecting your rights online, as well!" ("Mission Statement," EFF) Alas, Ben Franklin only experimented with electricity and invented bifocals! The stress upon the EFF"s rigorous belief in constitutionality protected free speech as an historic American right is reaffirmed by the organization"s icon, that of a minuteman holding a flag aloft with the organization"s initials, EFF, as the Patriot stands upon a computer.

             The implications of this mission statement are not simply constitutional. "Just as Patriots fought for liberty and freedom, we fight measures that threaten basic human rights. Only the dominion we defend is the vast wealth of digital information, innovation, and technology that resides online." ("Mission Statement," EFF) This statement also affirms the idea that legal privacy rights on the Internet are not something new, but is a legal right that directly proceeds from Constitutional guarantees in the Bill of Rights that protect other written media. "With Digital rights and freedom for all!" ("Mission Statement," EFF) .

             This is crucial not simply because the Internet is a vehicle of free expression like print-the organization thus further suggests that because of the innate democracy of the media-everyone and his brother can begin a blog. "being able to share ideas and information is the reason the Web was created in the first place!" And thus the Internet can even be more democratic than film or copyrighted print.