Ep. 270: The fight for privacy and free speech in the surveillance age

The early internet opened unprecedented avenues for speech, creativity, and connection without traditional gatekeepers.

But it also raised civil liberties questions: Do our offline freedoms exist online? And if so, how far do they extend?

Today, those questions are more urgent than ever. Advances in AI have given governments powerful new tools to track, monitor, and analyze our behavior, raising fundamental concerns about the future of free expression in the digital age.

Today we are joined by Cindy Cohn, the executive director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She has spent thirty years as a civil liberties attorney specializing in digital rights, which she documents in her newly published memoir Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.

 

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro  

05:17 Why write this book now?

09:11 Does privacy make free speech possible?

14:52 Code as speech: Bernstein v. United States 

33:34 The Patriot Act and government spying

51:09 National security letters and Section 702

57:57 Who is Tony Coppolino?

01:06:06 Why EFF left X

01:11:05 What's next for Cindy

01:13:56 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more. 

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at thefire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email [email protected].