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Cindy Cohn

Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age

Date:
Tuesday, March 17
Time:
7:30 pm PDT
Cost:
$10 – $35 + Optional Book Add-on
Additional fees may apply. Learn more about our ticketing model here.
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Venue

The Wyncote NW Forum
1119 8th Ave (Entrance off Seneca St.)
Seattle, 98101 United States + Google Map

Event Format

In-Person

EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM. Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.

Book cover for "Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance" by Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The title is listed in large black text over a beige background, featuring a red circle design in the shape of an apeture.
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Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance

Elliott Bay Book Company

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Headshot of Cindy Cohn (with grey bob, eyeglasses, and black jacket)
Civics

As we cascade further into the digital age, concerns over privacy and data security continue to rise with increasing urgency. As artificial intelligence expands its reach, vast aggregates of personal data are constantly being mined to refine future models. But, the fight for digital privacy is as old as the digital age itself. In Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, author and Digital Rights Activist, Cindy Cohn, chronicles her career-long battle to preserve our right to privacy online.

Part memoir and part legal history for a general audience, Privacy’s Defender reminds the reader just how hard-won the privacy rights we enjoy today were. Cohn stresses the societal importance of digital privacy, citing its role in combatting authoritarianism, organizing public protests, and reinforcing other human rights as well.

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Dismantling the myth that our digital landscape was the sole work of several male charismatic tech founders, Cohn instead paints a fuller picture of our technological history. Through weaving her own story with the history of Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state, Cohn reveals how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, even helping her to discover her birth parents and a life partner. Along the way, she also details the development of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which Cohn grew from a ragtag group of lawyers and hackers into one of the most powerful digital rights organizations in the world.

As we all know, advancements in technology never cease. Reckoning with its impact on our basic human rights is a conversation that Cindy Cohn has been having for over 30 years. Join Cohn at Town Hall Seattle, for a night of education, storytelling, and a reinvigoration in our fight to protect our rights in the digital age.

Cindy Cohn is Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000 to 2015, she served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Today, she spearheads a team of more than 120 lawyers, activists, and technologists who are dedicated to ensuring that technology supports speech, privacy, and innovation for all the people of the world.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.

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