Nicole Ozer, the new Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins the Plutopia News Network to discuss protecting privacy, free expression, and digital rights, and civil liberties as AI expands the power of governments and corporations. She explains how interconnected surveillance systems threaten vulnerable communities and argues that AI should be evaluated by the problems it addresses and its effects on people, rather than sweeping promises or fears. The conversation explores age verification and social media bans, the environmental costs of data centers, and lessons from earlier struggles over internet freedom. Ozer outlines an advocacy strategy combining litigation, local and state legislation, international work, and broad coalitions across political and social movements. Emphasizing public education, grassroots organizing, and renewed in-person connections, she calls for collective action to ensure technology empowers people and supports a safer, more open internet.
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Nicole Ozer:
You know, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a much different organization than it was when it was first founded. It means that we actually have a lot of different strategies at our disposal to be able to move work forward. Like the U. S. Supreme Court, we actually were able to win an important privacy issue there this past year in the Chatrie v. United States case on the privacy of location information. But it’s very hard to win in the U. S. Supreme Court right now. So we are also able to pivot to be doing really important work in state courts. We have a case right now about license plate reader surveillance that we’re moving through California state court with a state constitutional right to privacy claim. So looking at state courts, things we can move through state agencies, things we can move through local and state legislation, things we can move internationallyāwe can kind of combine all those strategies and come back federally in the U. S. with it, with potentially a different administration.
