Kevin Russo

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Please welcome to the stage, Cindy Cohn.

Hi, Cindy.

Thank you.

I'm admiring your Let's Sue the Government shirt.

Yeah.

It could be a reason to sue the government, which is something that you did throughout your illustrious career at EFF.

One of your first big fights back in the 90s was defending the cryptologist Daniel Bernstein against government restrictions on encrypted cryptos.

source code.

Thirty years later, we are still seeing fights between the government and private individuals over end-to-end encryption.

How surprised are you that this battle is still going on, and how would you characterize the state of that fight today?

I mean, I remember, you know, Kevin and I started covering tech around the same time.

And I remember, you know, whenever, you know, you guys would put out a statement that, you know, like Google, Facebook, like Amazon were putting out statements, like you guys were marching in lockstep.

You just said that that united front is now broken.

When did you first notice those cracks start to appear?

It obviously seems like that has accelerated quite a bit since President Trump was reelected.

There's been a major rightward shift in some of these companies.

You've talked to these people for many, many years.

How much do you think that is driven by something truly ideological?