When a woman gets attacked online, it's a woman, it's your children, it's her mother, it's her sisters. Like that will shut us down. There are no girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm bridget Todd and this is there are no girls on the Internet. With historic numbers of women running for state white office, also comes a sobering reality that those same women are more likely to be targeted online. For it.
It's not just women running for office. We've seen educators, election workers, and their families being targeted. Now this doesn't just harm the women being harassed and attacked, It's also meant to keep us from being able to fully participate in civic life. It's an attack on our democracy and it's dangerous. I'm Shanna Delabu and I am the CEO
of Bright Lines. Shanna is used to dangerous work. She learned about how the internet works and used what she learned to train law enforcement officials on how to target and combat violent drug cartels. So I worked on Mexico and like the drug cartels, and this was like two thousand and ten, twousand eleven. They were doing a fair amount of killing journalists citizen journalists, and so yeah, I was really deep into that side of the work. So
it was really fulfilling. Shanna became an expert on p i I personal identifying information and eventually started working to support journalists, activists, and civil society in places like the former Soviet Union to try to maintain a sense of democracy amidst a crumbling empire. And then in the United States, Trump was elected and her work became that much more
relevant and in demand at home. And Trump got elected and people in America finally wanted my services, and then around more and more people were concerned about their information online.
So the stuff that I've been training law enforcement on ten years prior started to become really important to people here understanding that they had a lot of p I I out there on all of these data broker sites and people's search sites, not facial recognition sites, and how could they get that down so that people couldn't do them harm? And so in twenty one we got a little bit of seed funding and I started bright Lines
in August of last year. Something that I read about your work is that it's I guess I'm at youth the phrase like trauma informed, like you have, you you kind of bring that lens to the work that you do, which I feel like so often when I have conversations about technology and the Internet and how to stay safe, the word trauma never even enters the conversation. And yet trauma is really like a I think oftentimes a part
of that experience. Absolutely, it is a magnifier. Its scales trauma, just like it's scale than anything else, the way that it's built to be so exclusive to a certain kind of experience, to exclude that the lived experiences of the people who are using it. It's just like this thing
on its own can create trauma, can magnify trauma. And then if you're going through something traumatic because of the Internet, it ignites a trauma response and the human being that can't you can't do anything about it, right, You can't
go to help. There's no help, right. And and it's so approximate because like your phone is under your pillow at night, is mine under my pillow at night because I fell asleep listening to my podcast, I don't wake up my family, so like it's right here in my ear, and to wake up and see like a flood of messages of people who are angry with me. Is triggering and like not triggering in the sense of like it's a trigger warning, it might bring back memories and triggering
of an autonomic response. Yeah, I had a trauma experience when I was living in so I spent a summer in Mexico. I was attacked when I was there, was stabbed by a man just in like a random like and he wasn't even trying to rob me a situation. Um. And when I came home, I had a lot of night terrors, was diagnosed with PTSD. It took me a few years to finally sleep through the night and feel
comfortable in my own skin. And I brought that experience, could see it and everybody that we worked with overseas UM and I can see it in the movement work that we do now. And I can see it with the people who come to us for support because they're afraid of being docks or they bend docks. It is everywhere, the trauma and like, how do you how do we how do we keep like lining these rich white dudes pockets for technology that's like causing so many of us actual harm. So fun, I mean, I I it's it's
the reality of the work. And I think that you're so right that we keep allowing the rich white dudes to create and get rich off of technology that causes harm while not even like not even they don't even have to reckon with that, that they can just sort of pretend like like what harm, what trauma. It's like the way that we've allowed wealthy tech folks who are mostly white men to get rich off of our harm and turn our lives into like a marketplace for negative,
harmful experiences. It infuriates me to no end. My friends or Raya Shinali always says, these guys named Jack on the board of Twitter, they're making money every time someone close after me, because like there are more men named Jack than women on the board, and every time someone tweets bullshit at me, they make money. And I don't think we say that enough. I don't think that we
hit on that enough. There's zero accountability around them, right, we know they don't let their own children use these tools, but love it when ours do. Have you zero conscience? Great? Great? Yeah, more impactful than any nation state. You know. Now you have more breadth and more money than any of us. So it's awesome. It's awesome times. There was once a time where I thought digital security kind of began and ended with protecting my credit card information or my social
Security number from scammers. But today the real threat is so much more than that. So for folks listening, can you give us a definition of doxing? Yeah? Yeah, I think the really sort of bare bones definition is anything that is private being published publicly in some way. So a lot of times docks sing means your private documents, Like that's where the docks comes from. UM in the beginning, I think folks consider that to be just like social
security numbers or credit card and m rs. We spoke with a legal team that was working with an abortion provider last week who is she has UM. She works with the public university in the Midwest, and so they were concerned about the public records requests they were getting and saying, okay, so we have to fulfill these requests. What if her information might be p i I personally
identifiable information that could be docked? Right, They were thinking about like that, like credit card numbers, social security numbers, and so we briefed them on just the amount of data we would call p i I. So again, personally identifiable information that could lead to a dox um. I'd say the biggest threat of doxing is someone showing up at your home. The next threats are people making like
threatening phone calls, are sending threatening texts. We had a client who was receiving photo texts of guns, guns laid down on the bed with the accompanying message that I'm coming for you. Sometimes it's messages to their loved ones, particularly if they're women, women of color, other intersectional identities.
