Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This week, legendary executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn, joins the show to talk about her new book, "Privacy's Defender."
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
Rosie Tran
Rosie Tran is one of the fastest rising stars in the entertainment business! Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she moved to Hollywood to pursue her career as a professional entertainer. The stand up comedian, writer, podcast personality, and actress has toured internationally, at comedy clubs, colleges, and overseas for the USO in Europe and the Middle East.
Editor
Andrew
I am the Editor of all things on the Stupid Sexy Privacy Podcast.
What is Stupid Sexy Privacy?
Stupid Sexy Privacy is a miniseries about how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos. Your host is comedian Rosie Tran, and the show is written by information privacy expert B.J. Mendelson. Every episode is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. Tune in every Thursday night โor Friday morning if you're nasty โ at 12 am EST to catch the next episode.
00:00
Here's three reasons why you should switch from Chrome to the free DuckDuckGo browser. One, it's designed for data protection, not data collection. If you use Google Search or Chrome, your personal info is probably exposed. Your searches, email, location, even financial or medical data. The list goes on and on. The free DuckDuckGo browser helps you protect your personal info from hackers, scammers, and data-hungry companies. Two, the built-in search engine is like Google.
00:30
but it never tracks your searches. And it has ad tracker and cookie blocking protection. Search and browse with ease with fewer annoying ads and pop-ups. Three, the DuckDuckGo browser is free. We make money from privacy respecting ads, not by exploiting your data. Download the free DuckDuckGo browser today and see for yourself why it has thousands of five-star reviews. Visit DuckDuckGo.com or wherever you get your apps.
00:59
Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy, a podcast mini series sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. I'm your host, Rosie Tran. You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime. And I'm your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorst. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey. I'm pretty sure that's not what a Japanese Macau sounds like. Oh, it's not. Not even close.
01:28
Let's hope there aren't any zoologists listening. Okay, I'm also pretty sure that's not what a snow monkey sounds like. Over the course of this mini-series, we're going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
01:56
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader. He really hates when we call him that. DJ Mendelson. Episodes 1 through 33 were written a couple of years ago. But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it. And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we've gone back and updated a bunch of them, even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way. That's right. So before we get into today's episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
02:25
and subscribe to our newsletter. This way you can get updates on the show and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026. And if you sign up for the newsletter, you'll also get a free PDF and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King's new book, How to Protect Yourself from Bashes and Weirdos. All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com. StupidSexyPrivacy.com. That's what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
02:53
I know, but repetition is key to success. You know what else is? What? Oh, Bonzo. Eat your pabling like a good boy, and pretty soon you'll grow up to be a big, strong, handsome man just like your daddy. Then you'll have Swedish pancake, too. I'm really glad this show isn't on YouTube because they pull it down, like, immediately. I know. Google sucks. And on that note, let's get to today's privacy tip.
03:23
You, us, and every other person on the planet is 99.6 % the same. So if you ever want to know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, listen to who's offering you an enemy instead of a solution, and then listen to hear if they're offering you a positive solution or a negative solution. That's what we're going to talk about in this week's privacy tip. In all good stories, there's almost always a good guy and a bad guy.
03:51
Therefore, offering up an enemy of some kind is sometimes unavoidable in stories meant to convince and convert. That's it. If other people are said to be the problem, it's important to dig a little deeper. The good guys are always going to give you someone to blame. In this case, the wealthy oligarchs who fund the fascists and weirdos all over the world. But they're also going to offer you positive solutions that help everyone. See the difference? Positive solutions that would provide for a decent job.
04:20
A house overhead and health insurance, not just for you, but everyone. This would include stuff like a plan to break up large corporations, raise the federal minimum wage, create a universal basic income using the successful Alaskan model. Alaskans have received a UBI since 1976 and invest in schools, housing, education, research and development as we did during the Cold War. The federal government used to invest in its people.
