Interest in the fight against government surveillance has flourished, according to Cindy Cohn, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In 2022, when Cohn began writing her memoirs, she feared that the public would perceive her concern about online spying as obsolete.

The paradigm shift

Initially, government surveillance was a major concern for civil rights advocates with the advent of the Internet in the 1990s. Subsequently, attention shifted to the harm caused by Big Tech.

The impact of the Trump administration

The second term of Donald Trump, with the aggressive operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) based on the intensive use of technology for mass deportations, has rekindled the debate. Communities have mobilized to defend online privacy, opposing the use of Flock cameras and countering the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) attempts to unmask ICE critics on social media. The EFF has supported lawsuits to protect the right of Americans to monitor ICE activities and share information anonymously online.