That threat gets spread out, so the docs will happen to their children, to their loved ones, their partner, their parents, right their mother's it's usually it's usually other female presenting people um and so those numbers might get shared, or those email addresses might get shared, or those home addresses. We spoke to a client today who was like, I don't own my home, but I helped my mother buy their her home, and I'm worried about that part. I
don't want anyone going after my mom. That's pretty common, right, So when someone gets kind of chewed up by this outrage machine, they're looking for any way to find a way to them in their personal life. So as we were explaining to these lawyers, like you need to think about is that person's cell phone number in their signature block on the emails that they're asking for. Is their
personal email address? In there are their photos of their newborn child that they might have shared with their colleagues at work. Is the name of the child out there, because especially with abortion providers UM child Protective Services will get called on them and they can't do that if they don't know the name of the kid. So in that case, they're looking for a way to get to you. And doxing would just mean publishing that someplace. Docksmen is
a really popular place for that. There are other doxing only websites and sometimes folks do that on Twitter. Sometimes they do them their own websites. Sometimes they you know, do it on Telegram or Kiwi Farms or a chan or you know the kind of cow places. Yeah, such a cesspool of crap. You call it the alternate more being nice, but I just generally call it like the cesspool. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's pretty sad. And I think something that I so in doing the podcast, I think I had a little bit of a shift and how I understand doc saying and the kinds of attacks and harassment that particularly marginalized people can face. I always thought that it was like, you know, who, who am I like, no one's ever gonna want to come after me. I'm not really like, like who who would want to who would spend their
time finding this information? And something that people say again it again, it's like you never know what's going to be the thing that gets you on the wrong side of the wrong like gets you on that bad side of the wrong side of the internet. You really never know, and so be proactive to protect yourself. You never know when it's going to be your turn in the barrel. That's what we always say. The outrage machine loves to
pick off an individual. It's like so hungry it needs to be fed, and like individual people get thrown in there and sometimes for nothing. Do you know, like did you see that this? Maybe not this? The Warby Parker customer service was fielding a bunch of threatening um calls and threats to docks because because Barby Parker wasn't advertising
I think on Dan Bongino's website anymore. The women being targeted are not usually big, flashy public figures or well moneyed or well connected They're just regular people who wanted to serve the public. Back in. Educator Cecilia Lewis didn't even know what critical race theory was, let alone had she been hired to teach it to school children in the Cherokee County School District in Georgia, where she had
just been hired as a school administrator. But that didn't stop groups from organizing online to run her out of town and run her out of the next town where she was hired to teach. This teacher, Oh my gosh, I've been thinking about this pro public article. This teacher Cecilia Lewis, she was an educator. I heard the story I have went down to work in Georgia. The people assumed she was there to teach critical race theory. They asked to see, oh, Louis, what's c r T is?
She's like culturally something, some sh she was not her gender, and then they followed her to her next job in Georgia. It's just like, why you know that you're just looking for a scapeboat all the time. Um, you know, so you never know if it's because you helped to update a Wikipedia article that someone is going to be angry with you or you tweet something that gets taken out of context, or you know you're an election official. Yeah,
your mom a mint. Yeah, Oh my god. Shay and Ruby Freeman their testimony, I mean, this is such a tangent, but their testimony and the January six commission broke my heart, like people showing up at her at her grandmother's house, Like it was heartbreaking. Anybody who's who has an ounce of empathy could feel that they did nothing wrong. They were doing a job and not exactly like a glamorous or high paid or like well well compensated around the
all around, or even like well appreciated job. They're doing a pretty tough and thankless and hot job and probably not getting paid very much for it. And that's the things they got. Yeah, I mean, And in that testimony they talk about how you know, they weren't drawn to community service, like helping their community, and I think that something is really broken and wrong when the cost of serving your community is being the target of these kinds
of dangerous attacks to your teacher. You're a teacher because you love children, because you believe that like the next generation needs all of love and Karen, like just support that they can get and then someone accuses you of being a groomer, and that's the end of your life as you know it. Like what the hell is wrong of people? Like if you've got some kind of grievance about what's happening for you, that's like yours, right, but it's like you you can go and project it on
other people all you want. But in an age where political tensions are clearly very high, we have more guns, and we have people in this country, and we have all this p I I available. Like I said, I started working on this ten years ago. The amount of data now versus then, it's exponentially more that's out there. You can find anything on anybody that's not that's we've I think we've gone a little bit too far swinging in that direction. Oh yes, let's take a quick break
at our back. We already know that women, especially black women in and women of color, have long been targeted, harassed, and attacked, but Shauna says it wasn't until the issue started impacting powerful white men and their families that legislators and tech companies really started paying any attention at all.