04:48
There's so much money available right now that there's absolutely zero reason why it can't do so again. That's our vision of the world and the role the government should play in every nation. A government of the people, for the people, and by the people's first priority is their protection and care of its people. In the United States, illegal immigrants are often provided as an enemy, with a negative solution being proposed to kick them all out, despite the fact that studies show repeatedly that people here without documentation commit fewer crimes than citizens.
05:16
and contributes to their local economy and neighborhood. So, let it be factually stated here that immigrants are net positive for a community. The argument made by fascists and weirdos is that an illegal is the reason you can't get a decent job, a house over your head, or health insurance. None of that is true. But sometimes the truth can be really complicated to explain to people, leading them to easily be persuaded by something simple and evil.
05:41
The truth here is that you can't get a job, health insurance, and a roof over your head because that's how America works. America has always been a product created by and sold to the wealthy. As far back as 1606 with the formation of the Virginia Company, the inhabitants of the New World have been victimized by one corporate scheme after another, each scheme designed for wealthy people to exploit poor people. First, it was the natives who were exploited. Then it was the poor, an indentured servant who came from the old world.
06:11
Then it was anyone who was black, and then it was anyone that wasn't white. Then it was anyone who wanted to take advantage and then ignore, like the Hmong, the Kurds, and the people of Ukraine. Not that many people caught this in 2026, and who can blame them with the deliberate flood of distraction offered by authoritarian regimes. But it shouldn't go unmarked that the United Nations voted in March of 2026 to declare that the transatlantic slave trade, the greatest crime against humanity.
06:40
Everyone voted to support that resolution except Argentina, Israel, and the United States. Although we're calling these things corporate schemes, we don't want to downplay at all the vast wave of human suffering each of these schemes have induced upon the world. But here's where you come in specifically. If you were born in the 20th and 21st century after the corporations and wealthy began Lewis Powell's suggested takeover of American institutions in the 1970s.
07:07
Weigh just stagnated and all the profits from every American's productivity kept going to the top. The CEOs, the shareholders. So as things got more expensive and Americans made less and less money and all the government subsidizing of things like colleges and suburban infrastructure went away, things came to a head. Taxes went up. There's fewer and fewer houses that makes them more and more expensive. But wait, you've been making less and less money since 1970. So what do you do?
07:36
And that's before we get into how America, you need a job to have a decent healthcare. This created a situation where Americans vote with their wallet and not with their brains. That's because people feel enslaved by having to hold a job they hate in order to keep their health insurance or work for such little pay that the federal government has to subsidize to their large corporate employers like McDonald's, Amazon, and Walmart through Medicaid and SNAP. Whether you want to call wage slavery a form of slavery, we'll let smart people debate. But.
08:04
It does remind us of something a wise man from Morningside Heights once said about America. It's a big club and you and I ain't in it. Poor people, because there's really no middle class anymore, are told to hate other poor people, leading to situations like here in 2026, where mass deportations of innocent Latinos doesn't give that poor white schmuck who voted for those deportations their job back. But it does lead to mass terror, anger, and fear among the entire American population.
08:32
causing more division and distraction from what the wealthy are doing. Not to mention incredible profits for private prison contractors like CoreCivic and the GEO Group. So, a bad guy is going to blame illegal immigrants and offer you a negative solution. Let's get rid of them. But you'll notice they won't tell you what happens next. They don't tell because you are probably next. Fascists and weirdos always need an enemy.
08:58
And throughout history, repeatedly, we've seen fascist movements turn from one group to another until eventually eating their own. Their solutions are always negative solutions. One's based on you being foolish enough to realize their solution doesn't actually solve your problems. In a lot of ways, and another reason why they're called negative solutions or negative freedoms and positive freedoms, as Dr. Timothy Schneider describes them, is because their proposals will make your life way worse. Building on our example, mass deportation efforts directly led to higher prices at the grocery store.
