FEDERAL PREEMPTION OF STATE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor of Law at University of Miami School of Law
A. Michael Froomkin is a professor of law at University of Miami School of Law and an expert in Technology Law (AI, robots, internet, privacy) and Administrative Law. He maintains a personal site at http://law.tm, and is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of JOTWELL - the Journal of Things We Like (Lots).
Job Titles:
- Director of Member Engagement
Aaron directs grassroots outreach for EFF's Development Team. He started in nonprofit development by managing membership at the New England Aquarium in Boston, and in donor operations at the Perkins School for the Blind. Upon returning to wonderful California, Aaron had the privilege of growing EFF's membership program for over eight years before becoming the team director. Aaron's interest in human rights and civil liberties crystallised during his years working with visitors at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles' Little Toyko, which educates the public about the unconstitutional incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. He still carries the spirit of "gaman" perseverance everywhere he goes. He enjoys 70s and/or artsy foreign horror, cake sculpting, and generally making things out of other things.
Aaron works on free speech, anonymity, privacy, government surveillance and transparency. Before joining EFF in 2015, Aaron was in Washington, D.C. where he worked on speech, privacy, and freedom of information issues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law. Aaron graduated from Berkeley Law in 2012, where he worked for EFF while a student in the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. He also holds an LLM from Georgetown Law. Prior to law school, Aaron was a journalist at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree in journalism and English from the University of Arizona in 2006, where he met his amazing wife, Ashley. They have two young children.
Abigail Phillips is a lawyer at DuckDuckGo focusing on Internet and privacy law and policy. A highlight among past roles was a turn as Senior Staff Attorney at EFF. Abigail has also held positions as Head of Legal for Mozilla Foundation and copyright product and policy lead for Yahoo. She was the Berkman Center for Internet & Society's first webmaster and has been passionate about tech policy issues ever since.
Adam Schwartz joined EFF as a Senior Staff Attorney in 2015. He advocates before courts and legislatures against surveillance and censorship. He has represented travelers subjected to warrantless smartphone searches by border officers, dissidents seeking to speak in government social media, and customers of phone companies that unlawfully sold location data. He has filed amicus briefs addressing the right to record on-duty police, perpetual location-tracking of court-involved people, face surveillance by corporations of consumers, and overbroad laws against so-called "cyber stalking." Through FOIA enforcement litigation, he helped expose new information about AT&T's "Hemisphere" phone snooping program. He has worked to pass bills to to protect consumer data privacy, and to stop high-tech surveillance of immigrants.
Previously, Adam worked at the ACLU of Illinois for 19 years, and clerked for Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He earned a J.D. from Howard University and a B.A. from Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Head of Resource Development at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Alberto Villaluna is the Head of Resource Development at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, bringing to the role more than 20 years of experience establishing successful relationships with individual donors, institutional and corporate supporters and increasing stakeholder engagement with mission-driven organizations. In his role at EFF, he provides leadership for all philanthropic, revenue-creation, and partnership strategies to advance EFF's mission and priorities. As a member of EFF's Executive Team, he works with EFF's Executive Director and organizational leadership to create and implement fund development plans that beneficially advance EFF's goals and strategic priorities.
Job Titles:
- Donor Operations Assistant
Alex is a born-and-raised San Franciscan with a nonprofit and arts-focused professional background who is extremely proud to have joined the fighting ranks of EFF. She is here to help our awesome donors and supporters have the best experience possible. Outside of EFF, Alex moonlights as a performing artist and voice actor, and enjoys creating and consuming theater, film, music and vegan snacks. She also likes cats. A lot.
Job Titles:
- Director of Engineering, Certbot
- Engineering and Design
Alexis works to encrypt the web by managing the Certbot and HTTPS Everywhere projects. She researches an intersection of issues on digital rights, encryption, and consumer technology. Deeply passionate about tech equity for all, she has been aiding activists and educators with their tech needs for over a decade.
She has spoken about user privacy, digital identity, cloud security, open technology standards, and government & corporate surveillance. She has worked in web development and application security for 10 year s and has earned degrees from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Technology (BS) and The New School in Organizational Change Management (MS).
Alexy has spent more than a decade using web technologies to solve problems. He is a strong believer in using computing to empower others.
Previously he worked on projects supporting nonprofits and educational institutions, from simple sites to complicated workflows.
Job Titles:
- Accounting Manager
- Engineering and Design
Andrea came to EFF with years of experience in accounting. Prior to joining EFF, she was an Airline Accounts Specialist for MSAS Cargo International. Before that, she was a Bookkeeper for Spectrel International Corp. She likes to travel almost as much as she enjoys playing with the pets in our office.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Attorney
- Engineering and Design
Andrew is a senior staff attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team. He focuses on EFF's national security and privacy docket, as well as the Coders' Rights Project. While in law school, Andrew worked at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and the Center for Democracy and Technology. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University. His interests include Boggle and donuts.
Job Titles:
- Director of Consumer Privacy Engineering for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Andrés is Director of Consumer Privacy Engineering for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His role covers policy and technical work in Privacy and Competition in areas like Drones, Telecommunications, to Online Services. He also oversees projects like Privacy Badger and Cover your tracks, and Cybersecurity issues like forensics investigations.
A Telecom and Electronics Engineer, he previously worked for Mobile Operators managing and developing projects from the Radio and Core networks to IT systems.
Seeing the state of privacy in the digital world from previous experiences, he joins the EFF to help develop tools that address these issues.
Job Titles:
- Contributing Editor
- CEO of Glitch, Board Member
Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, activist and writer recognized as one of the most prominent voices advocating for a more humane, inclusive and ethical technology industry. He is the CEO of Glitch, the friendly community where millions of creators collaborate on making and discovering apps, bots, art, and anything else they can imagine.
Dash was an advisor to the Obama White House's Office of Digital Strategy, and today advises major startups and non-profits including Medium, DonorsChoose, and Project Include. He also serves as a board member for companies like Stack Overflow, the world's largest community for computer programmers, and non-profits like the Data & Society Research Institute, which examines the impact of tech on society and culture, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, which serves girls and families in need in New York City.
As a writer and artist, Dash has been a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Wired, has had his works exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018. In 2013, Time named @anildash one of the best accounts on Twitter, and he is the only person ever retweeted by both Bill Gates and Prince, a succinct summarization of Dash's interests. Dash has addressed events ranging from the Aspen Ideas Festival to SXSW, lectured at universities ranging from Harvard to NYU to Berkeley, made TV appearances on MSNBC and CNN, and guested on dozens of high-profile podcasts.
Dash is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife Alaina Browne and their son Malcolm. Dash has never played a round of golf, drank a cup of coffee, or graduated from college.
Artemis Schatzkin is a front-end web developer who has worked on many of EFF's websites, such as Who Has Your Face?, Cover Your Tracks, this very site you're on, and many more. She also developed EFF's virtual reality site, Spot the Surveillance.
She has a parallel life as a visual artist.
Job Titles:
- Client Platform Engineer
- Development
Still ain't slept, watching law and order and eating handfuls of coco puffs out the box.
Barbara Simons is on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She was a member of the workshop, convened at the request of President Clinton, that produced a report critical of Internet Voting in 2001. She also co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of DoD's Internet voting project (SERVE) because of security concerns. Simons, a former ACM President, co-chaired the ACM study of statewide databases of registered voters, and she co-authored the League of Women Voters report on election auditing. She is co-authoring a book on voting machines with Doug Jones. Simons is retired from IBM Research.
Job Titles:
- Development
- System Administrator Lead
When not doing computer stuff at EFF, Ben works on community wireless networks, open source, and recreational mathematics.
Bennett is a staff technologist on the Tech Projects team. He works with a variety of teams across EFF, focusing on consumer privacy, competition, and state legislation. He also assists with development on Privacy Badger. Outside of work he has hobbies and likes fun.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Law at the University
Bernt Hugenholtz is Professor of Law at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Institute for Information Law (IViR). He is an expert on international and European copyright law, co-author of ‘International Copyright' (Oxford University Press, 2010) and has acted as an advisor to WIPO, the European Commission, and the European Parliament.
Job Titles:
- Investigative Researcher
- Operations
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a Poetician. She co-founded the political movements the Civic Movement in 2009 and the Pirate Party in 2013 and served both as a parliamentarian in the Icelandic Parliament, the latter polling as the largest party in Iceland for a full year. In 2010 her parliamentary resolution tasking the government with transforming Iceland into a Digital Save Haven inspired by a lecture in Iceland in 2008 by the late John Parry Barlow was unanimously adopted in the parliament. She simultaneously founded and served as a chairman for IMMI (International Modern Media Institute). The creation of the IMMI laws is ongoing as the current Prime Minister of Iceland has pledged to fulfill the aims of the resolution. Birgitta inspired the Icelandic Parliament to put together a Committee for the Future and served at the IPU (international Parliamentary Union) in the committee for human rights for parliamentarians. Birgitta co-produced Collateral Murder and worked closely with WikiLeaks during the Chelsea Manning era. Birgitta specializes is 21st century policymaking with focus on direct democracy, freedom of expression, information and digital privacy.
