The Fight Against AI-Powered Surveillance with EFF's Cindy Cohn and Adam Savage

About this episode

Cindy Cohn discusses the implications of AI-powered surveillance and her efforts to protect digital privacy.

When the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” this March, the dispute put a spotlight on civil liberties concerns in the AI-era. Anthropic had reportedly hit an impasse with the Trump administration over the company’s push for guardrails banning the use of its Claude model to conduct mass surveillance. Anthropic’s CEO had called such surveillance a “red line” it would not cross. But where exactly should those lines be drawn, and who should draw them? Few people have spent more time thinking about those issues than Cindy Cohn, executive director of the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Throughout her career, EFF’s executive director has been driven by a fundamental question: Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Her new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, chronicles her battles to protect our right to digital privacy. Cohn weaves her own personal story with the history of the Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state. She describes how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, as well as how this…

People in this episode

Guests: Cindy Cohn, Adam Savage

Topics covered

• AI surveillance
• civil liberties
• digital privacy
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Crypto Wars
• post-9/11 surveillance

Keywords

• AI
• surveillance
• civil liberties
• digital rights
• privacy
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Cindy Cohn
• Adam Savage

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Anthropic, Pentagon

Books & works: Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance

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