In addition to poll workers like Shaye and Ruby Freeman, who are black women being harassed and threatened after Trump baselessly claimed that they had helped rig the election against him. In Georgia, Tricia Rathnsburger, the wife of Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raethinsburger, started getting threatening text messages and the militia group the Oathkeepers, showed up outside of her home.
Her daughter in law's home was broken into, and what Tricia says was an attempt to intimidate her and her family. So many things to say. First of all, we don't have these tools because up until a year or two ago, this only happened to women and women of color and people of color and people who were not white men.
It only started happening to white men, I'd say, in with Brad Raeffinsburg, and even then it was his wife that was getting all the hate, right, Like, it didn't happen to people who mattered to people, right, And by people, I mean legislators and tech companies. Those are then they're run by the same group of people, so zero empathy, right, We're not people to them. Fine, so this was happening
to just us, great, so not a real concern. The police would tell folks all the time, like, oh, just get the Internet, as though that were possible, because again fundamentally don't understand. It's not happening to me. I don't
have to worry about it. Then you have all of these legislators who refused to understand how technology works, and because of Citizens United, have been running their campaigns on tech donations, and how can they possibly regulate them without without having to do something, you know, like to piss off their money bags. They're like Daddy Warbucks, right dot com? So like, now now there's more political will for it, because again we're starting to see the political islands amp
of because there's so much data out there. But I would argue bridget and I don't see this anywhere else. And I don't understand why all of these pieces of legislation that are getting proposed now carve out states selling data to data brokers. To start with, it is state agencies, whether they're d m vs, that's pretty well documented, um, if their utilities, if their law enforcement databases that are getting sold to data brokers who are then selling them
back to us. If it's like ICE or some other federal agency, but they're also selling them to data brokers, just to make sure I understand. So, state agencies, the d m V, my utilities company, my pepco, whatever, there might be the ones who are selling this data and making money off of it that is putting people at risk. They are the ones that are doing it. Okay, So if you can't tell what Shana just said that it's actually our public services and state agencies, the places that
we all have to deal with. We want the heat or the power or the water turned on in our apartments or just registered to vote, are also the same places selling our sensitive data. Floored me. I just had no idea that that's one way that our information is being put out there. This is shocking information to me. You're probably like, oh yeah, buckle up gets worse. But I think that would be shocking information to most people. Right. You would never know it until you went to FOYA
and I read. So the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown did this two year um research projects. They published it earlier this year called the American Dragnet, and their list of sources is just like the FOY at all of these agencies across I think it's twenty states, something like Remarkable that sold their law enforcement databases two ice.
That was their specific focus. I'd say, in addition to utilities, we know the courts sell court records, and those usually like so you imagine that you get a parking ticket. Because I lived in DC and I can never remember which side of the street is street cleaning this week, I get a parking ticket, and then there's a traffic court date if I want to go. I don't even
think about it. A ticket, it's like done. But there's a record right that has my name, my home address, the then number of my car, probably my date of birth, the information from my driver's license, plus my car, and so that's a court record that would get sold. So then what happened? Someone wants to follow Like the thing that terrifies me the most with these election officials. What they were describing was that people would wait for them in the parking to leave, They would follow them, take
pictures of their license plates. They don't have to follow them home. They could then just go online, pay twenty bucks and find out that person's home address, telephone number, whatever, because they had the license plate of that person. That's I mean, that's the idea that we've Yeah, I mean I did that we've we've I guess there's an expectation that governed that you're you know, state and local agencies
like that would be invested in keeping you safe. But I guess that's just not the case, not at all. I don't think that they even think about that. I think they feel what's killing me is that we pay taxes. So like before data brokers approached any of these agencies and said, hey, can you sell me your assessor database so I know who lives where and I can put it on block shopper because I'm I'd love to add that, inform me whatever. Like before that happened, these agencies ran
just fine on our tax dollars. If the issues there have budget shortfalls because we don't pay enough in taxes, like, well, we're still paying for it, you know what I mean. Like in most cases, what is heartbreaking the ironic is that they're not even charging the value of it, like
twenty dollars. Well, what I mean, DC says, it's entire voter file for two bucks that includes Supreme Court justices, Like she's not really big people living this still, and so I see laws like God bless her esther salis of federal judge in New Jersey whose son was murdered in an attack on her home that the guy was
looking for her killed her son, shout her husband. My family has experienced a paying that no one should ever have to endure, and I am here asking everyone to help me ensure that no one ever has to experience this kind of pain. Judge to her, Salas's story is as tragic as it is terrifying. In July, an assailant came to Judge Salis's home and her twenty year old son answered the door. Her son was shot and killed.