09:29
We hate to describe the unfolding horror and tragedy that is ICE's rampage across America in such blunt economic terms. But you'll have to forgive us. America is the same country that saw a killer virus run wild and at every opportunity put the economy over taking care of its people. Six years on from March of 2020, we don't have universal health care coverage. And there is still no national memorial to the 1.1 million people who verifiably died from COVID-19. There may be way more details that we'll never know about.
09:59
There are also 250,000 or so of those people who died specifically because fascists and weirdos told them not to get vaccinated. Well, vaccines were widely available. So you get what we're saying. And if you don't, let's emphatically repeat it. The wealthy are in charge and the only thing they care about is money. This is not just an American problem. This is global problem. And we want to be clear when it comes to these negative and positive solutions as it relates to other people. If someone tells you the problem is anyone
10:28
Other than the wealthy, the odds are good. They're a bad guy. Capitalism may have done away with the system where we were ruled by one king, but instead of freedom and democracy, what we actually got were more kings. This week, we're joined by Cindy Kahn. Cindy is an American civil liberties attorney specializing in internet law and served as executive director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This introduction doesn't begin to do justice to the work Cindy has done on your behalf over the last two decades.
10:57
especially when it comes to defending your privacy on the internet. So we're going to skip the privacy tip this week and encourage you to listen to everything Cindy has to say. Her new book, Privacy's Defender, is now available and we encourage you to purchase a copy through bookshop.org or from any of your favorite non-Amazon retailers.
11:20
Well, let's start with the very basics, which is, would you be so kind as to take a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. My name is Cindy Cohen and I'm the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I've been, oh my gosh, I've been at EFF for 25 years and I'm getting ready to uh step aside and let somebody else leave. But on my way out, I've written a book called Privacy's Defender.
11:46
that tells the story of three of the big privacy cases that I've handled on behalf of EFF. Yeah, I was really blown away by the amount of time that you invested in these cases. And that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about was, are any of them still in court that you were working on? No, the three cases that I talk about are all over.
12:12
There three sets of cases really, but they are all over as of about, oh yeah, but a couple of years ago, the Supreme Court decided uh the state secret's privilege scope in em not our cases, but some other cases. And it really marked the death knell for the longest running ones about the NSA's mass spying, at least for now anyway. mean, never say never. And if new information comes to light, I'm.
12:39
you know, I'm sure EFF and me wherever I am will be happy to jump into the fray again. Which is why we love the EFF on the show. Let me, I was sort of blown away by the time and I was just kind of hoping you could walk us through a little bit of, I have a question about the state secrets, we'll get to that in a second, but for people that aren't familiar, why does it take as long as it does for some of these cases to move through the court system?
13:08
Well, I think anybody who's ever been involved in litigation knows that it can be very slow. Some of that is because the process allows everybody to speak their piece and then gives judges times to think about it. um That can be very frustrating. mean, there's an old saying in the law, justice delayed is justice denied. And I think that it certainly feels like that sometimes for people. um
13:37
And uh the federal courts are used to being, especially the federal courts, are used to being very deliberative and taking a long time. So in many of these cases, we would argue in front of the judge. And it could be a year later that we get the decision. And I think that's probably a bug, not a feature of things. But it has to do with the...
13:58
You know, they have a lot of cases that they have to handle. Some things are really emergencies. If you're actually being prosecuted and might go to jail, you have a right to a speedy trial, which means that, you know, kind of in practice, civil cases like the ones that I handle are always a little bit more in the slow lane because the criminal cases have to go first. That I actually think is right. You know, if your liberty is on the line, the government should have to move quickly. But the resulting thing is that those of us on the civil side
14:28
um Even in cases that have a big constitutional footprint, um sometimes it takes quite a bit longer. And do feel that sometimes the government would go ahead and change the Like, it uses that time to sort of change the rules. Is that intentional, do you think? I mean, it's hard to give the government intentionality in that way because it's this big behemoth with lots of different people. I would say that it advantages them sometimes. I'm not sure. From the inside, that's...
