The Fight Against AI-Powered Surveillance, with Cindy Cohn & Adam Savage

When the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” this March, the dispute put a spotlight on civil liberties concerns in the AI-era. Anthropic had reportedly hit an impasse with the Trump administration over the company’s push for guardrails banning the use of its Claude model to conduct mass surveillance. Anthropic’s CEO had called such surveillance a “red line” it would not cross. But where exactly should those lines be drawn, and who should draw them?

Few people have spent more time thinking about those issues than Cindy Cohn, executive director of the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Throughout her career, EFF’s executive director has been driven by a fundamental question: Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Her new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, chronicles her battles to protect our right to digital privacy.

Cohn weaves her own personal story with the history of the Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state. She describes how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, as well as how this work serendipitously helped her discover her birth parents and find her life partner. Along the way, she also details the development of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which she grew from a ragtag group of lawyers and hackers into “one of the most powerful digital rights organizations in the world.”

Cohn will be joined by Adam Savage, former co-host of the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters,” to talk about the issues raised in her book, EFF’s work, and the emerging battle over AI surveillance.

Notes

Photos courtesy of the speakers.

Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.

SPEAKERS

Cindy Cohn, Executive Director, the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Author, Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance

Moderator: Adam Savage, Former Co-host, "Mythbusters"

5 p.m. doors open & check-in
5:30–6:30 p.m. program
7 p.m. book signing
(all times Pacific Time)

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