Privacy and Governmental Surveillance (at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum 2025)
As governments around the world expand their surveillance capabilities, strong encryption remains a cornerstone for protecting personal privacy, securing business data, and preserving digital rights. For consumers, it guards against identity theft and intrusive monitoring; for businesses, it protects intellectual property and builds trust across global markets. Yet, as governmental pressure to weaken encryption intensifies, critical questions arise: How do we preserve strong encryption standards while addressing legitimate security concerns? Can privacy, innovation, and human rights truly coexist with national security imperatives? And how do we resist the false choice between security and privacy that authoritarian regimes often present? At the Technology Policy Institute’s 2025 Aspen Forum, Shane Tews moderated a panel titled Privacy and Governmental Surveillance with Jeff Greene, Jim Kohlenberger, and Jennifer Huddleston as panelists. Together, they discussed how artificial intelligence is highlighting cybersecurity and privacy concerns and raising tough questions about governmental surveillance.
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The Digital Markets Act Is Undermining the App Economy by Weakening Security and Opening Data Doors (with Graham Dufault)
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is changing the app economy—and not for the better. This law aims to promote competition for European companies by restricting large online platforms’ dominance, which are mostly American. But how is this working in practice? What are the main DMA-related challenges app developers should be aware of? And does the DMA create more problems than it solves? To answer these questions, Shane interviews Graham Dufault, general counsel of the App Association. In this role, he represents small and medium-sized mobile software developers and connected device companies within the app economy. His practical experience with the DMA’s consequences is crucial for unpacking all this and more.
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DNS Abuse and the Economics of Cybercrime (with Karen Rose)
The Domain Name System (DNS)—the system that turns numerical IP addresses into easy-to-read website names—has become highly competitive at the registrar level, with potentially harmful consequences when it comes to leasing domain names for criminal activities. Today, the DNS infrastructure is increasingly exploited for cybercrimes, such as phishing and scams. Why is ignoring the identity of the parties behind the crime more than just a technical DNS infrastructure abuse issue?In this episode, Shane is joined by Karen Rose. Rose was an early architect of internet policy and has had a substantial impact on global web infrastructure as one of the primary Department of Commerce authors of the policy white paper that created the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and a senior executive at the Internet Society. Today, she consults on technology issues focused on securing the next generation of communications infrastructure.
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Interoperability, Data Access, and User Freedom (with Matt Boulos)
As AI systems become central to our digital lives, questions about openness, competition, and user agency are moving to the forefront, and discussions surrounding AI agents have placed system interoperability in the spotlight. Ensuring AI system interoperability isn’t simply a technical challenge; it will determine how innovation unfolds in the AI age. How will AI agents reshape our relationship to personal data? And why is interoperability central to user freedom?Shane Tews is joined by Matt Boulos, head of policy and safety at Imbue, on the latest episode of Explain to Shane. Together they explore the privacy implications of AI agents, how legislative efforts like Senator Mark Warner’s ACCESS Act could safeguard competition and user choice, and more.
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Inside the World of Domains (with Ram Mohan)
As the domain name system expands, how can the industry ensure that this growth supports a multilingual and inclusive internet? What responsibilities come with managing such a critical layer of the internet’s infrastructure in an era of rapid digital transformation?Shane Tews is joined by Ram Mohan, Chief Strategy Officer of Identity Digital, on the latest episode of Explain to Shane. They discuss how internationalized domain names and comprehensive policies can help create a more accessible web for users around the world. They also explore how the domain name system’s evolution intersects with broader Internet governance challenges—and what it means for the future of global connectivity.
Technology has become increasingly important to policy debates, but these debates won’t be productive without an understanding of how the technology in question works. AEI Visiting Fellow Shane Tews interviews tech industry experts to explain how the apps, services, and structures of today's information technology systems work, and how they shape our social and economic life.
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