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Boiling Frogs: Cindy Cohn of Electronic Frontier Foundation Details the American Surveillance State

Cindy Cohn, legal director at EFF, describes the Bush-Obama surveillance programs in this Boiling Frogs interview, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds 

Cohn joins us to discuss the critical constitutional questions raised by the government’s ongoing warrantless-illegal surveillance of American citizens without probable cause or a judicial warrant, and the implications of billions of everyday communications of ordinary Americans being swept up by government computers and run through a process that includes both data-mining and review of content. She provides us with her assessment of Obama’s presidency and his track record in not only maintaining but expanding the previous administration’s system of secrecy and abuse of power through authoritarian legal doctrines such as state secrets privilege. Cohn talks about the disappearance of separation of powers, the total abdication of responsibility by the US Congress, and the speedy rise of the police state in America today.

CohnCindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. Outside the Courts, Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on cyberspace issues. The National Law Journal named  Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006 for “rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online.” In 2007 the Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award.