14:58
as much of what they think they are doing. um But it certainly does work that way. So sometimes they change the rules and then you have to go back to the start again. That happened to us in the Bernstein case and it happened a couple of times in the NSA spying cases. uh I think sometimes they have the ability to run out, do things at a very slow timeframe. If you and I were in litigation without
15:26
the public interest, but actually paying for our lawyers. You we might push our lawyers to move a little more quickly, but the government doesn't, and it doesn't have to. And on the civil side, there's just not that many things that we could do to try to speed things up, although we should try it. You know, we would move from preliminary injunctions, we move for temporary restraining orders, but you know, there's a way in which the government kind of, you know, the scales of justice lean a little bit on their side, especially around timing. Right.
15:55
In terms of the state secrets, this is something we bumped up against recently. We've put in a bunch of FOIA requests for ICE because they had wanted to set a detention center about six minutes from where my parents live. Oh my gosh. And the thing that we kept hearing was, you you could put in all the FOIA requests you want, but they're just going to say national security state secrets. And then uh I thought a lot about that as I was reading through the section on the NSA. And I was hoping you might be able just to.
16:24
speak a little bit about what that is when the government just says national security as sort of like a blanket to not produce documents or to not produce what you might need to in order to move forward on a civil suit. Yeah, you know, um there's kind of two different things, but they work similarly. In the FOIA statute, there is actually a national security exception. m
16:47
In the context of FOIA, Congress has actually created an opportunity for the government to say, no, national security means you shouldn't get this information subject to the Freedom of Information Act request. In some ways, that's much stronger than what we faced in our cases, where the government was just asserting the state secret's privilege, which was actually created by the courts and doesn't have Congress's stamp on it.
17:15
And so it is, in my opinion, a lot weaker. You know, if you've got two branches, one branch of government that makes up a rule all on their own, it's a lot weaker than if, you know, two branches of government, which is what's happened with the FOIA law. But in general, they work the same way, which is if the government asserts that something could damage national security, if it was made public, and of course, both FOIA and
17:44
sometimes in uh litigation, things are made public, then they have a very broad ability to basically withdraw it and not turn it over. Now, there's supposed to be exceptions for that. One of those is supposed to be if what they're doing is illegal. And that was what we argued a lot in our case, is that, you know, you can't use the cloak of secrecy to hide, you know, illegal behavior that impacts millions of Americans. that's clearly not...
18:12
what the state secret's privilege is supposed to allow. uh And that's what we went back and forth about. ah we were winning on several times. We also had a statute that we could point to part of the FISA law that lays out a process for classified information, secret information to be used in court cases. So we argued, unlike FOIA, where Congress has given an exception in FISA,
18:38
Congress has outlined how the exception works in ways that means that the case should be able to go forward and be decided. So we tried to argue both as a matter of how the law works um and uh as the kind of basic ground rules that the government shouldn't be able to throw a cloak of secrecy over rampantly illegal and unconstitutional behavior that the courts had to consider this and shouldn't look the other way. Ultimately, we did not win that.
19:08
And I think the same is true on the FOIA side. I don't think they should be able to use the Freedom of Information Act to basically hide behavior, to block the public from being able to decide in this instance, whether a facility should be built in your backyard where there are very strong claims at detention facilities across the country that the way that they're being implemented violates people's.
19:34
people's rights and basic morality and human rights as well. And that got me thinking about, as I read through the NSA case in particular, uh I mean, I'm reading it as someone in the future in 2026, right? And I'm kind of like, it sounds quaint, doesn't it? Yeah. When you think about the NSA setting up a server room on a secret floor that no one goes into and
20:01
their eavesdropping on communications. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about was, as you went through writing the book and thinking about the NSA case, what parallels do you see between kind of what they were doing versus what we see now with what, let's just say, as a hypothetical, Palantir is trying to put together? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a continuation of the same mindset, right? The big shift in mindset.
