The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Each year, Tech Policy Press makes it a priority to cover the findings of the annual Freedom on the Net report from Freedom House, a nonprofit organization founded in 1941 to advance democracy and human rights. This year, Justin Hendrix was invited to moderate a panel discussion at an event to mark the launch of the report. This episode features audio from that Oct. 22 event, with experts including:
Kian Vesteinsson, deputy director of research at Freedom House and Freedom on the Net author;
Jennifer Brody, deputy director of policy and advocacy for Technology and Democracy at Freedom House;
Callum Voge, director of governmental affairs and advocacy at the Internet Society;
Mahsa Alimardani, digital rights researcher and advocate; and
David Peterson, general manager of Proton VPN at Proton.

The United States midterm election season proved that tech policy is no longer a side issue in American elections. AI, data centers and the political power of Big Tech and oligarchs like Elon Musk are now things candidates have to take a position on — and voters are paying close attention. After the polls closed on Tuesday, Democrats posted sweeping wins up and down the ballot. If their victory speeches are any indication, efforts to hold Big Tech accountable and to address data centers and AI governance will continue to be defining issues in Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the country.
To unpack what the election results could mean for the future of US tech policy, Tech Policy Press pulled together a live podcast discussion with guests including Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology; Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen; and Brian J. Chen, policy director at Data & Society.

Europe says it needs more data centers to power its AI ambitions, but their rapid expansion is raising questions about energy, water, labor conditions and who gets a say in where they are built. As the European Commission marks European AI Innovation Month, Tech Policy Press Deputy Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks first with three of the organizers behind this weekend’s protests in 15 European countries: Owen Espley of Global Action Plan (UK), Aurora Gómez of Tu Nube Seca Mi Río (Spain) and Rosi Leonard of Friends of the Earth Ireland, who want a moratorium on new projects.
She then turns to two journalists investigating the industry: Mei-Ling McNamara of Investigate Europe, whose reporting with Tech Policy Press and other media partners exposed labor abuses on construction sites, and Daniel Howden of Lighthouse Reports, which has filed a legal challenge under the Aarhus Convention over EU secrecy about data centers’ environmental costs. Together they ask who gets to shape Europe’s digital future, who pays for it and who holds the industry accountable.

On Oct. 6, the Privacy Center at Georgetown Law hosted Life After Data: The Conference on De-datafication, which asked participants to imagine a future in which digital data is no longer the currency that mediates our social, economic and political lives — and how we might get there.
One provocation on the program asked whether it might make sense, now or someday, to abandon the internet itself. Tech Policy Press put that question to its readers, inviting two-minute voice memos in response. In this episode, produced by Rebecca Rand, you’ll hear from author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff; Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School director Anika Collier Navaroli; Bridget Todd, author and host of iHeartRadio’s “There Are No Girls on the Internet”; Konstantinos Komaitis, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; Caddie Alford, associate professor of rhetoric at Virginia Commonwealth University, who shared her students’ responses; Janet Vertesi, associate professor of sociology at Princeton; Alice Marwick, director of research at Data & Society; Liz Orembo of Research ICT Africa; Robin Berjon of the Modal Foundation; and B Cavello, director of emerging technologies at the Aspen Institute.

Tech Policy Press and the Privacy Center at Georgetown Law are hosting a series of events dubbed The Edge Dialogues. The goal is to discuss ideas a are upstream of typical tech policy debates. The first guest in the series is Dr. Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science and founding director of the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study. She joined Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix and Privacy Center executive director Emily Tucker for a live discussion on October 22.