How to Fix the Internet Bonus Episode: Privacy’s Defender
4 snips
Mar 17, 2026 
Cory Doctorow, bestselling novelist, journalist, and EFF Special Advisor, hosts a lively conversation with Cindy Cohn about her book Privacy’s Defender. They cover the crypto wars, NSA mass surveillance, and landmark cases like Bernstein’s code-as-speech win. Discussions touch on encryption’s wider role, how legal fights are framed for courts, and threats from corporate and state surveillance.
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State And Private Surveillance Are One Problem
- Cindy Cohn emphasized there is no real choice between state and private surveillance because governments routinely obtain data from companies and buy from data brokers.
- The Trump administration simply made visible what had long been happening: private data fed state power for enforcement like ICE and deportation.
How Bernstein Freed Modern Encryption
- Cindy Cohn described taking the Bernstein case to free encryption from government control under a First Amendment prior restraint theory.
- A ragtag team of lawyers and hackers won in district court and the Ninth Circuit, leading the government to reduce encryption controls and enabling modern tools like Signal and Let's Encrypt.
Why Code Is Protected Speech
- Cindy Cohn reframed code as speech: computer code primarily communicates ideas between people and so merits First Amendment protection.
- She credits conversations with MIT's Hal Abelson and PhD students who published code to explain why code is protected speech.
