Electronic Frontier Foundation Launches Privacy’s Defenders Podcast Featuring Cindy Cohn and John Gilmore

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new documentary audio series titled Privacy's Defenders, featuring long-time digital civil liberties attorney Cindy Cohn in conversation with the pioneers of online rights. Released following its September 29, 2026 debut from EFF headquarters on Eddy Street in San Francisco, the inaugural episode highlights Cohn, who recently completed a landmark 26-year tenure with the organization including 11 years serving as its executive director. The premiere broadcast features an in-depth historical interview with EFF cofounder John Gilmore.

During the opening episode, Cohn and Gilmore recount the dramatic origins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 during the earliest days of public online communications. Gilmore, an early engineering employee at Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley, cofounded EFF alongside technology entrepreneur Mitch Kapor and lyricist John Perry Barlow after a pivotal gathering at a house party in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Their immediate catalyst was Operation Sundevil, a sweeping nationwide U.S. Secret Service investigation and equipment seizure targeting early internet bulletin board users and computer hobbyists.

Gilmore details how federal law enforcement officials at the time misunderstood decentralized computer networks, prompting Bay Area technologists and constitutional lawyers to establish a permanent legal defense organization for digital speech and encryption. The podcast series serves as an audio companion and follow-up to Cohn's recently published book, Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, with all book sales directly benefiting EFF's ongoing legal and technical programs. Civil liberties advocates in Concord, Lafayette, and Berkeley praised the series for preserving essential Bay Area technology history.

Digital rights committees and university law boards across Northern California noted that the constitutional questions raised during Operation Sundevil in 1990 remain directly relevant to modern debates over encryption, biometric tracking, and artificial intelligence governance. An advisory board member at a regional technology law clinic emphasized that establishing Fourth Amendment protections for digital communications laid the legal foundation for contemporary cloud computing and secure e-commerce. Public library districts in Contra Costa County have added both the book and podcast curriculum to their civic technology collections.

Listeners, students, and digital privacy supporters across the Bay Area can stream the first episode of Privacy's Defenders, read full episode transcripts, and order Cohn's book online at eff.org. Future episodes of the podcast will examine landmark federal appellate victories over cryptographic export controls and warrantless telecommunications surveillance. Questions regarding EFF community educational events or press inquiries may be directed to the San Francisco headquarters at (415) 436-9333.