This week on That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin sit down with Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to talk about the power structures hiding in plain sight across the internet, money, surveillance, and AI. Cindy breaks down what EFF actually does and why access to the internet is not just an infrastructure problem, but a civil liberties issue that shapes who gets heard, who gets tracked, and who gets left out.

We get into how mass surveillance quietly became normal, from license plate readers to cell phone tracking, and why most people would be genuinely shocked if they saw the full picture. We also look ahead at financial surveillance, using Europe’s move toward a Digital Euro as a case study, and ask where legitimate oversight ends and control begins. On the AI front, Cindy pushes back on the idea that privacy is already lost, and explains why treating opaque systems as inevitable only benefits the most powerful actors. Cindy makes a clear case that defending digital rights does not require being a technologist or a lawyer. It starts with staying skeptical, asking hard questions, and refusing to accept tools we are not allowed to understand or challenge. That is exactly why this conversation mattered, and why we were so glad to have her on.

Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and previously served as EFF’s Legal Director and General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. She has been involved with EFF since 1993, when she served as lead outside counsel in the landmark Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice case, a successful First Amendment challenge to U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Her work has been widely recognized, with honors from Forbes, The National Law Journal, and The NonProfit Times for her influence in technology, law, and civil liberties. She is also the co-host of EFF’s podcast, How to Fix the Internet, and the author of Privacy’s Defender, published by MIT Press. More information about the book can be found at https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262051248/privacys-defender/

Today Kevin and Laura chat with Bala Muthiah, Director of Engineering at Lyft, to talk about what leadership looks like when your product moves real people through the real world. Bala shares his path from immigrating to the U.S. to leading teams responsible for systems that make time-sensitive decisions at massive scale, and how those experiences shaped his views on power, responsibility, and trust in technology.

We talk about what privacy and safety actually mean at scale, where data is not abstract and mistakes have real consequences. Bala is candid about where rideshare platforms have improved, where industries such as these still struggle, and how leaders decide where to draw hard lines around data use even when the tech makes it more possible. The conversation also gets into the human side of engineering. How do you push for speed and performance while building teams that care about ethics, psychological safety, and consent? Bala shares how AI can be used to surface collaboration risks, why that can feel uncomfortable, and how transparency and boundaries matter just as much as capability.

Bala Muthiah leads teams that power real‑time decision systems for millions of users. An immigrant from India turned Silicon Valley leader, he’s also a startup advisor, nonprofit board member, and mentor across multiple platforms. Bala blends technical expertise with people‑first leadership and community impact—showing how to scale teams, startups, and even personal growth with empathy, innovation, and AI.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this conversation are personal and do not represent the views of his current or former employers or affiliated organizations.

This week, we sit down with Al Pascual, CEO and founder of Scamnetic, to talk about fraud from the inside out. Al didn’t come up through product or engineering. He started his career chasing real fraud cases, shaped early on by parents who were cops and a first job in a bank fraud department. That hands-on experience is what pushed him from treating fraud as “just a job” to seeing it as his lane.

We get into the scam patterns that worry him most right now, including pig butchering and sextortion schemes that still aren’t getting enough mainstream attention. Al makes a clear case that fraud isn’t primarily a data or tooling problem. It’s a human one. Psychology, pressure, shame, and timing matter more than most defenses want to admit. When a big fraud story hits the news, he explains how coverage often misses the point by focusing on the tech and ignoring the manipulation. Al shares one of the strangest cases he’s worked, and what it taught him about how creative and absurd fraudsters can be. We also tackle the reality of AI-enabled scams, including voice cloning. How common is it really, and who’s actually at risk? Kevin is skeptical he’d fall for it, while Laura shares a story about a friend losing $500 to a gift card scam, a reminder that real people get caught all the time. This one is a grounded, sometimes funny, and occasionally unsettling look at how fraud really works, and why understanding people matters as much as understanding systems.

A recognized expert on cybercrime, Al Pascual is the CEO and Founder of Scamnetic. Scamnetic is a software solution for scam detection and protection that uses AI to analyze incoming communications in real time and flag or score risk before someone falls for a scam. A successful technology entrepreneur and a former managing executive of Javelin Strategy & Research, Al has spent his career laser-focused on protecting consumers and organizations from financially motivated crimes. His past research on consumer identity theft has been cited by hundreds of media outlets and presented at conferences around the world. Al cut his teeth fighting fraudsters at HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and FIS, where during his time as an investigator, his work resulted in the arrest of more than four hundred suspects.