Brad Templeton is Chairman Emeritus of EFF, after two decades of service on the board of directors. He is currently working to assure that EFF stays ahead of the curve on the civil rights implications of emerging and future technologies.
He founded ClariNet Communications Corp., the first Internet-based business. ClariNet published an online electronic newspaper delivered for live reading on subscribers machines. He has been active in the Internet community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days, and in 1987 he founded and edited rec.humor.funny, the world's most widely read computerized conference on that network, and today the world's longest running blog. He has founded two software companies and is the author of a dozen packaged microcomputer software products.
He is track chair for computing and networks at Singularity University, a multi-disciplinary school of rapidly changing technology, and was among the founding faculty. He writes and researches the future of automated transportation at Robocars.com and worked for two years on Google's team building these cars. He is also on the board of the Foresight Institute (A nonprofit Nanotech think-tank) and technical advisor to delivery robot company Starship Technologies, Deepen, Nimbus, DeepMap and others. He is also a well known photographer and artist at Burning Man, and a popular speaker at international events on cars, online rights and other topics.
Job Titles:
- Senior Software Architect
- Senior Software Architect at EFF
Brad Warren is a Senior Software Architect at EFF working primarily on Certbot, a tool for obtaining certificates and automatically configuring SSL/TLS. As one of the core developers of the project, Brad is interested in making security products more usable as we work towards a more private, secure, and encrypted web.
Job Titles:
- Board Member, Entrepreneur, Technologist
- Director and Co - Founder of the Internet Archive
Brewster Kahle, director and co-founder of the Internet Archive, has been working to provide universal access to all human knowledge for more than fifteen years.
Since the mid-1980s, Kahle has focused on developing transformational technologies for information discovery and digital libraries. In 1989 Kahle invented the Internet's first publishing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) system and in 1989, founded WAIS Inc., a pioneering electronic publishing company that was sold to America Online in 1995. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive, the largest publicly accessible, privately funded digital archive in the world. At the same time, he co-founded Alexa Internet in April 1996, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999. Alexa's services are bundled into more than 80% of Web browsers.
Kahle earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. As a student, he studied artificial intelligence with Marvin Minsky and W. Daniel Hillis. In 1983, Kahle helped start Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker, serving there as lead engineer for six years. He is profiled in Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (HardWired, 1996). He was selected as a member of the Upside 100 in 1997, Micro Times 100 in 1996 and 1997, and Computer Week 100 in 1995.
Job Titles:
- Vice Chair of the Board, Entrepreneur, Technologist
Brian Behlendorf has been a fan of the EFF since the early 90's, when he first discovered the Internet as an undergrad at UC Berkeley, and saw both how essential and how fragile digital civil liberties were about to become. He carried that sense of purpose with him as he set up Wired Magazine's first web site in 1993, and then engineered the launch of Hotwired in 1994. In the same spirit of open standards and open source code that built the Net, Brian and 8 other individuals co-founded the Apache Group (and later the Apache Software Foundation), the team that built and gave away the popular Apache HTTP (Web) Server. Simultaneously he launched CollabNet, which brought the principles and tools used by the open source software community to large enterprises.
After 8 years leading CollabNet as its CTO, Brian left to work on the 2008 Obama campaign as a technology advisor, and then at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, developing strategies for open access to data and APIs. Later he advised the Department of Health and Human Services on the launch of two Open Source software projects designed to accelerate the adoption of standards for the exchange of electronic health records. In 2011 he moved to Geneva to start a 20-month stint as CTO at the World Economic Forum, where he rebooted a 30 year old legacy environment with open software and open thinking. Brian is now back in San Francisco, and remains an advisor to the WEF. Brian also is on the Boards of Director at the Mozilla Foundation, Benetech, and CollabNet.
Job Titles:
- Board Member, Security Technologist, Author
- Security Technologist
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a "security guru" by The Economist. He is the author of 14 books -- including the New York Times best-seller Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World -- as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter "Crypto-Gram" and blog "Schneier on Security" are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is also a special advisor to IBM Security and the Chief Technology Officer of Resilient. Photo by Josh More.
Job Titles:
- Artist
- Operations
- Visual Designer
Caitlyn is an artist who brings 10 years of chaotic-yet-versatile creative experience to EFF. She's painted murals and festival installations, built puppets, designed a typeface, made chalk signs for local businesses, and worked as an in-house designer at tech companies large and small. As someone who partially owes her career to lurking around concept art blogs in the early 2000s, she believes in the internet's vast potential to share knowledge, art, and interdisciplinary connection even with its flaws (and overabundance of Javascript). Her EFF work includes Who Has Your Face?, Cover Your Tracks, art for DEFCON, and a multi-year streak of illustrating The Foilies-which, to her great amusement, has given her the chance to have a drawing of a dumpster fire and a toilet in national syndication.
Cara focuses on trademark, copyright, and free speech issues as a staff attorney on EFF's intellectual property team. She also works on EFF's Coders' Rights Project, assisting programmers, developers, and researchers who are helping to build a safer future for us all. Cara came to EFF from O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where her practice focused on trademark litigation and counseling. As a law student, Cara worked on First and Fourth Amendment issues at the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and she was awarded a fellowship in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at NYU School of Law. Cara holds a J.D. from New York University and a B.A. in linguistics from Northwestern University.
Job Titles:
- Associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Legislative Associate
Chao is a legislative associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He assists in EFF's advocacy for a free, open, and accessible internet in state legislatures and Congress.
Job Titles:
- Member Outreach Assistant
As the Member Outreach Assistant, Christian connects with the many members of EFF. Whether it be at conferences or online through email or virtual events, Christian is always happy to chat about the work that EFF does and help members out with whatever they need. When not hanging out with supporters, he enjoys consuming all things Spider-Man, loving on his cats and dogs, and playing various video games.
Job Titles:
- EFF 's International Policy Director
- International Policy Director
Christoph Schmon is EFF's International Policy Director. He bridges EFF's domestic priorities with our international policy strategy and helps to make sure that digital rights are respected and enforced beyond the United States borders. Christoph has deep expertise in EU policy-making and a special focus on international copyright law and online intermediary liability.
Prior to working for EFF, he led the Consumer Rights Team at the EU Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and was appointed member of several expert groups to the EU Commission in Brussels. Christoph has litigation experience and holds a Ph.D in law. He was a researcher at several universities and teaches and writes about consumer law, digital rights, and private international law.
Job Titles:
- President and CEO at Public Knowledge
Christopher Lewis is President and CEO at Public Knowledge, a digital rights nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote free expression online, an open internet, and affordable access to communications technology and creative works. Prior to being elevated to President and CEO, Chris served as PK's Vice President from 2012 to 2019 where he led the organization's day-to-day advocacy and political strategy on Capitol Hill and at government agencies. During that time he also served as a local elected official, serving two terms on the Alexandria City Public School Board. Before joining Public Knowledge, Chris worked in the Federal Communications Commission Office of Legislative Affairs, including as its Deputy Director. He is a former U.S. Senate staffer and has almost two decades of political organizing, campaign, and advocacy experience. Chris graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelors degree in Government and lives in Alexandria, VA.
Christopher is a technologist and happy mutant. He volunteers at Bound Together Bookstore and does community organizing & environmental justice work in Bayview-Hunters Point.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Finance / HR
Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF's Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Ms. Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography.
Ms. Cohn has been named to TheNonProfitTimes 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, honoring 2020's movers and shakers. In 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America's Top 50 Women in Tech. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "[I]f Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.
Job Titles:
- Senior Donor Operations Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Security Researcher and Senior Staff Technologist With the EFF Threat Lab
- Senior Staff Technologist
Cooper is a security researcher and Senior Staff Technologist with the EFF Threat Lab. He has worked on projects such as Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal. He has also performed security trainings for activists, non profit workers and ordinary folks, and given talks about security research at security conferences around the world. He previously worked building websites for non-profits, such as Greenpeace, Adbusters, and the Chelsea Manning Support Network. Cooper was also an editor and contributor to the hacktivist journal, "Hack this Zine." He has spoken at multiple black hat conferences about security issues ranging from IMSI Catchers to Malware attacks against journalists. In his spare time he enjoys playing music and playing with his kids.