20:29
domestically after 9-11 was moving from kind of what we think of as the traditional Fourth Amendment police work or national security work where you have, you identify your targets and you go and you find out information about them and you might use it to prosecute them or in the case of spies, you might use it for kind of foreign intelligence and other kinds of things that you do on the kind of diplomatic or non-domestic realm.
20:59
The flip after 9-11 was no, no, no, we're gonna collect everything and we're gonna analyze everything and then we're gonna sort out from that what our targets are. um And that's, the founders dealt with a kind of thing like that, right? It was called a general warrant. Sometimes they were called writs of assistance where...
21:20
they would get a writ to search anywhere they wanted based upon the argument that somebody was committing tax evasion. Tax evasion, as you might recall from the Boston Tea Party and all, was one of the reasons that the colonists uh wanted an independent country was because of the unfair taxes. So ah on the one hand, I can reach this all the way back to the founding of the United States. On the other hand,
21:44
The digital techniques have made it much, much easier to do this kind of mass spying, to do it at scale. And now we see companies like Palantir, uh and they're not the only one, but that are applying techniques like AI and other kinds of mass data analysis tools to make it even more powerful, this kind of mass spying. I think...
22:09
I think what was a problem for the founders is a problem today as a kind of theoretical matter. um The difference between watching everybody and then sorting out who you really want to prosecute second versus actually having to do the real police work to decide who you're targeting um and going and getting actual warrants from an actual judge and those kinds of things. So I think there's a way in which it's the same
22:40
difference between how I think the country was founded and how modern police and ICE and other law enforcement are thinking about their jobs. And I think they've slid into a way of thinking that we rejected a long time ago. And now they've got the digital tools to really do it. So it's incumbent upon us to actually draw the line and try to get back to a balance between governmental power and individual.
23:09
rights and protections because it's gotten much worse in terms of what they're capable of doing. And we've given so much away ourselves too. Yeah, I mean I think that's true but I worry about blaming the victim in that situation, right? Like it's not like we had other options, you know, that were very viable. mean, you know, I'm a big fan of the
23:31
know, kind of decentralized user controlled social media stuff that is starting to happen now. There've always been better alternatives than the Google, Facebook, uh you know, business models of, you know, surveillance capitalism. But I also think for most people, it wasn't a fair fight. It wasn't a real choice. so... uh
23:55
Yes, I mean, I guess you could argue that we're giving it away, but I don't think anybody who clicks on I agree actually is entering into a contract in any of the ways that I was taught in law school, you about a meeting of the minds and an evaluation of what you're giving up versus what you're getting. that's a, that's, I think that's a lot of marketing spin to try to blame us for a situation that we had very little power over.
24:22
Hey everyone, this is Amanda King, one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy. These days, I spend most of my time talking to businesses and clients about search engine optimization. But that's not what this is about. I wanted to tell you a little bit about a book I've co-authored with VJ Mendelson called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. And the title tells you pretty much everything you would want to know about what's in the book. And thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo.
24:51
will actually be able to give you this book for free in 2026. All you need to do is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com and sign up to our newsletter. Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for a newsletter. We'll let you know when the book and the audiobook is ready because if you want a PDF copy that's DRM free,
25:21
It's yours. And if you want an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you can get that too. Now, I've got to get out of here before Bonzo corners me because he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him because I got a book to finish. I'm so glad you said that. am because it's people will sometimes gloss over notice and consent and how broken it is.
25:48
with how model here in the United States, and it's true. mean, like, there was, there's nothing stopping people from using Macedon, for example, like that's the one that sometimes comes up. Let me ask about, you end the book on a really positive note in saying, you know, I want to recruit you. And so there was really two questions I had that came out of that. The first was given, you know, I started out talking about like the length that it takes for these cases, how...
26:16
On your side, like how did you maintain hope and optimism to move forward with these cases as they sort of like move that this glacial pace? Well, I mean, I think the first thing and it's really important to underscore this, know, EFF is very, very loyal members, right? You know, we have 30,000 people who give us money every, you know, some people give monthly, some people give annually, but really that solid foundation was the thing that we all were able to stand on.
