Cybersecurity where daily life meets power.
Lock and Code turns cybersecurity and privacy stories into plainspoken conversations about daily life online. David Rees traces scams, smart doorbells, data brokers, TikTok, train control systems, and autonomous weapons back to the people affected by them.
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Lock and Code is a technology show about what happens after software leaves the screen and starts governing daily life. Its center of gravity is privacy and security, but the range is wider than password hygiene or breach headlines. A smart doorbell becomes a police surveillance question. A transit delay becomes a story about aging train control systems, budget pressure, and public infrastructure. A scam voicemail becomes an entry point into organized fraud and the denial that keeps victims isolated. David Rees keeps the show grounded in interviews, asking guests to slow down large systems until their consequences are visible. The tone is skeptical without becoming fatalistic. Episodes often begin with something familiar, then reveal the institutional machinery behind it. TikTok is not only an app people can quit; for some, it is work, community, and practical knowledge. Google Search is not only a convenience; it is a daily disclosure of worries, plans, symptoms, tastes, and attention. Data brokers are not a vague background threat, because the show keeps returning to what is collected, who can buy it, and why anonymity is weaker than it sounds. The military AI conversation is similarly careful. It separates chatbots, autonomy, weapons control, and human accountability instead of flattening them into one alarm. Lock and Code also makes room for labor, regulation, corporate incentives, and platform decay. Cory Doctorow's appearance frames online deterioration as a result of lock-in, weakened enforcement, and companies learning how to make leaving harder. Other episodes focus on practical privacy choices, such as moving away from Google Search, while admitting that incremental change is often the only workable path. The show is strongest when it connects a personal decision to a larger power structure. It does not pretend every listener can opt out of modern technology. Instead, it maps the tradeoffs with enough detail to make those compromises clearer. That makes it useful for people who care about security, but also for anyone trying to understand why everyday digital tools keep feeling less private, less accountable, and harder to escape.
Made for: For listeners who care about privacy, surveillance, platform power, scams, AI, and the hidden systems behind familiar apps and devices. It suits people who want accessible technology reporting with policy and social consequences kept in view.
What sets it apart: Lock and Code makes cybersecurity feel less like a specialist beat and more like a civic one. Its interviews connect consumer technology to policing, infrastructure, fraud, data markets, workplace pressure, and regulation.
Lock and Code tells the human stories within cybersecurity, privacy, and technology. Rogue robot vacuums, hacked farm tractors, and catastrophic software vulnerabilities—it’s all here.
An emailed receipt becomes ad targeting; if that makes your skin crawl, David Rees has questions.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded conversation about military AI, human control, and the institutions deciding where autonomous systems belong.
"Killer robots" treats the subject as a present-tense systems problem, not a sci-fi image. David Rees's conversation with Peter Asaro moves from Anthropic's public failure to reach agreement with the Department of Defense over how its technology would be used into the harder…
TikTok's power is clearest in the communities and livelihoods that cannot easily walk away.
TikTok comes through as more than an app: it is part of how people keep up friendships, make money, and trade useful knowledge. David Rees pushes Zach and Minji past the easy answer of telling users to quit, because that advice ignores what people would lose.
Plain-English privacy for a tracked world.
Privacy news with teeth and context.
Privacy law, pressure, and real-world judgment.
Privacy tech, crypto rails, internet freedom.
Privacy law with jokes left in.
Lock and Code opens by saying scams and fraud are now the most common form of organized crime globally, ahead of weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and sex trafficking.
["Lock and Code opens on Anthropic's dispute with the U.S.
A 10-year-old network card left BART controllers blind to train positions, and Rachel Swan says old equipment can stop the whole system fast.
Amazon's Ring cameras are presented here as more than doorbells: Matthew Guariglio of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says footage usually sits on Amazon servers unless owners enable end-to-end encryption, and police can reach it through a separate request system.
["Lock and Code host David Rees frames TikTok's January 22 U.S.
Lena Cohen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says researchers have found no evidence that smartphones constantly record conversations for ad targeting, while Apple and Google settled similar lawsuits for $95 million and $68 million.
David Rees interviews Cory Doctorow about enshittification, the deterioration of online services for users and businesses.
Lock and Code host David Rees and ALPR Tractor founder Will Freeman examine Flock's expansion to at least 102,000 cameras across more than 5,000 U.S.
David Rees interviews Erin West, founder of Operation Shamrock and a former Deputy District Attorney of Santa Clara County, about pig-butchering cryptocurrency scams.
Lock and Code host David Rees examines Which research reporting that Xiaomi, Kosori, and Egostar air-fryer apps requested precise location and unexplained phone-audio access.
Lock and Code host David Reese interviews Dr.
Lock and Code host David Rees examines Sam Altman’s statement that ChatGPT may offer “erotica for verified adults” after age gating expands.
Lock and Code host David Rees examines Google’s record of his digital life after Google Takeout delivered 11 compressed files containing 34.45 gigabytes of data.
Lock and Code host David Rees asks Rabble, described as Twitter’s first employee and host of revolution.social, whether social media can be saved.
Lock and Code host David Rees interviews Peter Dolanjski of DuckDuckGo about data collected beyond social-media posts, including identifiers, browsing behavior, purchases, and inferred relationships.
Lock and Code host David Rees and Partners for Justice co-founder Emily Galvin examine predictive policing, including Pasco County, Florida’s use of students’ grades, attendance, and discipline records.
Julie-Anne Kearns, who runs the StaySafeWithMJewels scam-awareness account, explains how a fake HMRC tax-rebate letter prompted her to upload passport and driving-licence images.
Lock and Code host David Rees interviews Jason Kelly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Texas HB 1181, which requires age verification for websites with more than one-third sexual material harmful to minors.
Lock and Code host David Rees interviews 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox about Anom, an encrypted-phone company secretly operated by the FBI.
David Rees, Anna Brading, and Zach Henkel examine whether generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are healthy to use.
Lock and Code interviews Becky Holmes about romance scams, celebrity impersonators, job scams, pet scams, and AI-assisted deception.
Carey Parker explains how a browser drawing a capital letter R off-screen can uniquely identify you across websites.
A 14-year-old boy's suicide raises questions about the role of AI chatbots in his emotional isolation and the ethical responsibilities of their creators.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu discusses the city's legal fight against deepfake porn, following an incident where middle school boys used AI to create fake explicit images of classmates.
Analysis of the arrest of Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov in France and its implications for content moderation and encryption.
An episode exploring how police are monitoring what people read through library vendors, with guest Sarah Lamdan.
Reporter Joseph Cox discusses the FBI's use of a backdoor in Anom encrypted phones to conduct the largest law enforcement sting operation ever.