Centralized Power and the Cost of Surveillance

What do cybersecurity experts, journalists in foreign conflicts, indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Drake have in common? They all use the Signal messaging app. Signal’s protocol has been the gold standard in end-to-end encryption, used by Whatsapp, Google and more, for more than a decade. But it’s been under fire from both authoritarian governments and well-meaning democracies who see the privacy locks as a threat. Since 2022, former Google rabble-rouser and AI Now Institute co-founder Meredith Whittaker has been president of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the app. Kara talks with Meredith about her fight to protect text privacy, the consolidation of power and money in AI and how nonprofits can survive in a world built on the surveillance economy. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher

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