26:45
Because if you're worried about your job or your job's going away and you're running from place to place, you can't maintain litigation on this side, especially against the government where those folks on the other side, the AUSAs on the other side, they had pretty solid jobs. They had good benefits and they stayed year after year. So the first thing is to really, uh big, big thank you to EFF members and supporters who really gave us the foundation that we could do.
27:13
that we could continue to do this work. I think the other thing, and I try to talk about this a little bit in the book, is having a community, both the community of those of us who are fighting together, and the lawyers and the activists and the technologists at EFF, and outside our outside lawyers, we all pull together.
27:34
their strength in community um and their strength in being able to stand together. I was never alone in any of these cases. I was never even the smartest person in the room in any of these cases. I always had other people. And then the other thing that I always tried to keep and I think helped keep me sane over the long run is I have also built a community of people outside of my work and an identity outside of my work. know, for me, it has a lot to do with music and the
28:02
the community I build of people who like to go listen to some of the same music, but it could be anything. But having a pillar of support that isn't dependent on your work, I think is one of the things that has really kept me sane over the long run and kept me balanced, given me a place I could retreat to when things are not going well, where it's not all on the line. It's a different.
28:28
kind of space and I've talked with people who do this kind of work all over the world and some people do it in much more dangerous situations than I ever have. And they will all tell you about some place, and again, sometimes that could be a place in your mind, people especially who meditate or do other kinds of uh contemplative uh things, but uh a place you can retreat from the fight to where you can regroup and
28:57
and gain power, that's really the secret to me of being able to do this over the long run. Because I've watched lots of people who come in full of fire and fury and then they burn out. And then they can't do it anymore. And I have all the sympathy in the world for that, I really, really want to urge people, you know, these are long fights. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
29:22
where you have ups and downs and wins and losses and going in with that idea and building yourself some systems to help keep you able to be in the fight for the long run is I think how we win. And you know, it reminds me a bit of the Carl Sagan quote of that, you know, no generation gets to see the whole picture. Yes. We only get to see parts of it. And I thought a lot about that when I read the final lines of the book where you were saying, you know, there's no
29:52
There's no big, I'm paraphrasing, but there's no big moment where all of a sudden everything changes. Instead it's more thousands and thousands of little cuts. And I was just hoping you might be able to expand on that a little bit. Yeah, you know, it's funny. My colleague and friend, Cory Doctorow does a version of this as well, where he talks about how you always have to be, you you might not be able to see the top, but you always keep looking for higher ground, right? Always keep trying to take the next fight and have the next fight be higher ground.
30:19
uh towards where we're headed. And you know, I think, you know, I think that's, that is how this works. I, you know, I, you know, we were very lucky in the Bernstein case. We got in the Bernstein case in the cryptography fight, something that really did feel like a more traditional, you know, kind of narrative arc with a victory at the end now. uh And, uh and that's great. And those moments are wonderful and you have to enjoy them when they, when they happen. But I think much more of the kinds of fights that were
30:49
we engage in around people's basic rights, freedom of speech and privacy and freedom from surveillance are things where we just have to keep chipping away. you know, it's not like you lose sight of the end goal. It's always the end goal to give people this, you know, a space, a private space where they can do organizing and planning and loving who they want to love and everything else that privacy gives you.
31:14
but recognize that it's gonna be a fight and we're gonna have to chip away and it's not gonna be like a TV show where after the third commercial it's all done and we're ready for the denouement and the next, the hints about the next one. It is much more a long arc and knowing that going in I think is helpful.
31:38
to people so they're not surprised uh but also just continuing to recognize that that is that is how it works when you're on the side of You know of the people And how do we how the people listening this join the fight? What are what are things that they can do? Well, you know, I think for your community especially, you know There are tons and tons of open source and other projects that are being built that are trying to help give people back Control you mentioned mastodon, you know, that's a open source project
32:07
uh The decentralization effort to try to give people spaces free of the big surveillance business models uh are really important, especially now when we see that many of those companies have decided to throw millions of dollars behind the Trump administration. So creating those spaces, creating the tools that people need in order to protect themselves, know, signal was written by, you know, a small group of people.