Job Titles:
- Legal Director
- Legal Director at EFF
Corynne McSherry is the Legal Director at EFF, specializing in intellectual property, open access, and free speech issues. Her favorite cases involve defending online fair use, political expression, and the public domain against the assault of copyright maximalists. As a litigator, she has represented Professor Lawrence Lessig, Public.Resource.Org, the Yes Men, and a dancing baby, among others, and one of her first cases at EFF was In re Sony BMG CD Technologies Litigation (aka the "rootkit" case). She was named one of California's Top Entertainment Lawyers and was also named AmLaw's "Litigator of the Week" for her work on Lenz v. Universal. Her policy work includes leading EFF's effort to fix copyright (including the successful effort to shut down the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA), promote net neutrality, and promote best practices for online expression. She testified before Congress about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230. Corynne comments regularly on digital rights issues and has been quoted in a variety of outlets, including NPR, CBS News, Fox News, the New York Times, Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone. Prior to joining EFF, Corynne was a litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. Corynne has a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. While in law school, Corynne published Who Owns Academic Work?: Battling for Control of Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Craig Newmark is a Web pioneer, philanthropist, and leading advocate on behalf of trustworthy journalism, voting rights, veterans and military families, and other civic and social justice causes. He founded craigslist, now one of the world's most-visited websites, in 1995; Craig has continued to work in customer service to stay connected to the community of craigslist users. Craig was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013, and the following year he was named "Nerd-in-Residence" by the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation. In 2015, craigslist received an award from the FBI in recognition of its undisclosed cooperation with the Bureau in combatting human trafficking. A year later, he created the Craig Newmark Foundation to promote investment in organizations that effectively serve their communities and drive broad civic engagement at the grassroots level. Amid growing concerns about the proliferation of "fake news" in the course of the presidential campaign, one of the foundation's first donations went to the Poynter Institute to create the Craig Newmark Chair in Journalism Ethics. He became a founding funder and executive committee member of the News Integrity Initiative in 2017. The NII is administered by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and seeks to advance news literacy and increase trust in journalism. In addition, Craig currently serves on the board of directors of a range of nonprofits including journalism, veterans, and women's organizations.
Job Titles:
- Senior Writer, Development
Cristina credits her lifelong love of writing to growing up in the drizzly Pacific Northwest. Prior to joining the full-time fight for Internet freedom, Cristina lived and worked in Los Angeles, where she spent several years in the entertainment industry. Earning a critical studies degree from the USC School of Cinematic Arts meant spending a lot of time staring at walls in the dark, which she still does occasionally. Requiescat in pace, Lil Bub.
Job Titles:
- Finance / HR
- Staff Technologist
- Staff Technologist at the EFF
Daly Barnett is a staff technologist at the EFF. She is also an artist, activist, and community organizer. Before arriving to EFF, she was the founder of t4tech, a trans forward tech collective based in NYC. She is also a part of Hacking Hustling, a sex workers advocacy organization, where her title is Witch.
Daniel works to give EFF's generous donors the best experience possible.
Before joining EFF he worked for a number of other cool nonprofits, including protecting the earth from asteroids with the B612 Foundation, making the world safer for bicyclists as Campaign Manager for America Bikes, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, and teaching children about philanthropy with Common Cents NY.
He has an MPA with a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from the Evans School at the University of Washington and a BA in Sociology from Amherst College. He has been to every movie theater in San Francisco.
Daniel J. Solove is the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is a Senior Policy Advisor at Hogan Lovells. He is also the founder of TeachPrivacy, a company that provides privacy and data security training programs to businesses, schools, healthcare institutions, and other organizations. Professor Solove served as co-reporter of the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law, Data Privayc. Professor Solove is the author of several books, including: Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It (Oxford University Press, 2022), Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security (Yale University Press 2011), Understanding Privacy (Harvard University Press 2008), The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press 2007), and The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (NYU Press 2004). Professor Solove is also the author of several textbooks, including Information Privacy Law, Privacy Law Fundamentals, Privacy, Information, and Technology, and others (all with Paul M. Schwartz). He has written more than 50 law review articles in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, NYU Law Review, Michigan Law Review, U. Pennsylvania Law Review, U. Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and many others. Professor Solove blogs at LinkedIn as one of its "thought leaders," and he has more than 1 million followers.
Job Titles:
- Director of Investigations
As investigations director, Dave researches and writes about surveillance technology, government transparency, press freedoms, the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration enforcement, prisoner rights, and other digital rights issues. He leads the Atlas of Surveillance project in partnership with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is a Reynolds Scholar in Residence.
Job Titles:
- Board Member, Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
- Distinguished Professor
David Farber is Distinguished Professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.
Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University holding secondary appointments in the Heinz School of Public Policy and the Engineering Public Policy Group. In 2003, he retired as the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania where he held appointments as Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School of Business and as a Faculty Associate of the Annenberg School of Communications. In 2000, he was appointed to be Chief Technologist at the US Federal Communications Commission while on leave from UPenn for one year ending in early June 2001. While at UPenn, he co-directed The Penn Initiative on Markets, Technology and Policy. He was also Director of the Distributed Systems Laboratory - DSL where he managed leading edge research in Ultra High Speed Networking. He is a Visiting Professor of the Center for Global Communications of Japan -- Glocom of the International University of Japan, a Member of the Markle Foundation Taskforce on National Security, and a Member of the Advisory Boards of both the Center for Democracy and Technology and EPIC. He is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE and was the recipient of the 1995 ACM Sigcomm Award for life long contributions to the computer communications field. He was awarded in 1997 the prestigious John Scott Award for Contributions to Humanity.
Job Titles:
- Civil Liberties Director
- Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director
David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director, has significant experience litigating First Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts and is one of the country's leading advocates for and commentators on freedom of expression in the arts. David was a founding member, with David Sobel and Shari Steele, of the Internet Free Expression Alliance, and currently serves on the Northern California Society for Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee, the steering committee of the Free Expression Network, the governing committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law, and on advisory boards for several arts and free speech organizations across the country. David is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law and an instructor in the journalism department at San Francisco State University. He has written and lectured extensively on many areas of First Amendment Law, including as a contributor to the International Encyclopedia of Censorship. Before joining EFF, David was for twelve years the Executive Director and Lead Staff Counsel for First Amendment Project, where he worked with EFF on numerous cases including Bunner v. DVDCCA. David also previously served as program director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression where he was the principal contributor and general editor of the NCFE Quarterly and the principal author of the NCFE Handbook to Understanding, Preparing for and Responding to Challenges to your Freedom of Artistic Expression. He also practiced with the firms Bryan Cave LLP and Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft. He is a 1991 graduate of Duke University School of Law.
David's work has been recognized by California Lawyer magazine as a 2013 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year, and by the SPJ Northern California as the recipient of its 2007 James Madison Freedom of information Award for Legal Counsel. He was also awarded The Hon. Ira A. Brown Adjunct Faculty Award by USF Law School in 2012.
Job Titles:
- Partner in the Intellectual Property Group at Fenwick & West LLP
David Hayes is a partner in the Intellectual Property Group at Fenwick & West LLP and is an expert on copyright law and digital media, software patents, open source issues, and technology transactions. He has served as counsel for a number of precedent-setting software copyright infringement cases, including Apple v. Microsoft and the Napster case.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Senior Counsel
- Senior Counsel in Washington
David Sobel is Senior Counsel in Washington, DC, where he directs the FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project. David has handled numerous cases seeking the disclosure of government documents on privacy policy, including electronic surveillance, encryption controls and airline passenger screening initiatives. He served as co-counsel in the challenge to government secrecy concerning post-September 11 detentions and participated in the submission of a civil liberties amicus brief in the first-ever proceeding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. David is co-editor of the 2002 and 2004 editions of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws. He is a recipient of EFF's Pioneer Award (2003) and the American Library Association's James Madison Award (2004), and has been inducted into the First Amendment Center's National FOIA Hall of Fame (2006). David was formerly counsel to the non-profit National Security Archive, and, in 1994, co-founded the Electronic Privacy Information Center, where he directed FOIA litigation and focused on government surveillance and collection of personal information. David is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Florida College of Law.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information
Deirdre Mulligan is an Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Professor Mulligan's current research agenda focuses on information privacy and security. She was previously a clinical professor of law and the director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center
Eben Moglen is Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center and Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University Law School. Professor Moglen has represented many of the world's leading free software developers. Professor Moglen earned his PhD in History and law degree at Yale University during what he sometimes calls his "long, dark period" in New Haven. After law school he clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld of the United States District Court in New York City and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He has taught at Columbia Law School since 1987 and has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Virginia. In 2003 he was given the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for efforts on behalf of freedom in the electronic society. Professor Moglen is admitted to practice in the State of New York and before the United States Supreme Court.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Technologist
Erica develops the Let's Encrypt client Certbot, which makes it easy for people who run websites to turn on https, keeping their users private and secure against network-based attackers. She writes and speaks about encryption in practice, including what people need from secure messaging providers and what the next generation of encryption in the cloud might look like. Erica previously worked on EFF's net neutrality project, writing technical filings and opinion pieces and organizing technologists from the networking industry to speak up for technical accuracy in policy decisions.
