Podcast Episode Rerelease: Dr. Seuss Warned Us
Deeplinks 2025-03-23
Summary:
This episode was first released on May 2, 2023.
We’re excited to announce that we’re working on a new season of How to Fix the Internet, coming in the next few months! But today we want to lift up an earlier episode that has particular significance right now. In 2023, we spoke with our friend Alvaro Bedoya, who was appointed as a Commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission in 2022. In our conversation, we talked about his work there, about why we need to be wary of workplace surveillance, and why it’s so important for everyone that we strengthen our privacy laws. We even talked about Dr. Seuss!
Last week the Trump administration attempted to terminate Alvaro, along with another FTC commissioner, even though Alvaro's appointment doesn't expire until 2029. The law is clear: The president does not have the power to fire FTC commissioners at will. The FTC’s focus on protecting privacy has been particularly important over the last five years; with Alvaro's firing, the Trump Administration has stepped far away from that needed focus to protect all of us as users of digital technologies.
We hope you’ll take some time to listen to this May 2023 conversation with Alvaro about the better digital world he’s been trying to build through his work at the FTC and his previous work as the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University Law Center.
Dr. Seuss wrote a story about a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher whose job it is to watch his town’s one lazy bee, because “a bee that is watched will work harder, you see.” But that doesn’t seem to work, so another Hawtch-Hawtcher is assigned to watch the first, and then another to watch the second... until the whole town is watching each other watch a bee.
You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive and on YouTube.
To Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, the story—which long predates the internet—is a great metaphor for why we must be wary of workplace surveillance, and why we need to strengthen our privacy laws. Bedoya has made a career of studying privacy, trust, and competition, and wishes for a world in which we can do, see, and read what we want, living our lives without being held back by our identity, income, faith, or any other attribute. In that world, all our interactions with technology —from social media to job or mortgage applications—are on a level playing field.
Bedoya speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about how fixing the internet should allow all people to live their lives with dignity, pride, and purpose.
In this episode, you’ll learn about:
- The nuances of work that “bossware,” employee surveillance technology, can’t catch.
- Why the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) isn’t the privacy panacea you might think it is.
- Making sure that one-size-fits-all privacy rules don’t backfire against new entrants and small competitors.
- How
Link:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/podcast-episode-rerelease-dr-seuss-warned-usFrom feeds:
Fair Use Tracker » DeeplinksCLS / ROC » Deeplinks