Her husband was also shot, but he survived. The primary suspect was roy Den Hollander, a self proclaimed quote anti feminist lawyer known for things like bringing unsuccessful lawsuits against nightclubs for having ladies nights and colleges for teaching women studies courses. He had previously gone before Judge Solace and in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the male only
military draft. Hollander died by suicide after being named a suspect in the attack, and after his death it was revealed that he was also planning an attack on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In response, Judge Salace champions Daniel's Law, legislation specifically designed to protect personal information about active and retired judges, law enforcement officials, prosecute earth, and their immediate family members from being made public. She drafted Daniel's Law
that was passed in New Jersey. They brought it to the federal you know, to the to the federal level, and um it just it carved out two things. First of all, it carved out allowing their addresses, so they had to be flagged on a database if they were a federal judge or some other kind of judicial person, but never was it that they had to hied that information.
So like if DC flagged the federal judge, or in this case of New Jersey, if if Esther Salace herself was flagged, she would never show up on a public like on a database, on a on a website, you could never search for her name and find her, search her address and find her. But what they don't seem to understand is that New Jersey would just sell the full database and while she was flagged to not show up on their public facing website, there's no protection of
her if the whole filed gets sold. So they don't seem to get that right. And even with this a d p P A like the American Data Privacy Protection Act, I think I don't remember entirely what it stands for. But they carve out state agencies. They're not considered. They don't even consider them when it comes to who's selling the data to data brokers, let alone consider like what a data broker is and how they would self identify.
I don't know if you've ever seen these tech companies when they get squirrely asked like are you a media company? Are you a tech company? That? And they will not say because they don't have to because and they'd be regulated like what they are, and they just won't do it. These data brokers aren't going to Tons and Reuters is a journalism company that also has Data of mind for twenty five years as like a dorm address for me
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm like, I didn't even have utilities, they don't sell phone, how do you have this address? So yeah, I like to call it commodification without consent because they just keep selling it. And I think I was saying this. California sells its entire d m V database for like thirty million dollars, like they grossly undervalue their own act. It's like, how it's so fucked up, so fucked you know we're gonna just like sell us out.
Could you at least make enough mind? Yeah, like make enough money that like, oh, you'll pick the roads. It's like what, like why why do I sell potholes if you're like you know you're gonna pull that ship, and then I still have to live with like your bullshit roads. Exactly. I can die and try continually, so you tell me if that's enough, or you have follow up questions there. It's just so frustrating for them. They just don't get it, or if I don't, I can't see how they understand.
And by day I mean legislators that like maybe a child Protective Services database doesn't need to be sold to spoke you, doesn't need to be sold to Thompson readers. Maybe that's something that could be protected because it fucking matters that it's protected, Like who needs to see that? No, nobody,
nobody needs to know. And I think it just speaks to this idea of like do we want to live in a world where everything, even our most sensitive information about ourselves our children is for sale, has a price, I would argue no, I would argue some things shouldn't be for sale, particularly by my state and local uh government, not without my consent. People still shoot with the bathroom door closed until that changes, I would argue that, no, they you get to make that decision for themselves, and
this is not that we don't get to decide. You have to have an ID to get on an airplane, to drive a car, you have to have an idea to get into a bar, like you have to have identifications CONU no option there, So that they're selling in our I D information because some private company is fucking mind blowing thinking, how are you supposed to have heat?
You can just freeze because you can't. You don't want your information to be sold to some conglomerate, which, by the way, that conglomerate gave Equifax, gives Equifax all their data to sell them straight because in the nineties they didn't understand the ramifications of the amount of data they were collecting and of those five utilities or so um, you know, millions tens of millions of Americans data these Equifax was charged with building the database to put it
all together. And in exchange it got the soul rights to sell it to third parties. The nine needs. No one probably thought anything of it because they were dumb. We did, we didn't know who knew. Apparently these guys at Tago Facts are like this sucking money. Look all this data is going to mean something someday, so evil, so evil. I'm happy that we are starting to get services and tools that are better than just like, oh
do this to that, like piecemeal solution. What kind of services does the bright Line offer for folks who are running for office, who are activists, who you know might be wanting to protect themselves online. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so yes. So to my final to the last point, I want to just say, the narrative, the consistent narrative is that you did this to yourself, you operating on the Internet and your social media in in being on Facebook or posting this information. This is why your data
is out there. You did this to yourself. And that is such a bald faced lie and absolute bullshit. And it's the same story we hear from tech over and over. It has nothing. We didn't do anything wrong. So first and foremost, like if your p I I is out there. It's nothing you did, more than likely unless you took a photo of your driver's license, and most people don't do the kind of ship so even then wouldn't have been scraped by most of the databases, if not all
who have it. So don't believe that lie. First, what do we do at bright lenes So I think when you talk about delete me, there's another one called Canary. There are other services like that Privacy Duck used to exist that would helps scrape your information from data broker sites. That is low hanging fruit. For the most part, those sites will opt your information out at least for a while.
