Privacy's Defenders: Stories From the Fights for Digital Rights

The government’s surveillance powers grew rapidly after Sept. 11, 2001, some in public view and some in secret. EFF suspected but couldn’t prove that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans' communications. The New York Times sat on a story about it for over a year, finally publishing it in December 2005. Then, in January 2006, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein walked into EFF's office with a manila folder of documents that blew the story wide open.
Welcome to the third episode of “Privacy’s Defenders,” a podcast about the people – lawyers, journalists, hackers, and others – who’ve fought to secure your digital liberties since before most people even knew what the internet was.
In this episode, former EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn talks with former EFF lawyer Kevin Bankston, who was at his desk drafting a lawsuit against AT&T when Klein showed up. Less than two weeks later, EFF sued the phone company on behalf of its own customers in Hepting v. AT&T. Cindy speaks again with now-retired Justice Department lawyer Tony Coppolino, who asked for the opportunity to defend the case. He called EFF with a warning after Klein’s documents were filed in court: If they were classified, EFF would be in big trouble. You’ll also hear from Klein himself, and from Carolyn Jewel, a romance novelist and AT&T customer who became the lead plaintiff in EFF's related case against the NSA.
It's the story of a secret room in a San Francisco phone company building, a heroic whistleblower, and the people who refused to let mass surveillance stay hidden.
The “Privacy’s Defenders” podcast is a follow-up to Cindy’s book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance,” bringing to life pivotal moments in the voices of those who fought for your rights. Sales of “Privacy’s Defender” benefit EFF, so pick up your copy today!
Joanne Elgart Jennings co-produced and created this podcast.
Jarrod Sport co-produced, mixed, and mastered it.
Corinne Ruff is our story editor.
We had additional help from Rachel Estabrook and Alison Broverman.
The original music was composed and performed by Nat Keefe of Hot Buttered Rum with Ben Andrews on the fiddle.

When we communicate online today – from your personal emails and DMs to secure international commerce – we usually do so with encryption. Encryption converts readable data into unreadable gibberish to protect our privacy and security. This didn’t just happen organically. Three decades ago, the U.S government treated encryption like a weapon, and it took some unlikely heroes to set it free: a grad student, a junior lawyer, and a fledgling digital rights group who sued the federal government.
The ruling in Bernstein v. Department of Justice held that code is speech and so is protected by the First Amendment – a precedent that underpins the internet as we know it today. This landmark case was led by Cindy Cohn, then a young pro bono lawyer working on behalf of EFF, who went on to become EFF’s legal director and then executive director.
Welcome to the second episode of “Privacy’s Defenders,” a podcast about the people – lawyers, journalists, hackers, and others – who’ve fought to secure your digital liberties since before most people even knew what the internet was.
In this episode, Cindy – who left EFF in June – speaks with Dan Bernstein, who was a Cal Berkeley grad student when he developed a simple encryption algorithm called “Snuffle.” Because federal law classified encryption as a war munition, publishing Snuffle meant submitting it to the government for review, getting a license as an arms dealer, and being granted a license the government had no intention of granting. Bernstein felt this violated his free-speech rights and in 1995 he sued, represented by Cindy working with EFF.
Cindy also talks with Tony Coppolino, the Justice Department lawyer she battled in court – who admits she intimidated him from their very first phone call, and who offers a surprising perspective on the case all these years later.
The “Privacy’s Defenders” podcast (new episodes drop every other Tuesday!) is a follow-up to Cindy’s book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance,” bringing to life pivotal moments in the voices of those who fought for your rights. Sales of “Privacy’s Defender” benefit EFF, so pick up your copy today!
Joanne Elgart Jennings co-produced and created this podcast.
Jarod Sport co-produced, mixed, and mastered it.
Corinne Ruff is our story editor.
We had additional help from Rachel Estabrook and Alison Broverman.
The original music was composed and performed by Nat Keefe of Hot Buttered Rum with Ben Andrews on the fiddle.

People are increasingly concerned about the ways in which mass surveillance is tracking our every move: from Flock license plate readers to face recognition to creepy ads that – based on what we see and do online – seem to know everything we’re thinking and planning. It didn’t have to be this way, and since the early days of the internet, a dedicated band of activists, lawyers and technologists have fought for a better, more secure and private digital future – a future that’s still attainable.
Cindy Cohn, who just finished a 26-year run with the Electronic Frontier Foundation including 11 years as its executive director, has lived this fight. She says privacy isn’t just about secrecy: It's ultimately about power – who has it, and who has the ability to protect themselves from it.
Welcome to the first episode of “Privacy’s Defenders,” a podcast about the people – lawyers, journalists, hackers, and others – who’ve fought to secure your digital liberties since before most people even knew what the internet was.
In this episode, Cindy talks with EFF cofounder John Gilmore about how he – an early employee at Sun Microsystems – came together with Lotus Development cofounder Mitch Kapor and cattle rancher, philosopher and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow to create EFF as a bulwark against government investigation and prosecution of early internet users.
It’s a story of the Secret Service’s “Operation Sundevil,” jet-setting tech titans, tie-dyed cypherpunks, and a fateful house party in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district amid the earliest days of online communications, setting the stage for the battles that created the internet as we know it and issues we still grapple with today.
The “Privacy’s Defenders” podcast is a follow-up to Cindy’s book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance,” bringing to life pivotal moments in the voices of those who fought for your rights. Sales of “Privacy’s Defender” benefit EFF, so pick up your copy today!

While How to Fix the Internet is on hiatus, we wanted to share a great conversation with you from earlier this week. EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn spoke with bestselling novelist, journalist, and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow about Cindy’s new book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance” (MIT Press).

Part memoir, part battle cry, “Privacy’s Defender” is the story of Cindy’s fights alongside the visionaries who looked at the early internet and understood that the legal and political battles over this new technology - the Crypto Wars, the NSA’s dragnet, the FBI gag orders - were really over the future of free speech, privacy, and power for all.

This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, March 10 in front of a packed house at San Francisco’s iconic City Lights Bookstore. You can also watch the video on YouTube.

For more about the book and Cindy’s national book tour - with stops in places including Seattle, Silicon Valley, Denver, Boston, Ann Arbor, Iowa City, Washington DC and New York City - check out https://www.eff.org/Privacys-Defender

And finally, stay tuned to this feed; we’re working on a special podcast series featuring key players and moments from the book!

A new podcast from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: The digital world isn't just a place you visit on your phone. It's the battleground where tomorrow's civil liberties will be won—or lost. Each episode of the EFFector podcast will fill you in on the most important news in digital rights, highlighting key developments in the fight for a world where technology supports freedom, not tyranny.

We've all had the unsettling experience of seeing an ad online that reveals just how much advertisers know about our lives. You're right to be disturbed. Those very same online ad systems have been used by the government to warrantlessly track peoples' locations, new reporting has confirmed. In this clip from EFFector, we're talking about how advertising surveillance enables government surveillance.

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