EFF’s Cindy Cohn Steps Down as AI and ICE Battles Heat Up

Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been fighting government surveillance since the 1990s, when the internet was still finding its legs and the biggest worry was whether the feds could read your email. She started writing a memoir back in 2022 partly because she was afraid people would peg her as an “old fuddy duddy” still banging on about online spying.

That fear now looks quaint. Because here we are in 2026, and the surveillance fight she helped pioneer is not only back in full force — it’s broadened into something uglier. Cohn is stepping down as EFF’s executive director, and the timing says everything.

For years, the digital rights conversation drifted away from government abuse and settled on Big Tech harms. Data brokers, ad tracking, algorithmic manipulation — that’s where the public’s attention went. Cohn herself acknowledged the pivot. But Trump’s second term yanked the spotlight back hard. ICE operations, turbocharged by the administration’s mass deportation agenda, are leaning on surveillance tech in ways that should alarm anyone who still believes in privacy.

You’ve seen the backlash. Communities tearing down Flock cameras — those automated license plate readers that help police and ICE track movement — across party lines. That’s not nothing. When people who disagree on everything else agree that the government shouldn’t be logging every car trip, something shifted.

And then there’s the DHS’s ham-fisted attempts to unmask ICE critics on social media. They’ve largely failed so far, but EFF has been in the trenches, filing and backing lawsuits to protect the right to track ICE activity and share information anonymously. The fact that this is even a fight in 2026 tells you how much the Overton window on surveillance has warped.

Cohn’s departure isn’t a retirement — she’ll stay on as a strategist and continue writing her memoir. But the new executive director will inherit a battlefield that’s more complex than anything EFF faced in the early days. AI-generated disinformation, biometric tracking at scale, and a federal government that seems willing to weaponize any technology it can get its hands on.

I’ve been watching EFF for years, and I’ll be honest: I thought the government surveillance fight was mostly won after the Snowden revelations. I was wrong. The tools got cheaper, the laws got older, and the political will to abuse them got stronger. Cohn’s legacy is that EFF never stopped fighting even when the public stopped paying attention. The next leader better be ready to pick up where she left off.