Uh they've been they do pop it back up right and so you can go through and do that kind of whack a mole with them across these hundreds of sites. So you can pay someone to do it with the body and some human interaction, and that's relatively inexpensive. It is not easy, however, to get your information down at the core, and that is what we do, like we
go to the root of the public record. What's really difficult about the work we do is that it takes so much follow up cajoling, like being a really nice like white lady and you know, I see that you love Jesus me too. Would you put abortion doctors ship off your website? Literally conversation we had this week. Um, blessings was her response. In any event, Like, there's a
lot of kind of following up there. We have no protections, right like section to thirty well hated among privacy activists is like this shield for the content that's on a website that the website owner isn't responsible for the content that gets placed there. So, like we were talking about at the start of the hour, like no accountability, and that is the upper you know, the modus operandi of
this industry. There's no accountability public records. Um. That is where we're different than anyone else because we don't want you to keep coming back. Um. Other services are designed to keep having to knock your information down. That's that's just not how we like to operate. So say a candidate, an activist, a journalist, UM, a medical doctor, in some cases a climate a climate scientists will come to us and say, hey, I'm worried about these pieces. My mom
owns a home, I own this farm. Because that's the thing that actually a handful of our clients farms like I started a company, registered it in my name and my home address, I'm registered to vote in this state. That I'm worried about that, and um, they'll ask, you know, what do I do? I've been getting some messages online
that bother me. Or I'm afraid that because my work is in race equity, I will and I have a little child at home, or I have several children at home, or I'm Chinese American and that's our latest like hate flavor, right, So what can I do? So we'll take a few minutes with them to understand their concerns. Um, talk through what has happened and what they're what's coming up for them in their lives, and then the areas where and by that I mean like are they going to speaking publicly,
are they publishing something, etcetera. And then talk with them about you know, who's at home, who they want to protect, what they want to protect. Sometimes it's an identity. Sometimes it's an identity or a previous marriage that they don't want folks to know about, or it's they have little
children or with their mom right or their grandma. And so what we'll then do is take like a delete me and start scrubbing the low hanging fruit that's on the data broker sites and then use a handful of frankly arcane legal mechanisms to try to compel a website to remove their information and or an agency. So we'll often tell folks to put their home in a revocable trust,
which isn't an easy thing to do. To find an estate lawyer who understands your privacy concerns, can help you name your trust in a way that wouldn't immediately identify you, um. And then to understand, like what that updated filing looks like on a d C d C d C R a's website right, or on Jefferson County or Marion County's website. Um, would the website also have the addendum that's like this was this and now it's this, Like is there a transfer of sale? What does all of that look like?
So in some cases we asked them for revocable trust for folks who can afford it, we talked to them about using an LLC because that's more um, it's more coverage, it's more protection. It's just harder with capital gains. Folks lose out on the gains of their of their money and and sometimes of their investments. Sometimes the mortgages mortgage companies won't lend to an LLC, so there's more complexity
than it is necessary there. Um, the point is to create a firewall between your name and your home address. That's are like number one, always, always always, because with our clients who have successfully put their homes and trusts, we see the amount of data across the board nose dive within a few months. It's expensive, it's a high barrier to entry, and it sucks that that's the case. We just should maybe not be selling that data point blank, you know, like just don't. It doesn't need to be
online everywhere. Then we'll talk to folks about voter records because those are often those voter files get sold to lots of people and there is no like drm Like if you sell it to a campaign, there's nothing stopping that camp and a campaign can buy it right Like, there's a lot of cases they are perfectly protected buyer of a voter file. They need it, but there's nothing
stopping them from selling it down the line. Most are scrupulous they wouldn't do that, but not everybody's like that, And so then that there's one state Colorado that allows someone to file as a register as a confidential voter. In no other state does that exist. So there we try to work with an address confidentiality program that's set up for survivors of domestic violence and intimate partner rounds, not for just like regular folks. Not all states have them.