Job Titles:
- Finance / HR
- Senior Legislative Counsel
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Public Policy, Information and Communication at the University of Massachusetts
Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the use of new media technologies by activists and alternative business and governance models for the internet. He is the author of Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them (2021) and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2013). With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices. It showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages, publishing editions in 20 languages. Previously, Zuckerman directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. He and his family live in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts.
Job Titles:
- Director of Cybersecurity
- EFF 's Director of Cybersecurity
Eva Galperin is EFF's Director of Cybersecurity. Prior to 2007, when she came to work for EFF, Eva worked in security and IT in Silicon Valley and earned degrees in Political Science and International Relations from SFSU. Her work is primarily focused on providing privacy and security for vulnerable populations around the world. To that end, she has applied the combination of her political science and technical background to everything from organizing EFF's Tor Relay Challenge, to writing privacy and security training materials (including Surveillance Self Defense and the Digital First Aid Kit), and publishing research on malware in Syria, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Kazakhstan. Since 2018, she has worked on addressing the digital privacy and security needs of survivors or domestic abuse. She is also a co-founder of the Coalition Against Stalkerware.
Gennie is the Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she leads a team of advocates, researchers, and policy analysts working to defend and expand digital rights online. Her research and advocacy primarily focus on consumer privacy and security, with an emphasis on third-party tracking, platform policy, and secure messaging, as well as content moderation and open access.
Prior to joining EFF, Gennie was a Henry Luce Scholar in Laos and Thailand, and earned a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington Information School while doing research in the School of Computer Science and Engineering's Security & Privacy Research Lab. While at the UW, she also co-founded a successful initiative for a university open access policy. Outside of her EFF work, Gennie volunteers at the San Francisco Public Library and serves on the program committees of several computer science research venues.
George Koichi Wong is a San Francisco native who grew up speaking Japanese, studied International Relations and Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego, and received a master's degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University. His educational interests varied from equity in public education to nuclear disarmament, before finally settling at international human rights law.
He spent a summer as an intern at the Pat Finucane Centre in Northern Ireland, which had a great influence on his understanding of the impact of armed conflict on ordinary people. He also had the privilege of participating in a study trip to Malta, where he facilitated a discussion with law students at the University of Malta on the intersection of migration and international human rights law. For his master's thesis, he produced a report for ICITAP on Ukraine's maritime border security in the Black Sea, based on research and interviews with US and Ukrainian officials. His previous work experience includes internships at the World Faiths Development Dialogue, the Wilson Center, and the National Immigration Forum. His passion and career goals are to realize a world where human rights are truly universal. George is fluent in Japanese and English, and studied Russian in university.
As a San Francisco native, pre-COVID, his favorite activities were visiting new cafes, exploring urban spaces that are car-free and car-optional, and ranting about land-use and zoning restrictions in the US. Mid-COVID, he is most often seen working on his espresso game, cooking his favorite restaurant meals at home, and reading about modern monetary theory.
Job Titles:
- BOARD MEMBER, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, GEORGETOWN LAW INSTITUTE for TECHNOLOGY LAW & POLICY, PUBLIC ADVOCATE, NET NEUTRALITY PIONEER
- Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy
Gigi Sohn is a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate. She is one of the nation's leading public advocates for open, affordable and democratic communications networks. From 2013-2016, Gigi was Counselor to the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler. She advised the Chairman on a wide range of Internet, telecommunications and media issues, representing him and the FCC in a variety of public forums around the country as well as serving as the primary liaison between the Chairman's office and outside stakeholders. From 2001-2013, Gigi served as the Co-Founder and CEO of Public Knowledge, a leading telecommunications, media and technology policy advocacy organization. She was previously a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts and Culture unit and Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Legal Intake Coordinator
As the Intake Coordinator here at EFF, Haley is the first point of contact for legal assistance and general information about EFF for the public. Prior to EFF, she's worked as a researcher and writer for various local, national, and international human rights organizations. She's also a big fan of live music, good food, other people's dogs, and traveling far and wide around the planet.
She kept showing up to the Magic the Gathering draft parties until eventually she was the one planning the parties.
Job Titles:
- Staff Attorney
- Engineering and Design
Hannah is a staff attorney who focuses on criminal justice and privacy issues, and is part of the Coders' Rights Project. Prior to joining EFF, she represented criminal defendants on appeal in state and federal courts in New York, Illinois, and Missouri, and also worked at the human rights NGO, Human Rights in China. While pursuing her law degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Hannah represented indigent defendants and refugee applicants in Durban, South Africa, and studied international law at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She also competed in, and remains involved with, the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition, including as a problem author in 2019. In college, Hannah studied Computer Science and Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In her spare time, she likes to climb things.
Hayley Tsukayama is Senior Legislative Activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, focusing on state legislation. Prior to joining EFF, she spent nearly eight years as a consumer technology reporter at The Washington Post writing stories on the industry's largest companies.
Hayley, who is CIPP/US certified by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, has an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri and a BA in history from Vassar College.
Job Titles:
- Art Director
- EFF 's Art Director
As EFF's Art Director, Hugh D'Andrade helps craft EFF's image by designing our websites, t-shirts, stickers, white papers, as well as the murals that grace our stairwell. Hugh has worked with EFF in various capacities since 2007, and is the artist behind some of EFF's most iconic images. All the work Hugh does for EFF is CC-licensed and can be downloaded, re-used and re-mixed from the EFF Flickr page. When Hugh isn't working for EFF, he creates illustrations for young adult novels, rock posters, magazines, and the occasional gallery wall. You can see more of his work on his personal website.
Job Titles:
- Director of Federal Affairs
Prior to joining EFF, India spent over 10 years in Washington, DC as a legislative staffer to three members of Congress from California. Her work there primarily focused on the appropriations process, specifically analyzing and funding programs in the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Justice. Her biggest legislative accomplishment was authorizing, funding and then naming a new outpatient VA/DoD clinic that will serve over 80,000 people.
India's passion has always been for good public policy, and she's excited to be using skills developed during legislative battles to fight for consumer privacy and for robust surveillance oversight.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Technologist
Jacob is a lead developer on Let's Encrypt, the free and automated Certificate Authority. He also works on EFF's Encrypt the Web initiative and helps maintain the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension.
Prior to working at EFF, Jacob was on Twitter's anti-spam and security teams. On the security team, he implemented HTTPS-by-default with forward secrecy, key pinning, HSTS, and CSP. On anti-spam, he deployed new machine-learned models to detect and block spam in realtime. Before Twitter, he worked at Google, variously on the maps, transit, and shopping teams.
Job Titles:
- Chief Software Architect at Liquid Robotics
James Gosling is the chief software architect at Liquid Robotics, where he spends his time writing software for the Waveglider, an autonomous ocean-going robot. He spent many years as a VP & Fellow at Sun Microsystems, where he did the original design of the Java programming language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. He has been a contributor to the Real-Time Specification for Java and researched software development tools at Sun labs while serving as Chief Technology Officer of Sun's Developer Products Group and the CTO of Sun's Client Software Group. He briefly worked for Oracle after the acquisition of Sun and spent some time at Google.
Job Titles:
- Partner at Open Tech Strategies, Board Member
James Vasile's work centers on improving access to technology and reducing centralized control over the infrastructure of our daily lives.
He is a partner at Open Tech Strategies, a company that offers advice and services to organizations that make strategic use of free and open source software. Vasile has 20 years' experience as an open source user, developer, advocate, and advisor. He is dedicated to using the dynamics of open source communities to challenge existing structures into sharing access, control, and resources.
Vasile was the founding director of the Open Internet Tools Project, which was the launching pad for community-based projects such as the Circumvention Tech Festival, which later became the influential Internet Freedom Festival, and Techno-Activism Third Mondays, a meetup that gathered people in over 20 cities around the world every month. He serves on the boards of Brave New Software, which makes the Lantern censorship circumvention tool downloaded 100 million times around the world, and Horizons Media, which supports the study of the artistic and scientific uses of psychedelics. Previously, Vasile was a Senior Fellow at the Software Freedom Law Center and a director of the FreedomBox Foundation. He helped create Open Source Matters, the non-profit behind Joomla, where he was an early board member.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Digital Strategy
- Development
- Digital and Campaign Strategist
Jason Kelley is a Digital and Campaign Strategist on EFF's Activism Team. Before joining EFF, Jason managed marketing strategy and content for a software company that helps non-programmers learn to code, and advertising and marketing analytics for a student loan startup. Jason received his BA in English and Philosophy from Kent State University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from The University of the South. He tries daily to apply advice from his professor Sam Pickering, the inspiration for Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society: "Take out the extra words.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Senzing
Jeff Jonas is founder and CEO of Senzing, the creators of real-time entity resolution solutions. Jeff is also a three-time entrepreneur, acclaimed data scientist and advocate for privacy and civil liberties. Over the course of his career, he has been at the forefront of solving some of the world's most complex big data problems for companies and governments. Jeff has taken on many high-profile challenges, including identifying potential terrorists, detecting fraudulent behavior in casinos, connecting loved ones after a natural disaster, and modernizing voter registration systems. In a National Geographic profile, Jeff was recognized as the Wizard of Big Data.