32:37
led at the time by Moxie Marlinspike, oh my goodness. um like, so building the tools, supporting the tools, helping people learn how to use the tools, those are all things that people who are kind of a technological bent uh can do. Of course, supporting EFF and the many other organizations who do this. know, when I started out, there really was just EFF, and now there's a whole digital rights community and
33:06
There are local groups all over the country and all over the world who are doing this kind of work. And I do think that while, you know, ah it's important that we have a professional community of people who can do this work, not just volunteers, not that volunteers aren't important, but, you know, the Justice Department attorneys who I go up against are not volunteers. They're not just, you know, doing this in their spare time while they do something else. So it's important that those of us who are trying to fight them and push back on them
33:35
also have the ability to do this over the long run and grow and get better at it. um There are good digital security tools now, they could all get to be better, but they aren't widely spread. One of the things that's been exciting for me and watching kind of what's going on right now in the fight against ICE is how many people are actually really using Signal and organizing on it. Like that wasn't true. um
34:05
you know, even during the first Trump administration and during COVID, you know, I was trying to drag my friend group, all this community who I say supports you, of drag them onto Signal and off of the big platforms. um So I think that's good news, but we need to continue. We need to continue to develop those tools and then make your voice heard, you know, whether that's going to a protest or writing to your congressman or showing up at a congressional office or participating, you know, in
34:34
democracy. John Perry Barlow, who is one of the founders of EFF, told me something that I really hold dear all the time. He said, nobody gives you your rights. You have to take them. Right now, we're in a period of time where I think more people are recognizing that than ever before. um And that means we have to find ways to plug in and take them back because they're being taken away and they're not being taken away from you personally right now. They're being taken away from someone you know or love.
35:03
And believe me, they won't stop with them. I think that's so important. And that's something that on the grounds, organizing people against a nice facility, I've spent so much time trying to convey to people that last point of they're not going to stop at someone that's here, quote, illegally. They're going to move on to the next group and then the next group. So this is why you have to, this is why it's your problem now. the thing I've heard is,
35:31
Oh, they're going to put the detention center in Chester. So that's a Chester problem, not a Woodbury problem. And I keep trying to explain to them, no, like this is your problem. Yeah. It's funny how people will draw the circle smaller and smaller around, know, because you really, you know, I mean, I get it. Like we all have other things we'd rather be doing than fighting for our, you know, human rights and the human rights of our neighbors. This has been thrust upon us. know, history has always thrust upon people.
36:00
You know, I don't think the people in the 1940s were like, you know, oh gosh, so excited. Let's do a world war and have to stand up against Hitler. No, no, they just had to do it. And, um and I think that's, you know, we're in a moment now where we don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting other people um stand up for our rights and the rights of our neighbors and loved ones. I mean, this is the other thing about privacy that I always try to tell people is that there's a lot of forces that want you to reduce privacy to just you.
36:30
But privacy is a team sport and everybody who's in, you know, your contacts, everybody who you work with, everybody who you, who's in your neighborhood, they're all people who, you know, even if your risk factor is very low personally right now, A, it might not last and B, you definitely know somebody who, and I suspect care about somebody who is in the crosshairs now or close. I mean,
36:58
You know, they said they were gonna go after people who were here illegally, but you know, if you look at the numbers, that's not who they're detaining. They're detaining people who are brown or black or have an accent. First they said they were just gonna do the worst of the worst. It was just gonna be violent people who were here illegally. Then it became people who were illegally. Now it's asylum seekers and immigrants, green card holders, um and a good number of American citizens. So, you know, I don't...