Not all would be flexible enough to allow a person who's just being taunted online or threatened with boxing um to apply and to have their application improved. In some states it's possible. And what that does is shield the home address. People have an alternate address that would forward the mail to their home if they wanted. It shields their home address from the DMV, and it shields their home address from a voter record. So you basically are
hiding from the government and it's really difficult and expensive. Ways. Yeah, I mean, it's I'm so grateful that you're providing these services to people, but I and I really admire the tools that you all are building. But part of me wishes that you didn't have to be, you know, doing less like do you do you do? You see a situation where that's ever the case, where we have the kind of world where the kind of tools that you
offer folks just aren't necessary. I mean Europe under g DPR m hm, they can do a round of like a delete me and for the most part their information scrubbed. More after a quick break, let's get right back into it. G d p R, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a regulation that came into effect in that aims to enhance control and rights over individuals personal data across Europe. We had a client there, they moved their principles moved to the US with the client is a UK based company,
and they were like, what are you all doing? Why do they have so much of your data? Why? Why are your own agencies betraying you? And I was like, yeah, no, you're right, Um no, I'd love it. I'd love it if we had a federal piece of federal legislation in place that protected us, if we had a whole suite of tools, if we had recourse, if we had an agency like the FTC that could actually have some teeth, if we could file lawsuits. Do you know that meant
something like these fines? Even on my biggest complaint with GDPR is the findes that these companies get. They're just like cost of doing business. Like, what's thirty million, what's three million? Not that much to them? Like, I don't think I don't think the fine is the way that it works, you know, I think there needs to be um. Yeah, the only way through this is for there to be a consideration on state agencies selling data. And first we
have to admit we have a problem. Just you know, step one, admitting to yourself another person this, this is a big problem. Yeah. When people are having to go to like go through so many hoops just to vote and own property or rent a place or whatever, I would say that's a problem. Yeah, there's no privacy in American any longer. And who's benefiting a bunch of wealthy white men run companies, big corporations. Why are we doing
this to ourselves? How many assassinations? When we have to see before we start to put two and two together, this man showing up at Primla Japauls like outside of her home, terrifying, terrifying, we can find all of those folks. That's not great. And so like when Representative Jopaul when this happened to her, the sergeant in arms, you know, in Congress, was like, oh, here's the money you can
spend to like lockdown your house. It's like, bro, like, if they're already at your house, you've lost Like why not stop them long before they get there. It's like, oh, now you have mouth cancer. We can do this really in big is some difficult thing and it might save you. But if you just brush your teeth for the last thirty years, you wouldn't be here, you know what I mean? Like yeah, just like not Yeah, I would love it if we didn't exist. Don't repeat that to any investor.
Love it if we didn't exist, and thanking that we'll have to for a while. Yeah, I mean, I wonder do you see you know, we've seen more and more like women, LGBTQ folks, folks of color, you know, running for office, which is awesome and like holding public office, which is awesome. But the reality is that these same folks are disproportionately targeted for this kind of harassment. And so I'm wondering, like do you see this as a
gender and race issue? And like do you and do you see it as like I don't know, I just see it as a direct threat to our democracy, Like we can't have a functional democracy. While this is the thing that is happening, we don't anymore arguably, so I this became my like will be in my bonnet In seven from Iowa and a candidate who was against the reprehensible Steve King ring with Kim Weaver dropped out of a race in for a couple of reasons that didn't
really get reported all that well. One she came out of her house one day and there was a for sale sign in the front yard to the government agency and state agencies she was working for had just had their budget cut by the exact amount of her salary. And she was like, well, I'm harming people in my in my office who did nothing wrong, and they're coming
to my home. And then and she dropped out of a race, and I was like, that's no. We no longer live in a democracy if a person can't run out of those fears and someone's going to physically harm her or because we're women, like the way that we for the most part, not to be completely like genderizing this, but like for the most part, women take take a very We take risks in a certain way, will risk not for ourselves necessarily or personal gain, will take risks
for the people around us. The the inverse is true as well. If the people around us are being harmed by our behavior. We've been traded aimed throughout our years of presenting as women that we need to stop whatever we're doing. So that is why when a woman gets attacked online, it's a woman, it's her children, it's her mother, it's her sisters, like that will shut us down because because that's our training, right, So you know, arguably we
don't live in duncracy anymore. I started this because I thought the way that America would survive in some way, shape or form, not necessarily as the democracy we see today, because I don't think it's much of a real democracy. It's founded on like a lot of privilege and on the backs of enslaved people's It's like, I don't care
if that democracy continues. But what I love for our country and like our our communities and our society like globally to look like, would be one where we are actually represented by the people in our communities right in an equitable manner. That's not going to happen if we have to keep electing Joe Biden to fight off Donald Trump. Bless them, he's maybe you know, a really wonderful person, but his lived experiences aren't Kamala Harris's. Do you know
it's not. He has no idea what she's been through in her life. I would much rather see a leader like that who has been had to learn a lot about empathy and the experiences of other people and herself having those inform the policy making. Only then are we gonna start treating people like human beings. We wouldn't see R. V. Wade being overturned if we had been able to elect people who look like us, who had had our lived experiences. It's a complete lack of empathy on the part of
those judges. It's such a cruelty. If you've ever known or a lot yourself lost to pregnancy that you very much wanted I have, Like that is so, it is so cruel what they've done, And like we just wouldn't be there as a nation treating people like non humans. Wouldn't be a hundred or however many hundreds of police officers standing outside of his school, well children were being murdered, because we would see those children as human beings. And I just don't I just don't think that our structures
allow for that at this point. I feel like I've gotten really far afield from bright lines. No, this is I mean, I think it's all It's all related, and I think it makes me feel good that the thing that animates you and motivates you in this work is getting back to that humanity, because it does feel like we've we've take it. We've we've come so far from that.