Job Titles:
- Surveillance Litigation Director
As Surveillance Litigation Director, Jennifer Lynch leads EFF's legal work challenging government abuse of search and seizure technologies through the courts by filing lawsuits and amicus briefs in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, on important issues at the intersection of technology and privacy. Jennifer founded EFF's Street Level Surveillance Project, which informs advocates, defense attorneys, and decisionmakers about new police tools. In 2017, the First Amendment Coalition awarded her its Free Speech and Open Government Award for her years-long litigation against the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff's Departments seeking access to Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) records and for setting new precedent in California's public records law. In 2019, the Daily Journal named her to its annual list of Top 100 Lawyers in California, and in 2021, the Daily Journal further named her to its list of lawyers who "Defined the Decade" for her work "guarding privacy in an over-policed world." Jennifer has written influential white papers on biometric data collection in immigrant communities and law enforcement use of face recognition. She has also published on forensic genetic genealogy searches with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and on suspicionless police searches of consumer data as part of the Hoover Institution's Aegis Paper Series. She speaks frequently at legal and technical conferences as well as to the general public on technologies like location tracking, biometrics, algorithmic decisionmaking, and AI, and has testified on facial recognition before committees in the Senate and House of Representatives. She is regularly consulted as an expert on these subjects and others by major and technical news media.
Jennifer Pinsof is a staff attorney on EFF's civil liberties team. Her work focuses on free speech, privacy, and government transparency in the digital age. Prior to joining EFF, Jennifer was a legal fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute, a clinical lecturer at Yale Law School's Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic, and a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Before law school, she worked at a software company specializing in data analytics. Jennifer holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. from Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Director for International Freedom of Expression
- Fellow at the Centre for Internet & Human Rights
Jillian C. York is EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression and is based in Berlin, Germany. Her work examines state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture and human rights, with a focus on historically marginalized communities. At EFF, she leads the platform censorship working group, and also works on European policy, the impact of sanctions on the use of technology, and occasionally, digital security. Jillian is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism (Verso, 2021) and has written for Vice, Buzzfeed, the Guardian, and the New York Times, among others. She teaches at the College of Europe Natolin in Warsaw. She is also a regular speaker at global events.
Prior to joining EFF, Jillian worked at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, where she coordinated the work of the OpenNet Initiative and contributed to other projects including Herdict and research into DDoS attacks. She has also worked in fundraising and grant writing, as an EFL teacher, and as a travel writer.
Jillian is a fellow at the Centre for Internet & Human Rights in Berlin and a founding member of the Deep Lab collective. She currently serves on the IFEX Council, the Open Tech Fund Advisory Council, and on the advisory board of SMEX.
Jillian holds a BA in Sociology from Binghamton University, where-like a surprisingly large number of individuals in her field-she also studied theatre. Prior to the pandemic, she could often be found flying the friendly skies, but today, is more likely to be found on Zoom or Twitter.
Jim Griffin is based in Northern Virginia and works on IP Law and Policy for Pex. Jim co-founded the Pho List, a listserve where thousands converse daily on digital media topics with a focus on music.
Job Titles:
- Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents
- Policy Analyst at EFF
Joe Mullin is a policy analyst at EFF, where he works on patents, encryption, platform liability, and free expression online. Before joining EFF, Joe worked as a reporter covering legal affairs for the technology website Ars Technica, and American Lawyer's magazine group. Earlier in his journalism career, Joe wrote for The Associated Press and The Seattle Times. He has a bachelors degree in history and a masters in journalism, both from the University of California at Berkeley. Outside of his work at EFF, Joe enjoys trail running and cycling.
Job Titles:
- Software Engineer
- Director of Technology Projects
Jon Callas is a cryptographer, software engineer, user experience designer, and entrepreneur. Jon is the co-author of many crypto and security systems including OpenPGP, DKIM, ZRTP, Skein, and Threefish. Jon has co-founded several startups including PGP, Silent Circle, and Blackphone. Jon has worked on security, user experience, and encryption for Apple, Kroll-O'Gara, Counterpane, and Entrust.
Before coming to the EFF, Jon was a technologist in the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project on issues including surveillance, encryption, machine learning, end-user security, and privacy.
Jon is fond of Leica cameras, Morgan sports cars, and Birman cats. Jon's photographs have been used by Wired, CBS News, and The Guggenheim Museum.
Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources for the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, human computing, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia, and as part of the OpenNet Initiative co-edited a series of studies of Internet filtering by national governments: Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering; Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace; and Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Board of Advisors for Scientific American. He has served as a Trustee of the Internet Society and as a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum, which named him a Young Global Leader. He was a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Federal Communications Commission, where he previously chaired the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee. His book The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It predicted the end of general purpose client computing and the corresponding rise of new gatekeepers. That and other works may be found at JZ.org.
Job Titles:
- Partner at Durie Tangri LLP
Joseph Gratz is a partner at Durie Tangri LLP, a law firm in San Francisco. Joe's practice is focused on litigating Internet-related copyright and trademark cases.
Before joining EFF, Josh served for six years as communications director, deputy chief of staff, and senior advisor to Congressman Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security committees and co-chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. He helped shape the message on a wide range of legislative priorities, including gun violence, student loan debt, and protecting our democracy, as well as through the Trump-Russia investigations, the COVID-19 pandemic, and two presidential impeachments, including the Congressman's role as an Impeachment Manager. He also served as communications director for Rep. Swalwell's presidential campaign in 2019. Earlier, Josh was a journalist for almost 24 years: five years covering City Hall for the Express-Times in Easton, PA, and then 19 years covering state and national politics for the Bay Area News Group, where his byline appeared in the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, and other Bay Area newspapers. While at the Bay Area News Group, he created the Political Blotter blog; was a lead reporter on the award-winning Chauncey Bailey Project, investigating the circumstances around the 2007 assassination of Bailey, a journalist and former colleague; and was a frequent guest on San Francisco public television station KQED's public affairs programs. He's a Queens, NY, native and an Eagle Scout who earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.
Jumana Musa is a human rights attorney and racial justice activist. She is currently the Director of the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. As director, Ms. Musa oversees NACDL's initiative to build a new, more durable Fourth Amendment legal doctrine for the digital age. The Fourth Amendment Center educates the defense bar on privacy challenges in the digital age, provides a dynamic toolkit of resources to help lawyers identify opportunities to challenge government surveillance, and establishes a tactical litigation support network to assist in key cases. Ms. Musa previously served as NACDL's Sr. Privacy and National Security Counsel. Prior to joining NACDL, Ms. Musa served as a policy consultant for the Southern Border Communities Coalition, a coalition of over 60 groups across the southwest that address militarization and brutality by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in border communities. Previously, she served as Deputy Director for the Rights Working Group, a national coalition of civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, and immigrant rights advocates where she coordinated the "Face the Truth" campaign against racial profiling. She was also the Advocacy Director for Domestic Human Rights and International Justice at Amnesty International USA, where she addressed the domestic and international impact of U.S. counterterrorism efforts on human rights. She was one of the first human rights attorneys allowed to travel to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and served as Amnesty International's legal observer at military commission proceedings on the base.
