Episodes

July 11, 2022

Payton Croskey: Subverting Race-based Surveillance in a Digital Age

Payton Croskey and her team investigate the ways in which racial bias and discrimination shape how we are watched, policed and targeted by surveillance technology.   Payton Croskey     Bio   Payton Croskey is a visual artist and...

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July 8, 2022

Friday News Brief - 07.08.22

TikTok is under intensifying pressure from Congress after Buzzfeed released leaked audio from nine different TikTok employees saying that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company based in China, had access to TikTok user data in the U.S. In a...

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June 27, 2022

Ryan Merkley: Disinformation Post-Roe v. Wade

The discourse in the US is increasingly toxic and divisive. Disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech are rampant and we have few options to change it. The US has been entrenched in a deteriorating political and information environment for a...

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June 25, 2022

Friday News Brief - 06.24.22

In a 6-3 decision Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan were the only dissenting justices. Writing for the majority, Justice Alito left it up to state legislatures to write their own abortion laws. As...

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June 18, 2022

Friday News Brief - 06.17.22

During his state of the Union address Tuesday, President Joe Biden called for better regulation of social media companies. First Lady Jill Biden invited Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to the State of the Union – Haugen was the first to shed...

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June 13, 2022

Joe Miller: Let's Talk About 'Tech Transparency

I decided to do a solo episode this week because I think it’s really sort of super important to highlight bias in the public policy profession – because it is a profession. Because over the last 17 years that I have been working on tech and media...

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June 10, 2022

Friday News Brief - 06.10.22

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced a privacy bill last week that some observers including the Washington Post say faces a steep uphill battle. But the bill would require companies that use your data to only collect that...

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June 6, 2022

Ari Fitzgerald: 5G Basics

Most of us probably don’t think about it much, but our cell phones and Wi-Fi connections use something called spectrum to send and receive data. The term “5G” refers to the fifth major version of this standard for transmitting information...

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June 4, 2022

Friday News Brief - 06.03.22

Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook after 14 years with the company.The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta has been reviewing Sheryl Sandberg's personal activities, including a reported allegation from the Journal's sources that she used...

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May 27, 2022

Friday News Brief - 05.27.22

A company called Evolv uses “active sensing” — a light emission technique also used in radar and lidar—to create images and identify weapons in public and private venues, according to the company. Despite “fundamental   limitations in...

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May 23, 2022

Emnet Tafesse & Ranjit Singh: A Social Science Approach to AI

AI is an interdisciplinary field that draws on many fields of study, including computer science, psychology, neuroscience, and mathematics. AI researchers often bring a social science perspective to the field. They want to understand the social...

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May 20, 2022

Friday News Brief - 05.20.22

New York State Attorney General Letitia James opened a new probe in.  to Twitch, 4chan, 8chan, and Discord in the aftermath of the mass hate-motivated shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that left 10 Black people dead. The probe is geared towards...

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May 16, 2022

Vicki Shotbolt & Geraldine Bedell: Global Tech Policy and Media Literacy for Families

Today’s global economy has made it easier than ever to explore opportunities and access resources. However, this comes with the challenge of understanding how these new markets and opportunities can be beneficial or harmful to your family....

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May 13, 2022

Friday News Brief - 05.13.22

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling to strike down the State of Texas’ controversial that created a private right of action for anyone who thinks they were banned from a social media platform because of their...

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May 9, 2022

Afua Bruce: Tech, Equity, and Philanthropy

Afua Bruce is a leading public interest technologist whose career has spanned the government, non-profit, private, and academic sectors, as she has held senior science and technology positions at the White House, the FBI, IBM, and the nonprofit...

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May 2, 2022

Jessica Dheere: How do tech companies use data about you?

Tech companies use data to spot patterns in their users’ search histories. They use this information to understand how customers behave. But in the 6 years since the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, the details of how tech companies use our...

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April 28, 2022

Vint Cerf: How Futuristic Technologies Will Shape the World

With the convergence of the Metaverse, Web 3.0 and the blockchain, it’s hard to imagine just how far we have come over the last century. We can’t fully appreciate this giant leap forward, without examining the origins of the internet. Who better...

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April 19, 2022

Jonathan Cohen: The Importance of Media Law

We are in the middle of a disruptive tech revolution, and it will take some time for society to adjust. Tech, media, and telecom companies turn to Jonathan Cohen for advice as they navigate a continually shifting legal, technological and political...

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April 11, 2022

Kyle Williams & Kamal Carter: How to Confront Racial Misinformation and Disinformation with Kyle Williams & Kamal Carter

The way you process information will affect your survival. It’s just a fact. Without the ability to evaluate information through a critical lens, it's hard to discern fact from fiction. Kyle Williams and Kamal Carter of A Long Talk About An...

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March 25, 2022

Donata Stroink Skillrud: Managing Your Privacy Law Compliance

A lack of a unifying federal privacy law in the U.S. like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and a growing patchwork of state regulations to keep track of, can make it tricky for your business to maintain compliance....

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March 18, 2022

Anita Balaraman: How to Overcome Self-Doubt in Your Cyber Career

You’re well aware that this podcast is about public policy and so often we focus on that, but today, we’re also bringing you the creative side of policy making. So many of the policies that we fight to implement are created as a way to protect and...

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Feb. 28, 2022

Dana Miller: Keeping Kids Safe Online

Now more than ever we need to protect our kids as they have more exposure online than ever before. Children’s Online Safety is a priority that we are taking very seriously.  We’re living in a hyperconnected age and we’ve got the Metaverse...

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Nov. 11, 2021

Douglas Keith: How Remote Court Proceedings Affect Equal Access

When the pandemic started, courts that were slower in adopting technology had to undergo a two-week revolution to move their operations to a remote setting. Under normal circumstances, that would have taken them twenty years to achieve.  Existing...

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Nov. 1, 2021

Camille Stewart: Talk about leadership

WashingTECH Policy Podcast was started largely because of the impact of tech, AI and cybersecurity on communities of color, working class and immigrants, and none of the big players in the industry have it on their radar. Our conversation today is on...

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