The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, the impact of the decision on the internet may not have been front of mind for most people thinking through the implications. But in the weeks after the Court’s decision, it’s become clear that the post-Dobbs legal landscape around abortion implicates many questions around not only data and digital privacy, but also online speech. One piece of model state legislation, for example, would criminalize “hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.” 

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future. She recently wrote an article in Wired with Lia Holland arguing that “Section 230 is a Last Line of Defense for Abortion Speech Online.” They talked about what role Section 230’s protections have to play when it comes to liability for speech about abortion and what content moderation looks like in a post-Dobbs world. 

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In recent weeks, we've brought you information and insight about Swedish and Finnish attitudes toward NATO membership, and about Turkey's machinations regarding the two country's applications. But now, Sweden and Finland have been invited to NATO - and member country ratifications are coming in.

To explore the topic deeper, David Priess sat down with Katarina Tracz, the director of the Stockholm Free World Forum (Frivärld) and author of the book in Swedish, The Sea of Peace? Increased Tensions Around the Baltic Sea, and with Minna Ålander, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, where she focuses on Finnish and Nordic security.

They talked about Swedish and Finnish strategic perceptions and military interoperability with NATO equipment, the geopolitical importance of the Baltic sea, specifically the Gulf of Finland and Gotland, and about Swedish and Finnish risk perceptions as they await NATO membership. 

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Earlier this month, the Fulton County special grand jury investigating potential criminal interference into Georgia's 2020 elections subpoenaed members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Senator Lindsay Graham, among others.

To discuss these high profile subpoenas and some of the finer points of Georgia state criminal procedure, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Tamar Hallerman, reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who is covering the Fulton County Trump probe, and who also formally served as the papers Washington correspondent covering the Trump administration. Tamar also hosts a weekly podcast on the special grand jury called The Breakdown.

They discussed the scope of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's criminal probe, how a special grand jury operates in the state of Georgia, what this one has been up to, and what's next for the investigation.

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Global crises of the last 20 years have led to a backlash against elites of all kinds, but those same crises often lay bare just how much power they still have, especially informed policy. Former Lawfare Associate Editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Elizabeth Saunders, an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, to talk about her recent article in the Annual Review of Political Science: "Elites in the Making and Breaking of Foreign Policy."

They discussed questions like who exactly are foreign policy elites, why they behave the way they do, and what, if anything, is the alternative to concentrating power in the hands of an elite few? Bryce and Elizabeth also got into why, when it comes to foreign policy elites, we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot on this show about how falsehoods about the coronavirus are spread and generated. For this episode, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with two emergency medicine physicians who have seen the practical effects of those falsehoods while treating patients over the last two years. Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols are two of the cofounders of the organization No License for Disinformation, a group that advocates for medical authorities to take disciplinary action against doctors spreading misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. They argue that state medical boards, which grant physicians the licenses that authorize them to practice medicine, could play a more aggressive role in curbing falsehoods. 

How many doctors have been disciplined, and why do Nick and Taylor believe that state medical boards have fallen down on the job? What are the possibilities for more aggressive action—and how does the First Amendment limit those possibilities? And how much good can the threat of discipline do in curbing medical misinformation, anyway?

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The “hackers for hire” industry continues to grow unbothered. Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using spyware and other security and privacy circumventing tools to target dissidents and other sensitive targets. But another equally invasive and secretive industry has developed over the last decade, involving the use of foreign hackers to win lawsuits and arbitration battles. 

To discuss this issue, Alvaro Marañon, fellow in cybersecurity law at Lawfare, sat down with Chris Bing and Raphael Satter. Chris is a reporter for Reuters, covering digital espionage and Raphael is a journalist and writer for Reuters, covering cybersecurity. Chris and Raphael recently published an extensive investigation, entitled “How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles”, where they breakdown this hackers-for-hire business model in India. 

They discussed the details around the structure of this marketplace such as how the clients and hackers are matched, the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the various hacking groups, and what the significance of this illicit industry could be for other sensitive communities. 

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We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Democracy means majority rule and public participation. Liberal democracy means democracy plus minority rights. There's no guarantee that democracy will be liberal. And in fact, some of the same things that enable democracy can also undermine its liberal commitments.

Zac Gershberg, a professor of journalism and media studies at Idaho State University and Sean Illing, the host of the Vox Conversations podcast, have recently released a new book, The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion.

In the book, they argue that every democracy is fundamentally shaped by the dominant media technology of its time. And that the current landscape of social media and cable news fuels our democracy, but also pushes it in an illiberal authoritarian direction. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Zac and Sean about how American democracy got to this point, how the present compares to the past, and what, if anything, can be done to put liberal democracy on firmer footing.

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