I feel in our national political conversations and the way that we interact online, like it's so clear that humanity we have just something like somehow gotten lost in the mix completely. There's no seeing each other as human beings anymore. It's like what can I do to satisfy my own feelings of like need or outrage, my own selfishness? Right?
It just really it is not a high point for the citizens of this country by and not even citizens, that's not fair, but like the people who inhabit Turtle Island, that inhabit this space, right, you know, like it's not We're not It's not a high point in our existence as a as a species by any means. And I think that's been fueled by the way our technology has been built. If you look at the beginnings of the Internet and all the hopes for this utopian space and like,
how we could be so connected. I think about being a kid who was just weird. I was just a weird kid growing up in Iowa. I wasn't like other kids, and I didn't know that other weirdos were out there until I got to college, and then I had to go abroad and I found other even and then I came here to d C. And I was like, oh, yeah, you're my weirdos. My nephew is sixteen. He's out as by in Illinois, so like in a similarly very like kind of small Midwestern place, and he knows he's not alone.
He know there are other people out there. He also has to deal with a fair amount of ship that I didn't have to as a kid who didn't have social media and the internet so close, right, But at
least he knows that he's not alone. And I think there was this promise of the Internet being a place where you didn't have to where you would feel connected to other people, and when you can increase your empathy skills and you can understand the experiences of people who weren't like you, and we have gone so far afield
from that. Now it's like this tool to divide whether being manipulated by like Russian or even frankly, like I worked on China, I understood that they also do this work where they intentionally not necessarily be foreign countries but sway influence public opinion online. Like we can be manipulated outside of the country, we can also be perfectly manipulated by our own people. If shinzo Abe can be assassinated in in a country without guns, that's all you need
to know. They don't We don't need to train militias anymong We don't need trade military forces. Frankly, like we need to get inside of the head of one person. All of us have become sleeper cells. That's terrifying. You know what point do you make a bad decision because of something you're sure you heard on like some Q and on YouTube whatever craziness and like there's no you fall down that rabbit hole and where do you from out?
It's true, it's true. And you know something that you said that really sticks with me because it really resonates with my own experiences. You know, I I live in d C. As well, I grew up in Virginia, and um, yeah, I was like the weird kid in a tiny town in the South who I didn't know. I felt very low and I felt very alien. I felt very strange. And the day that my parents brought home a computer and I first got on America online, remember that like
terrible noise, like a awful noise. That was the first time that I was like, Oh, there's other people out there like me, Like I'm not alone. And I know that I would not like the path of self discovery that that set me on. I am so grateful for in my life, and I know that I wouldn't be
where I am now without it. And I feel like the generation that comes before us, I wonder are they having the same experiences that feel like self discovery, that feel like creativity, that feel like safe exploration of who they are? You know, are we leaving behind an internet that is worse or better than the one that I grew up with that that was so impactful for me. I would argue, it's not better, it's not better. It's certainly not better. No, I don't think more is better.