Job Titles:
- Analyst, Senior Media Relations Specialist
Karen Gullo is an award-winning former journalist working as an analyst and senior media relations specialist at EFF, collaborating with the organization's lawyers, activists, and technologists on strategic communications and messaging to amplify their amazing work defending civil liberties in the digital world. As a writer, editor, and former reporter with over two decades of experience at Bloomberg News and Associated Press in San Francisco, Washington D.C., and New York, Karen helps develop EFF's responses to media inquiries, and writes press statements and releases and op-eds about EFF's advocacy of online privacy and free speech, encryption, Fourth Amendment rights, copyright abuse, and much more. As an analyst, Karen writes blog posts and contributes to white papers on subjects ranging from student privacy and mass surveillance to private censorship, the First Amendment, and international surveillance and data protection treaties. She has worked on EFF activism projects holding social media platforms accountable for bad content moderation practices, exposing Amazon Ring's cozy relationships with local law enforcement, and pushing for the inclusion of human rights safeguards in the Council of Europe's revised Budapest Convention. She is also a contributing writer for feminism website SeismicSisters.com. Prior to joining EFF, Karen was a reporter at Bloomberg News from 2002 to 2015, where she broke stories about Google's legal challenge to FBI national security letters. Before Bloomberg, Karen was a reporter for the Associated Press in New York and Washington, covering politics-including the 2000 presidential election-the Justice Department, campaign finance, federal contracting practices, and much more as a member of an investigative reporting team. Karen is the recipient of national and local journalism awards, including the Jesse H. Neal Award Business Journalism Award and the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club's excellence in journalism awards. She grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, and resides in San Francisco.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Policy and Activism
Katharine is the Associate Director of Policy and Activism at EFF, where she coordinates EFF's federal activism. Her areas of expertise are competition, broadband access, intellectual property, net neutrality, fair use, free speech online, and intermediary liability. Before joining EFF, Katharine spent many years as a writer and editor at the science fiction and science website io9. She has had her work appear in many other publications, including io9's sister publications Deadspin, Gizmodo, and Jesebel. Katharine got a BA in history at Columbia University and a JD at USC Gould School of Law, doing work with the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic. It was Katharine's experience in media that led to her going to law school with an eye to learning more about fair use and copyright law.
Job Titles:
- EFF 's Policy Director for Global Privacy
Katitza Rodriguez is EFF's Policy Director for Global Privacy. She concentrates on comparative policy of global privacy issues, with special emphasis on emerging technology and cross border data flows. Katitza's work also focuses on cybersecurity and government access to data at the intersection of international human rights law and standards. Katitza also supervises EFF's growing Latin American team. She was an advisor to the UN Internet Governance Forum (2009-2010). In 2018, CNET named Katitza one of the 20 most influential Latinos in technology in the United States. In 2014, she was also named one of "The heroes in the fight to save the Internet".
Kelly invokes her passion for all things numbers as EFF's Finance Director. Prior to joining the staff, she was a frequent volunteer at EFF events while honing her finance and accounting skills at a large public accounting firm. When her head is not buried deep in spreadsheets, she enjoys puzzles and games of most varieties, and attends local sporting events.
Job Titles:
- Staff Accountant
- Staff Accountant and Senior Internal Events Coordinator
Keri is a Staff Accountant and the Senior Internal Events Coordinator at EFF. Her goal in life is to become an eccentric old lady when she grows up. She believes that just like bacon, anything goes with combat boots. When she is not working, she enjoys yoga, taking spin classes, watching independent film, writing haiku and playing fetch with her cat. Keri loves anything that is pink and sparkly and squeals like a six year old when she sees a puppy. She is known to wear party dresses, flowers in her hair and yes, combat boots.
Job Titles:
- Design Manager
- Development
Kim helps support the work of EFF's Engineering and Design team. She was previously on EFF's international team and managed the Surveillance Self-Defense project and content localization. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication and a B.A. in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her free time, Kim enjoys running, hand lettering, and crossword puzzles.
Kit is a senior staff attorney at EFF, working on free speech, net neutrality, copyright, coders' rights, and other issues that relate to freedom of expression and access to knowledge. She has worked for years to support the rights of political protesters, journalists, remix artists, and technologists to agitate for social change and to express themselves through their stories and ideas. Prior to joining EFF, Kit led the civil liberties and patent practice areas at the Cyberlaw Clinic, part of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and previously Kit worked at the law firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, litigating patent, trademark, and copyright cases in courts across the country.
Kit holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.S. in neuroscience from MIT, where she studied brain-computer interfaces and designed cyborgs and artificial bacteria.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Executive Director
- General Counsel
- Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Kurt Opsahl is the Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In addition to representing clients on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law, Opsahl counsels on EFF projects and initiatives. Opsahl is the lead attorney on the Coders' Rights Project, and is representing several companies who are challenging National Security Letters. Before joining EFF, Opsahl worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice. Prior to Perkins, Opsahl was a research fellow to Professor Pamela Samuelson at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems. Opsahl received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. Opsahl co-authored "Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook." In 2007, Opsahl was named as one of the "Attorneys of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O'Grady v. Superior Court appeal. From 2014 to 2022, Opsahl served on the USENIX Board of Directors. Opsahl is a member of the Filecoin Foundation Advisory Board and the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee's Technical Advisory Council.
Laura comes to us with an eclectic history of working in various non-profits, and with a Masters degree in Pastoral Ministry. Rather than becoming a Woman of The Cloth, she now supports the good works of EFF by keeping the day to day things that the organization needs to keep running, including making sure that staff never run out of coconut water.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Attorney and Adams Chair for Internet Rights
Lee Tien is a Senior Staff Attorney and the Adams Chair for Internet Rights at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in free speech law, including intersections with intellectual property law and privacy law. Before joining EFF, Lee was a sole practitioner specializing in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. Mr. Tien has published articles on children's sexuality and information technology, anonymity, surveillance, and the First Amendment status of publishing computer software. Lee received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford University, where he was very active in journalism at the Stanford Daily. After working as a news reporter at the Tacoma News Tribune for a year, Lee went to law school at Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley. Lee also did graduate work in the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC-Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Director of Human Resources
Lee leads the human resources effort for EFF. Prior to joining EFF, he practiced employment law and led the human resources department for several organizations. Lee received his J. D. from Case Western Reserve University and his B.A. and M.S. degrees from Tulane University. He became interested in online privacy issues during law school. After hours, he can be found exploring beautiful northern California and searching for thin crust pizza!
Job Titles:
- Engineering & Design Director
Before EFF Lena worked in journalism, international development and tech. She studied the emergence of Open Source communities in Latin America, and later worked as a trainer, qualitative researcher and media producer with human rights groups in the field. She led the Twitter Localization team and has worked as a Product Manager and an Engineering Manager. At EFF, she works with the Engineering and Design team on internal tools and external-facing web applications. She's also part of the AI working group. Lena likes plants, philosophy and dogs.
leez, a second-person narrative. You're quite fond of freely-modifiable and redistributable things. While compiling your college thesis on the free and open-source software movements, you rebuilt their course-management servers with free and open-source software. You are a social justice advocate that is often found evangelizing worker-run factories or encryption. Lately you also find pleasure in the ancient art of seafaring, the modern art of flash mobs, phaselocking bullymongs, and trying to make music with that electronic keyboard.
Job Titles:
- Legal Support Manager
- Operations
- the Legal Support Manager
Madeleine is the legal support manager on the legal team. Prior to joining EFF she worked in practices that represented consumers in complex class action litigation. She has a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. from Camberwell College of Art, London.
Job Titles:
- Donor Operations and Logistics Manager
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor at Stanford Law School and is director of the Stanford Center for Law, Science and Technology. He is the author of several books and over 190 articles and has testified before Congress and the FTC on patent, antitrust, and constitutional law matters. He is a partner at Durie Tangri.
Matthew is the Accounting Director at EFF. He has been a finance leader for several Bay Area nonprofits and brings his passion for civil liberties to EFF. Matthew enjoys spending time on the Russian River and hanging out with his partner and cat.
Matthew Guariglia is a policy analyst working on issues of surveillance and policing at the local, state, and federal level. He received a PhD in history at the University of Connecticut where his research focused on the intersection of race, immigration, U.S. imperialism, and policing in New York City. He is the co-editor of The Essential Kerner Commission Report (Liveright, 2021) and his bylines have appeared in NBC News, the Washington Post, Slate, Motherboard, and the Freedom of Information-centered outlet Muckrock. Matthew is an affiliated scholar at University of California, Hastings-School of Law and serves as an editor of "Disciplining the City," a series on the history of urban policing and incarceration at the Urban History Association's blog The Metropole. (Photo by Zack Garlitos)
Megan Gray is a lawyer focused on Information, Internet, Innovation, and Intangibles. Within those fields, she has worked as corporate counsel, litigator, and lobbyist for startups, established companies, non-profit organizations, individuals, and trade associations. In the privacy and free speech arena, Megan has been a key player in a number of precedential matters, including the first case alleging violation of a FTC Consumer Privacy Consent Order (Google/Safari, $22.5 million settlement), the first lawsuit against a leading Internet portal for privacy violations (AquaCool v. Yahoo!), the first FTC enforcement action against online distribution of identification templates (FTC v. InfoWorld), and the first motion to quash a subpoena seeking the identity of an anonymous Internet poster (Xircom v. Doe).