37:27
And now they're going after protesters as well. And so many of them look nothing like the people who are actually being targeted. And that creates people like Renee Good and Alex Preti, who look a lot more like some of the people who say, oh, well, I'm not in the crosshairs. That's right. Yeah. I've been very happy, though, to see the amount of baby boomers come out on behalf of people who don't look like them.
37:58
on people who are much younger. And I've been really heartened by that. We're almost out of time. So let me ask, the last thing I wanted to get in was you've accomplished so much in this book. And I just want to know what was next for you. I just want to hear a bit more. And I'm sure our listeners do too, because after they read Privacy is Defending, they're gonna want to know where you're going next. And so I'd love to hear it. Well, I haven't yet decided. I mean, I'm still...
38:23
know, EFF just made a shirt that I adore that says, let's sue the government. um And it's very cute and pink and black and white. um you know, that speaks to me. I'm not sure. think that, you know, as I'm like, I love EFF and if I could be a staff attorney at EFF, that's what I would be. But I felt like it was time to pass the baton of leadership.
38:45
uh to the next generation after 25 years uh leading it. I just think that's good organizational health and there are many, many talented people both inside EFF and in our community who deserve a chance to lead. So I'm stepping aside from leadership, but I'm not stepping aside from suing the government um and getting what I hope will be a little deeper into the fights again. think...
39:11
as you become like the executive director and at the top of these organizations, the amount of time you get to spend like writing briefs or standing up in court or doing the actual fight goes down, right? Cause you've got to run the thing. And so my hope is to find a good landing spot and continue to, you know, use what I know and the experience I have to stand up for people's rights. Well, you have awful support. know that. Thank you.
39:39
There are two economies in America, one for the wealthy and one for you and me. And the one for you and me resembles what used to be called a third world country. These days, we more politely call them developing countries. And we should, because with the way things are going, those developing countries are soon going to kick our ass and offer things like universal health care coverage. So we know managing your privacy, data security, and anonymity can get expensive, which leads to the question, what's the least you can do to get the most in protecting yourself from fascists and weirdos?
40:08
We'd like to recommend the following. Use Signal for all text messaging with your friends, family, coworkers, and fellow protesters. Do not use WhatsApp. Use Bitwarden to manage your passwords. And last but not least, get the DuckDuckGo subscription plan. For about $10 a month or around $100 a year, DuckDuckGo offers a solid VPN identity theft restoration protection, private access to advanced AI chat models, and a data removal service. These four items are often sold separately for way more than $100 a year.
40:38
and $100 a year is way less than what you spend on virtually every streaming service. You can sign up for DuckDuckGo subscription via the settings menu in the DuckDuckGo browser available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, or via the DuckDuckGo subscription website, duckduckgo.com slash subscriptions. The DuckDuckGo subscription is currently available to residents of the US, UK, EU, and Canada. Feature availability varies by region, but your peace of mind will not.
41:04
Because supporting companies like DuckDuckGo is one of the key ways we can defeat fascists and weirdos. Don't support companies that support fascists and weirdos, support DuckDuckGo instead.
41:18
This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California. It was written by B.J. Mendelsohn, produced by Andrew Van Voorst, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran. And of course, our program is sponsored by our friends DuckDuckGo. If you enjoy the show, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a review on Pocket Cast, Apple Podcast, or wherever you may be listening. This won't take more than two minutes of your time, and leaving us a review will help other people find it.
41:43
We have a crazy goal of helping 5 % of Americans get 1 % better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdos. Your reviews can help us reach that goal, since leaving one makes our show easier to find. So please take a moment to leave us a review and I'll see you right back here next Thursday at midnight. After you watch Rosie Trent Presents on Amazon Prime, right? Bonzo, I wish that you'll have many more birthdays just like this one. With those you love and trust around you always to share your happiness.
42:13
And I wish that you'll get a chance very soon to prove that being loved and looked after like a human being has made you feel like a human being. And that if love can do that to you, then it ought to be able to make some other human beings, human beings.