I don't think more images are better. Sinse friends of mine they have a my friend has a stepdaughter who um is in college and bless her. She had to graduate from high school and do a re freshman year, both during like code quarantine, so she got robbed with quite a little bit. She's a really adaptive young woman, bright, beautiful young woman. She finally gets her like trip to Italy over the summer and and creates an itinerary that's
where she can take all of her Instagram shots. That's not how I planned my trip to Italy, And they're like laughing, and it's not how we planned our trips to Italy, Like, that's not how we did our like summer in Europe or whatever privilege cool thing that we got to do, right, Like it's I don't I don't know that her experience was like that much better because she got to go to these like beautiful places and
take these beautiful photos of herself looking amazing. Sure, I'm sure right, And would it have been just as cool as see that my r dwemal like would have been just as cool as you? Like, you know, like could you have had an amazing time that let you down a different path in your life if it weren't so, if you weren't if you hadn't been so focused on what you were doing for the Graham. Yeah, I don't know that it's better. I don't think it's better. And
it doesn't feel safe. It doesn't feel like it's a see place to explore because the ramifications are so real world. It was one thing to feel unsafe because you could be harassed. That's already shitty, But then to know that you'd be out into your parents, your grandparents, like your friends, your people back home, like to a community that you struggle to be part of still because they're bigoted for
whatever reason. Right and and it's no one else's business but your own, Like you get to decide when you come out and blah blah blah. Right, Like to have someone know that about you and then find you I r L and then share it like that's a risk I didn't have to take with the internet. Mm hmm. I could still be my crazy self. You know, no one was ever going to know I called. I lived in Spain for my junior and senior year, trying not
to hate. It was so amazing. I would call my family once a week because that was the long distance plan that they could afford. If still a lot of money to call back then right, um, they had no idea what I was doing. There were no ramifications for the life that I had. I got to live this like fairy tale existence where I got to like leave behind all the family trauma and like all the trauma and like all their stuff and just live my own life for two years. There's a reason I didn't come
home after my juny or you're abroad like this is great. Yeah, I can't there. That doesn't that one that doesn't happen now can't happen now. So yeah, I really wish that the real world ramifications weren't what they used to be, or weren't aren't what they are now for people. Yeah, they were closer to what they used to be, which
was nothing, very little. What you decided to share, what you consented to to be trauma informed and sensitive about it, like for your decisions to inform um the image that the information people get to receive. And we don't live that way now in real life, let along online. Does that make sense? It makes so much sense, It makes all It makes so much sense, And I think that's exactly it. Somewhere along the line. It's like we gave
that up without even really realizing how precious it was. Yeah, yeah. You know a few years ago, my mother in law was living with us. She's disabled, she was sick, and she'd come up here um because she couldn't. You know, North Carolina was one of those states that didn't have um, the Medicaid expansion, so she needed she didn't work care
and it was no longer affordable down there. And I remember reading something about how the Girl Scouts had chosen this Pellow Autoon Networks to partner with them to make the cyber security badge. And I would go to look at their board of directors and they're C suite and I'm like, oh, there's one woman. Do I have to tell you what department she was running? Hr? Of course? So right, So like I was like this, these fucking guys, right, And so I'm about to go on a Twitter tirade.
And then I think about Kathy sitting on my front porch and how easy it would be to find her day in and day out, and I cannot. I can't rant like i'd like to, which is a privilege, right, but like to be able to speak my mind. But it's one that most folks assume we have as a an absolute right, and most of us don't, and fewer of us do now that meaning you ever did? Oh? Absolutely,
you know. On the show, we talked to mostly women, women of color, LGBTQ folks, most of whom are involved in things like they're activists or they're like advocating for making technology safer and better and the internet safe or safer and better. I would say probably at least ten different times times I have done interviews, they are in some level of hiding. It's like, Oh, I'm not I'm not in my apartment right now, I'm I'm speaking to you from a safe location. Just recently, someone I had
an interview set with had to cancel. She was like, I've pulled out of all public appearances because of because I'm being attacked by right wing extremists because of my disinformation work with the Biden administration. And it was like the the amount of times that I have heard that story again and again where it's like, oh, yeah, because of my work, my opinions, putting my putting my opinions out there, being civically engaged, I'm not safe. I'm not able to be at home. I'm in I'm in a
safe place. You're speaking to me from a safe house. Maybe you're not speaking to me at all, Like it has happened again and again and again, and I think it really says something about the state of play that we're at right now. Oh yeah, Like if they can't be civically engaged, then no, we aren't living in the democracy. That's violence against women in politics from top to bottom.
Right you can happen to him and being like politically assassinated who are running for office, who are part of a party, who are in office, and it also means that women can't participate. That is the same level of API in my mind, like you're not. Yeah, we are not. This is not a democracy. And I think the sooner. He said to my husband the other day, I was like, what do you think of civil war would look like
in America on the twenty one century? And he's like this, I think we're living it, I think, and we just don't realize it for the most part. Yet this is it, Like we are not in a position where I cannot believe. So if you have other guests who are in this position who need help, please feel free to send them our way. We don't we're not cheap, and we can get in touch with different funds for different kinds of
activists and journalists to help pay for things. Because it makes me sick, and I'm not surprised this is where we are. This is why we started this, because I believe we're more than we are acting like we are right now as a species. I believe that we're more than what we're doing right now. And I won't stop being hopeful and I won't stop being optimistic about the future of humanity, UM, and I won't stop fighting for
us to be more. And this is one small way that I feel like we can start to move towards more evolved, more human, more kind, more whatever the word is. Um. Yeah, we're more than we are. It's twenty per century moment. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to say Hi. You can be us a hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Brigittad. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Donathan Strictland as our executive producer, Tara Harrison as our producer, and sound engineer, Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm host Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. H