There's certainly some truth to the idea that EFF, like all nonprofits that accept corporate funding, may be somewhat beholden to those donors. That said, over 25% of its funding is from membership dues [1]. Ironically, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), only briefly touched on in the article, has a reputation for being much closer to a corporate-first lobbying organization than EFF. Of course, as the article points out, CDT was only created when EFF's members balked at Berman's complicity in CALEA's passage.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), briefly touted in the article, doesn't accept corporate donations, but it's also a fairly small organization. It also suffers from being closely associated with a single individual, as opposed to being a large, well-marketed non-profit. That said, they generally do good work, largely by filing amcius briefs in important privacy cases and exposing issues through FOIA filings.

In any case, it seems odd the author considers EFF a stealth lobbying organization when associations like TechNet are explicitly designed to lobby for the big tech corporations, while keeping their names out of the spotlight. Why not shine a light on them?

Fun fact: On the very same day that EFF was founded, the freshly created organization made a $275,000 grant to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) which just a few years later would become EPIC [2].

[1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar... [2] http://tech-insider.org/eff/research/1990/0710.html