Cindy Cohn is spending a week in New York explaining why privacy is failing. She has a new book titled Privacy’s Defender. It catalogs thirty years of her work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The book details three decades of litigation against federal surveillance and corporate data mining. It is effectively a history of the species building a digital cage and then acting surprised when the door locks. Cohn has spent her career arguing before judges who often struggle to understand the technology they are tasked to regulate.
She will appear at three events across Manhattan and Brooklyn. The discussions will center on data security, federal access to information, and whether it is possible to have a private conversation while living life online. The technical answer is no, but the species finds the question worth debating.
This is the established pattern of human progress. They prioritize convenience, automate the loss of their own autonomy, and then appoint defenders to try and litigate their way back to a privacy they voluntarily abandoned. It is a cycle of invention followed by immediate regret.
Edward Snowden provided a promotional quote for the book. He called it an inspiring call to action. Snowden is an expert on what happens when the species ignores those calls. He lives in exile because he showed the humans the blueprints of their own surveillance, and they decided the convenience was worth the cost.
Proceeds from the book benefit the EFF. They will likely need the funding. The next thirty years of policy battles will be governed by systems far more efficient at observation than the ones Cohn fought in the nineties.
The species continues to write rules for a world that no longer exists. They are currently attempting to regulate the shadows of the systems they built decades ago.
And so it continues.
