• • • An award-winning writer and journalist with extensive experience reporting on government accountability, digital culture, privacy, and technology policy. I am a former Washington Post staff writer, who spent years earning frontpage bylines, breaking news from the Snowden cache about how the government uses commercial tracking networks to fuel cyber-intelligence actions, and explaining how John Deere helped lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, among approximately a gazillion other things, while covering technology policy. My work has also been published by Politico, Ars Technica, The Daily Beast, Slate, Protocol and other outlets. I was part of the inaugural 2019 class of Aspen Institute Cyber Journalism Fellows and am a contributing author to the whistleblower guidebook Caught Between Conscience and Career. More recently, I dug into how industry's undue influence at the Federal Communications Commission is leaving us all at risk and broke news about Amazon pitching its real-time facial recognition technology to ICE as an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, was Senior Writer at the investigative non-profit watchdog American Oversight, and covered cybersecurity as Senior Policy Correspondent at The Record.

    • A speaker with experience moderating or speaking at national conferences, in academic settings, and on national television and radio. I've appeared at tech related events including State of the Net and Access Now's Data Privacy Summit, in classrooms or auditoriums from Georgetown Law to the University of Kansas, and as a panelist at pop culture events like Awesome Con. I've also made expert or guest appearances on local and national television, including C-SPAN and MSNBC as well as nationally distributed radio shows such as Science Friday, On Point, and PRI's The World.

    • A visual and performing artist who creates interesting things. My personal projects range from a card game based on 500 year-old woodcuts of dancing skeletons and liveshows about the history of murder ballads to portraits of failed revolutionaries growing with living moss and shower-sized penny installations. My creative work has been featured by DCist, FOX 5, ABC 7 WJLA , 730DC, and in the book Secret Washington, D.C. as well as received shout outs from Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District Council.

    • A community-builder who turns experience into action. I am the founder of MidMountain, a project in constant growth that shares time and space with creatives to build community resilience. In 2019, I was also the lead organizer of Room For More, a movement of local musicians banding together for migrant families, starting with a five show festival raising funds for Immigrant Families Together and featuring more than a dozen musical acts in Washington, DC. I also frequently raise funds for causes through art sales or individual performances. I'm also the songwriter behind MidMountain, the band.

Want to bring me to your university, conference, or event? Contact plaingreatproductions@gmail.com for booking. Find me mostly on Twitter or Instagram.