The Lawyer Fighting Government Surveillance for 30 Years (With EFF's Cindy Cohn)

April 6, 2026·55 min·4 clips

Cindy Cohn says the company-versus-government privacy choice is fake.

1. The 404 Media Podcast episode centers on EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn and her memoir Privacy's Defender. 2. Jason Kebler and Cohn discuss how Bernstein v. Department of Justice, the AT&T NSA case, and the Credo and Cloudflare national security letters fights structure the book. 3. Cohn frames the memoir around privacy as the through line that connects decades of work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 4. Kebler notes that Bernstein v. Department of Justice was decided in 1996 and established code and encryption as protected speech under the First Amendment. 5. Cohn contrasts that clean win with the slower, more contested litigation that followed the September 11 attacks. 6. She says the post-9/11 climate made courts and Congress more timid when the government asked for new surveillance powers. 7. In the AT&T NSA matter, Cohn describes how EFF had to think about whether journalists should publish first before the lawsuit went public. 8. She cites the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as the model for reducing risk around classified material. 9. Cohn says EFF is not in the news business and wants journalists to create the public record while EFF turns that coverage into legal change. 10. She says the national security letters work moved from the Internet Archive to Credo and then to Cloudflare, each step widening the fight. 11. Cohn notes that successful national security letters challenges helped other providers, including Google, come forward with similar cases. 12. She says the book includes personal material such as a hard divorce and a Colbert Report appearance because the professional and private parts of her life were intertwined. 13. Cohn says she wrote in the first person to make privacy law more accessible to readers who are not already steeped in tech policy. 14. She describes her litigation method as "finding where the fight is" by laying briefs out horizontally on a legal pad. 15. That method helps her identify when a judge is watching parties talk past each other instead of arguing the core issue. 16. Cohn says the modern privacy fight is no longer just company spying or government spying, because the government uses companies to do the work. 17. She points to IRS information going to ICE and government purchases of commercial data broker information as evidence of that convergence. 18. Cohn says EFF is leaning into municipal and state fights over tools like Flock license plate readers and a California case in San Jose. 19. The interview keeps a conversational, explanatory tone, with Kebler pressing for process details and Cohn answering in concrete examples. 20. People interested in privacy law, digital rights, and surveillance policy would get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting light entertainment or a quick news recap could skip it.

As heard by us

A memoir-driven look at privacy, surveillance, and the practical case for clarity.

404 Media's interview with Cindy Cohen, the EFF's executive director, looks back on her long tenure and on Privacy's Defender. It is strongest when it stays practical, with Cohen arguing that briefs should help a judge follow the main point rather than drift into side eddies.

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Why you'd press play

You get a veteran privacy fight with real legal texture, not conference-panel fog.

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