Job Titles:
- Legal Fellow
- Public Interest Legal Fellow
Meri Baghdasaryan is a public interest legal fellow at EFF. Before joining EFF, she conducted human rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights, UN Human Rights Committee and Constitutional Court of Armenia. She also worked as a consultant for UNDP Armenia and Council of Europe. Meri has extensive engagement in the Internet governance (IG) ecosystem, as a member of SEEDIG and EuroDIG communities, former YCIG Steering Committee member for the Eastern European group, and editor of the SEESummary, covering digital policy and IG developments in South Eastern Europe and the neighboring area (SEE+). Meri was a member of 2020 cohort of Open Internet Leaders for Democracy program, a NextGen@ICANN72 and ARIN48 fellow. Her expertise and interests include issues related to privacy and data protection, freedom of speech, and youth participation in IG. Meri has an LL.M'21 from University of Pennsylvania Law School (Intellectual property and technology concentration), LL.M'15 in Human rights from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), and LL.B'14 from Yerevan State University
Job Titles:
- Law Professor at the University of Ottawa
Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He is active on copyright, privacy, and Internet issues and was a founder of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. He blogs at michaelgeist.ca.
Michael Page is a retired IP litigator and mediator. Michael was a partner at Keker & Van Nest and then Durie Tangri, representing numerous technology companies and individuals, and now lives in San Francisco with his partner Stacey Wexler and their faithful pup Hamilton.
Job Titles:
- President Emeritus of the American Law Institute
Michael Traynor is President Emeritus of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and Senior Counsel at Cobalt LLP in Berkeley.
Mike Nelson directs the Carnegie Endowment's Technology and International Affairs Program, which helps decisionmakers understand and address the impacts of emerging technologies, including digital technologies, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Carnegie, he started the global public policy office for Cloudflare, a startup that has improved the performance and security of more than 10 million websites around the world. Nelson has also served as a principal technology policy strategist in Microsoft's Technology Policy Group and before that was a senior technology and telecommunications analyst with Bloomberg Government. In addition, Nelson has been teaching courses and doing research on the future of the internet, cyber-policy, technology policy, innovation policy, and e-government in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University.
Before joining the Georgetown faculty, Nelson was director of internet technology and strategy at IBM, where he managed a team helping define and implement IBM's next generation internet strategy. He has served as chairman of the Information, Communication, and Computing Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, serves as a trustee of the Institute for International Communications, and was selected to be a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum. From 1988 to 1993, he served as a professional staff member for the Senate's Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and was the lead Senate staffer for the High-Performance Computing Act. In 1993, he joined Vice President Al Gore at the White House and worked with President Bill Clinton's science adviser on issues relating to the Global Information Infrastructure, including telecommunications policy, information technology, encryption, electronic commerce, and information policy.
Misha was born and raised in San Francisco, CA and have been living in Vallejo for about 2 years. She had a long-term experience in customer service, homeless prevention and a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and pursued an additional education for early childhood development, She now supports Electronic Frontier Foundation's as an Operations Coordinator making sure that EFF staff feel comfortable at work and, she's helping with preparations that the organization needs to keep running smoothly. After hours Misha usually spend her time making candles and decorating it like a dessert. (cupcakes, ice cream & even coffee etc)
Mitch Kapor is one of EFF's founders as well as the founder of the Lotus Development Corporation. He's the co-Chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact and an active impact investor.
Job Titles:
- Competition Director
- EFF 's Competition Director
Mitch Stoltz is EFF's Competition Director and a member of the legal team. Mitch leads EFF's work on antitrust and competition, including litigation, legislative advocacy, coalition building, and policy analysis to address the effects of market concentration on user rights and innovation.
Mitch also litigates cases where copyright and trademark laws collide with free speech, defending the rights of software developers, security researchers, and nonprofit organizations to advance their work with technology. His recent cases and projects have covered Internet TV and radio, game development, free and open source software licensing, government transparency, and domain names.
Before joining EFF, Mitch was an associate at Constantine Cannon LLP in Washington DC. Long ago, in an Internet far far away, Mitch was a security engineer at Netscape Communications, where he worked to secure Web browsers against malware. Mitch has a JD from Boston University School of Law and a BA in Public Policy Analysis and Computer Science from Pomona College.
Mukund Rathi is an attorney and Stanton Fellow at EFF, focusing on free speech litigation. He previously worked at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) on digital privacy rights in criminal cases and securing freedom for incarcerated people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mukund interned with EFF as a law student. He received his J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. He likes climbing things and making pizza at home.
As the Deputy Managing Director of EFF, nash works to assure the organization's work is impactful, collaborative, and innovative.
Job Titles:
- Director of Donor Relations
Nicole has been supporting EFF's fundraising efforts since 2013. She originally led the major donor fundraising program, the organizational membership program, and planned EFF's external events. In 2020, she became the Director of Donor Relations, focusing soley on EFF's major donor program which included the creation and implementation of EFF's Giving Societies. She now plans and executes annual campaigns while also leading two of the three Giving Societies: the MXM Society, EFF's community of top-level major donors; and the Lighthouse Society, key supporters who have named EFF in their estate planning.
With over two decades of nonprofit experience, Nicole has managed a wide range of social justice-focused philanthropic efforts. At Tides Foundation, she led the grantmaking programs of individual donors and offered customized programmatic services to institutional funders. She also supported fiscally sponsored projects at both the Tides Center and the San Francisco Parks Trust. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, making pickles, and frolicking with baby goats.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board, Professor of Law and Information Management, and Co - Director, Center for Law and Technology, University of California at Berkeley
Pamela Samuelson is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley with a joint appointment in the School of Information Management and Systems and the School of Law, where she is Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. Her principal area of expertise is intellectual property law, and she has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes. In 1997, she was named a Fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and has also been a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery. In 1998, the National Law Journal named her as one of the 50 most outstanding women lawyers in the U.S. She is a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Directors for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. As a Contributing Editor of the computing professionals' journal, Communications of the ACM, Pam writes a regular "Legally Speaking" column. A 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, she practiced law as an associate with the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher before turning to more academic pursuits. From 1981 through June 1996, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, from which she visited at Columbia, Cornell, and Emory Law Schools.
Peter builds and maintains websites for EFF. After studying math at UC Santa Cruz he got started programming electronics and then for the web.
Job Titles:
- Civil Liberties Advocate and Writer
Rainey Reitman is a civil liberties advocate and writer. From 2018-2022, she served as the Chief Program Officer of EFF, where she focused on organizational development and the day-to-day management of EFF's programmatic work. From 2010-2018, Reitman served as the Activism Director for EFF, overseeing campaigns such as the very first Tor Challenge, flying a blimp over the NSA data center in Utah, EFF's participation in the SOPA blackout, and the march on Washington to end mass surveillance. Reitman is a board member and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. She, along with co-founders Daniel Ellsberg, Trevor Timm, and J.P. Barlow, received the 2013 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Journalism. She is also a board member of the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Reitman was a co-founder and steering committee member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, a network of individuals and organizations that advocated for the release of accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Previously, Reitman served as Director of Communications for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit advocacy and education organization promoting consumer privacy. Currently, Reitman facilitates retreats and consults on strategy, management, and leadership through Groundwork Strategy. Find her at @raineyreitman.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- EFF 's Managing Director
Rebecca Jeschke is EFF's Managing Director, helping to ensure that EFF can do its best work to fight for digital rights now and into the future. Formerly, Rebecca was EFF's Media Relations Director and a Digital Rights Analyst, fielding press requests on a broad range of issues including privacy, free speech, and intellectual property matters. Her media appearances include Fox News, CNN, NPR, USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, and Harper's Magazine, and she has been a presenter at South by Southwest. Before joining EFF in 2005, Rebecca worked in television and Internet news for more than ten years, including stints as an Internet producer for CBS 5 in San Francisco and as a senior supervising producer for TechTV. She has also been a travel guide editor, an English teacher in the Dominican Republic, and a worker on a "slime line" gutting fish in Alaska. Rebecca is on the Advisory Board for the Internet Freedom Festival and on the Board of Directors of Alameda Family Services.
Job Titles:
- Lawyer at Paliare Roland Barristers in Toronto
Ren Bucholz is a lawyer at Paliare Roland Barristers in Toronto, where he focuses on technology and intellectual property litigation, as well as public and constitutional law. Ren has published academic and popular articles on intellectual property, file sharing, and electronic voting. Ren held a variety of activism and international policy positions at EFF from 2001-2007. He rejoined EFF in 2008 as a Google Policy Fellow before returning to Canada to practice law.
Richard Wiebe is a San Francisco lawyer with his own law practice, handling civil appeals as well as trial court litigation on a broad array of topics. Rick also works as outside counsel with EFF on lawsuits protecting civil liberties and individual rights in the digital world, and has done so since 2001. These lawsuits address a wide variety of public policy issues, including balancing intellectual property rights with the public interest and freedom of expression, protecting First Amendment rights of individuals and journalists, protecting individual privacy against government surveillance, and protecting voting rights.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Community Organizing
As Associate Director of Community Organizing, Rory (they/them) coordinates EFF's support of local advocacy groups. Much of this work is done through the grassroots information-sharing network, the Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA).
