Tech, Democracy, and the Surveillance State

If you’ve been reading Tech Policy Press closely over the last three weeks, you may have come across one or more posts from collaboration with Data & Society called “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis.” The articles in the series examine how powerful tech billionaires and authoritarian leaders and thinkers are leveraging AI and digital infrastructure to advance anti-democratic agendas, consolidate control, and reshape society in ways that threaten privacy, labor rights, environmental sustainability, and democratic governance.

For this episode, Justin Hendrix spoke to four of the authors who made contributions to the series, including:

• Jacob Metcalf,  program director of the AI On the Ground Initiative at Data & Society;
• Tamara Kneese, program director of the Climate, Technology and Justice program at Data & Society;
• Reem Suleiman,  outgoing US advocacy lead at the Mozilla Foundation and  member of the city of Oakland's Privacy Advisory Commission; and
• Kevin De Liban, founder of TechTonic Justice.