National Book Tour for Cindy Cohn’s Memoir, ‘Privacy’s Defender’

SAN FRANCISCO – Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn will launch her memoir, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (MIT Press, March 10), with events in San Francisco and Berkeley before embarking on a national book tour. 

In Privacy’s Defender, Cohn weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders.  

The book will be Cohn’s swansong at EFF as she’s stepping down as executive director later this year after 25 years with the organization. And there’s no timelier topic: Everyone should be concerned about privacy right now, as the federal government consolidates and weaponizes data, companies track our every click, and law enforcement from local police to ICE keep tabs on all of us, everywhere we go, every day. 

The Privacy’s Defender tour will begin with a free event at San Francisco’s famed City Lights Bookstore (261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133) moderated by bestselling author and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow, at 7pm PST Tuesday, March 10.  

Then EFF will host a launch party at Berkeley’s Ciel Creative Space (940 Parker St., Berkeley, CA 94710) moderated by bestselling author Annalee Newitz at 7 p.m. PT on Thursday, March 12; tickets cost $12.50-$20. 

The book tour will also include events in Portland, OR; Seattle; Denver; Cambridge, MA; Ann Arbor, MI; and Iowa City, IA. Later events are being planned in New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as a May 13 event at Commonwealth Club World Affairs in San Francisco. 

Proceeds from sales of the book benefit EFF. 

“These beautifully written stories show why the fight for privacy is worth having and reveal all that Cindy Cohn and EFF have done to establish the modern privacy doctrine as the essential core of a free society.” — Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University; author of How to Steal a Presidential Election 

“Cindy Cohn gives readers a first-person window into some of the pivotal legal disputes of the digital era and reminds us that action and activism are crucial to preserving Americans’ freedom.” — U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, author of It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change 

“Privacy’s Defender is a compelling account of a life well lived and an inspiring call to action for the next generation of civil liberties champions.” — Edward Snowden, whistleblower; author of Permanent Record 

For the San Francisco event: https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/ 

For the Berkeley event: https://www.eff.org/event/privacys-defender-book-launch-party  

For more on Privacy’s Defender and the book tour: https://www.eff.org/Privacys-Defender