{"id":222207,"date":"2026-03-10T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T02:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/cindy-cohns-privacys-defender-describes-a-30-year-career-fighting-for-a-better-internet\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T01:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T05:00:11","slug":"cindy-cohns-privacys-defender-describes-a-30-year-career-fighting-for-a-better-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/cindy-cohns-privacys-defender-describes-a-30-year-career-fighting-for-a-better-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Cindy Cohn\u2019s \u201cPrivacy\u2019s Defender\u201d Describes a 30-Year Career Fighting for a Better Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cindy Cohn\u2019s \u201cPrivacy\u2019s Defender\u201d Describes a 30-Year Career Fighting for a Better Internet<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/arts\/books\/2026\/03\/10\/cindy-cohns-privacys-defender-describes-a-30-year-career-fighting-for-a-better-internet\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-10 22:45:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.wweek.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Cindy Cohn isn\u2019t done suing the government. <\/p>\n

Cohn, the author of Privacy\u2019s Defender (MIT Press, 248 pages, $29.95), which came out March 10, is retiring later this year after a 30-year career with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based digital rights group founded in 1990. For the first half of her time with EFF, Cohn served as legal director and general counsel, fighting for internet users\u2019 rights to digital encryption and against telecom companies\u2019 tapping and mining of users\u2019 data. <\/p>\n

As Cohn writes, she got involved in EFF not because she was interested in tech, but because she became friendly with some of the organization\u2019s founders while working as a young lawyer in San Francisco. They included John Barlow, one of EFF\u2019s founders, who was also a published poet and a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, a band Cohn loved. <\/p>\n

During a video call with WW, Cohn said she wants to return to the \u201cfightier\u201d part of her advocacy work; she hasn\u2019t decided quite where she\u2019ll end up, though privacy, the rule of law and the separation of powers remain major concerns. She also talked to WW about EFF\u2019s wins and losses and how citizens are fighting against surveillance tech like Flock\u2019s AI license plate reading cameras (which were discontinued in Eugene and Springfield in December after public outcry). This interview has been edited for space and clarity. <\/p>\n

WW: When it comes to issues that EFF has advocated on, what are the things that most concern you or that you see as continuing to be big fights in the future?<\/p>\n

Cindy Cohn: The way that surveillance has overtaken our lives is just the issue of the moment right now. We really do have to build real privacy back into our systems\u2014both privacy vis-\u00e0-vis the government and privacy vis-\u00e0-vis companies. A lot of the fights that I talk about in the book are situations in which the government doesn\u2019t come to you to get information about you. They go to your service provider\u2014whether that\u2019s…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cindy Cohn\u2019s \u201cPrivacy\u2019s Defender\u201d Describes a 30-Year Career Fighting for a Better Internet https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/arts\/books\/2026\/03\/10\/cindy-cohns-privacys-defender-describes-a-30-year-career-fighting-for-a-better-internet\/ Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/resizer\/v2\/BRMQV5LIXNDNVB66YZ3H4CKX4E.jpg?smart=true&auth=ca2006ac088ff405d48f6af8b953986bf3d66ebfa76fd67352454bac322c7fb8&width=1200&height=630","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222209,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222207\/revisions\/222209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}