411. Cindy Cohn: Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age

As we cascade further into the digital age, concerns over privacy and data security continue to rise with increasing urgency. As artificial intelligence expands its reach, vast aggregates of personal data are constantly being mined to refine future models. But, the fight for digital privacy is as old as the digital age itself. In Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, author and Digital Rights Activist, Cindy Cohn, chronicles her career-long battle to preserve our right to privacy online.

Part memoir and part legal history for a general audience, Privacy's Defender reminds the reader just how hard-won the privacy rights we enjoy today were. Cohn stresses the societal importance of digital privacy, citing its role in combatting authoritarianism, organizing public protests, and reinforcing other human rights as well.

Dismantling the myth that our digital landscape was the sole work of several male charismatic tech founders, Cohn instead paints a fuller picture of our technological history. Through weaving her own story with the history of Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state, Cohn reveals how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, even helping her to discover her birth parents and a life partner. Along the way, she also details the development of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which Cohn grew from a ragtag group of lawyers and hackers into one of the most powerful digital rights organizations in the world.

As we all know, advancements in technology never cease. Reckoning with its impact on our basic human rights is a conversation that Cindy Cohn has been having for over 30 years. Join Cohn at Town Hall Seattle, for a night of education, storytelling, and a reinvigoration in our fight to protect our rights in the digital age.

Cindy Cohn is Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000 to 2015, she served as EFF's Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Today, she spearheads a team of more than 120 lawyers, activists, and technologists who are dedicated to ensuring that technology supports speech, privacy, and innovation for all the people of the world.