The Lawfare Podcast

President Trump kicked off the first foreign policy crisis of his new administration by signing an executive order mandating the construction of the much-promised border wall with Mexico, resulting in as-yet-unresolved confusion as to how the wall will be paid for and an ongoing diplomatic scuffle with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Benjamin Wittes spoke with Stephanie Leutert, the Mexico Security Initiative Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and writer of Lawfare's "Beyond the Border" series, to chat about what the wall might look like, how effective it will or won't be, and what this means for U.S.-Mexico relations. 

Direct download: Episode_206.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:54pm EDT

On January 13th, Benjamin Wittes and Emma Kohse released a new paper challenging the assumption that "privacy is an eroding value," worn away by the incessant collection of online data about consumer habits. Their paper, "The Privacy Paradox II: Measuring the Privacy Benefits of Privacy Threats," uses empirical data from Google consumer surveys to study how many people actually experience the technologies often accused of eroding privacy as increasing their privacy instead. 

In an event at the Brookings Institution, Ben sat down with Stewart Baker of Steptoe & Johnson and Amie Stepanovich of Access now to discuss the paper. This week, we're bringing you that conversation on the podcast. 

One note: Ben's opening remarks reference Powerpoint slides containing the survey results, which you can view in the paper itself—available here.

Direct download: Episode_205.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:04pm EDT

Jameel Jaffer, author of The Drone Memos: Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law, joins Jack Goldsmith at the Hoover Book Soiree. 

Direct download: Episode_204.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:35am EDT

In an interview with The New York Times before his intelligence briefing on Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election on Friday, President-elect Donald Trump called the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference a "political witch hunt." In that spirit, we brought Lawfare managing editor Susan Hennessey and former GCHQ information security specialist Matt Tait on the podcast to discuss evidence of Russian attempts to influence the presidential election and Trump's baffling response. 

Direct download: Episode_203.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:08pm EDT

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