Prior to joining the EFF, Rory studied activist pedagogy and adolescent use of social media as a doctoral student of psychology. As a student, instructor, and researcher, they advocated for student and worker privacy, open science, and open education on campus. They were also active in several New York City community projects like CyPurr Collective, an EFA member group focused on accessible digital security trainings.
Job Titles:
- Law Professor at the University of Washington
Ryan Calo is a law professor at the University of Washington and a former director at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. You can find his published work on SSRN and follow his thoughts on privacy, robotics, and other topics on Twitter (@rcalo).
Saira Hussain is a Staff Attorney on EFF's civil liberties team, focusing on racial justice and surveillance. Previously, Saira was a Staff Attorney in the Criminal Justice Reform Program at Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus (ALC), where she focused on disentangling federal immigration enforcement from local law enforcement through policy advocacy, litigation, and coalition-building. She started at ALC as a Berkeley Law Public Interest Fellow in the Immigrant Rights' Program, representing immigrants in deportation proceedings. In addition, Saira organizes with Survived and Punished CA to end the criminalization of survivors of gender-based and sexual violence. She received her J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and her B.A. from UC Berkeley. Saira speaks Spanish and Urdu, and is an avid baker and yoga enthusiast.
Job Titles:
- Board Member, Lawyer, Former Corporate Executive
Prior to her retirement in 2015, Sarah Deutsch was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Verizon Communications, where she spent over 23 years in the Legal Department. She was responsible for Verizon's global IP practice, including copyrights, trademarks, patent licensing, and unfair competition. In the course of her career, Sarah also managed Verizon's privacy practice, and worked on a broad set of global intellectual property policy issues, including Internet policy, online liability, and advocacy. Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that lead to the passage of the DMCA. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference.
Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-house Counsel Award at the America's Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received Public Knowledge's President's Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet.
Prior to Verizon, Sarah was an associate in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius. She holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University. In addition to her current legal and policy advocacy work, Sarah serves on the Board of the National Center for Health Research and is an avid professional photographer. Sarah previously served on EFF's Board in 2005-2006.
Job Titles:
- Board Member, Former Executive Director, Former Legal Director
Shari Steele was EFF's Executive Director for 15 years before retiring in 2015 and joining the Board of Directors. Shari served as EFF's Legal Director for eight years before she was named ED. She is also co-founder of Bridges.org, a nonprofit working to ensure sound technology policy in developing nations. She has spoken widely on civil liberties law in newly emerging technologies, including on the CBS Evening News, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, The Today Show, CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radio. As EFF's Legal Director, she advised the NTIA on hate crimes in telecommunications, the U.S. Sentencing Commission on sentencing guidelines for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the No Electronic Theft Act, and the National Research Council on U.S. encryption policy. She has spoken about Internet law as part of the Smithsonian Institution's lecture series on the Internet, the ABA's TechWorld Conference, the National Law Journal's annual Computer Law Conference, and the National Forum for Women Corporate Counsel. A graduate of Widener University School of Law, Shari later served as a teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where she earned an LL.M. degree in Advocacy. Ms. Steele also holds a Master of Science degree in Instructional Media from West Chester University.
Shirin uses design and educational strategy to empower people to protect their privacy and promote equity and accessibility. Her work includes web design, graphics, usability, user research, instructional design and the occasional animations for EFF projects. On the content end, Shirin also works on digital security and security education, as well as dark patterns and design legislation.
Sophia Cope is a Senior Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team, working on a variety of free speech and privacy issues. She has been a civil liberties attorney for over 15 years and has experience in both litigation and policy advocacy. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Slate, and Huffington Post.
Prior to joining EFF, Sophia spent eight years in Washington, DC. She worked at the Newspaper Association of America (now, the News Media Alliance) on freedom of the press and digital media issues, with a focus on protecting journalists' confidential sources. She advocated for a federal shield law, a warrant-for-content requirement under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and improvements to the Freedom of Information Act. She also wrote a chapter for a book published by the American Bar Association entitled "Whistleblowers, Leaks and the Media: The First Amendment and National Security" and spoke out against NSA surveillance.
Prior to NAA, Sophia worked at the Center for Democracy & Technology on a variety of civil liberties and human rights issues related to the Internet and technology, including the regulation of content on the Internet and broadcast television, and the privacy implications of government identification programs; she also worked on the development and launch of the Global Network Initiative.
Before moving to Washington, Sophia litigated at the First Amendment Project in Oakland, California, where she defended an environmental activist against a frivolous lawsuit and a video journalist against a federal subpoena seeking his unpublished footage; she also counseled clients on how to obtain greater access to public records and public meetings.
Sophia was an adjunct professor of media law for nearly four years, teaching Washington-area undergraduate communication and journalism students. She is a graduate of Santa Clara University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She is proud to be a native Californian.
Syd builds and maintains websites for EFF. They graduated from Yale, where they studied statistics, helped manage a student developer program, and organized a political discussion/activist group. They love Ruby, data privacy, and unsolved mysteries.
Tadayoshi Kohno is a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he is also the Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access. He has adjunct appointments in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the School of Information, and the School of Law. His research focuses on helping protect the security, privacy, and safety of users of current and future generation technologies. Kohno is a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Technology Review TR-35 Young Innovator Award, and the Golden Goose Award. Kohno has authored more than a dozen award papers, has presented his research to the U.S. House of Representatives, had his research profiled in the NOVA ScienceNOW "Can Science Stop Crime?" documentary and the NOVA "CyberWar Threat" documentary, and is a past chair of the USENIX Security Symposium. Kohno is the co-author of the book Cryptography Engineering, co-editor of the anthology Telling Stories, and author of the novella Our Reality. Kohno co-directs the University of Washington Computer Security & Privacy Research Lab and the Tech Policy Lab. Kohno was a founding member of the National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience and is currently a member of the USENIX Security Steering Committee. Kohno received his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego.
Job Titles:
- Information Security Executive, Social Scientist
Tarah Wheeler is an information security executive, social scientist in the area of international conflict, author, and poker player. She is CEO of information security consultancy Red Queen Technologies, and a Cyber Project Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University‘s Kennedy School of Government. She is an International Security Fellow at New America leading a new international cybersecurity capacity building project with the Hewlett Foundation's Cyber Initiative and a US/UK Fulbright Scholar in Cyber Security. She is an Electronic Frontier Foundation advisory board member, an inaugural contributing cybersecurity expert for the Washington Post, the Brookings Institution's contributing cybersecurity editor, and a Foreign Policy contributor on cyber warfare. She is the author of the best-selling Women In Tech: Take Your Career to The Next Level With Practical Advice And Inspiring Stories. She has been Head of Offensive Security & Technical Data Privacy at Splunk & Senior Director of Engineering and Principal Security Advocate at Symantec Website Security. She has led projects at Microsoft Game Studios (Halo and Lips) and architected systems at encrypted mobile communications firm Silent Circle. She has spoken on information security at the European Union, at the Malaysian Securities Commission, for Foreign Policy, the OECD and FTC, at universities such as Stanford, American, West Point, and Oxford, and multiple governmental and industry conferences. She has two cashes and $4722 in lifetime earnings in the World Series of Poker. Reach her at @tarah.
Thomas E. Moore III has practiced law in Palo Alto continuously since 1984, representing individuals and start-up to mid-size technology companies in intellectual property and commercial litigation matters. Tom is a member of Royse Law Firm, PC, which provides sophisticated, yet affordable, legal services to a variety of Silicon Valley clients. Tom has collaborated with EFF on a variety of projects beginning in January 2000 with the DVD Copy Control Association's case against Andrew Bunner. Since then, he has defended the rights of on-line journalists, argued that famous trademarks do not hold a monopoly on ordinary English words and helped to explain how IP addresses can reveal important information about person's movements and associations. Most recently, Tom has joined EFF in its efforts to curtail the government's mass surveillance of the American public. He is a graduate of Stanford, and he received his law degree from U.C. Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director for Latin American Policy
Veridiana coordinates EFF's activities with local organizations and activists in Latin America, where we work together to reinforce the defense of digital and human rights. Veridiana has been involved with telecommunications, media, Internet and human rights issues since 2009. She has been a member of Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) as one of the civil society representatives (2010-2013) and worked in Brazilian civil organizations such as Idec and Intervozes. Veridiana is a lawyer, has a Ph.D in Human Rights from the University of São Paulo Law School, and holds a Masters degree in Economic Law from the same institution.
Job Titles:
- EXECUTIVE TEAM COORDINATOR
- Executive Team Coordinator for Electronic Frontier Foundation 's Executive Team
Vernita is the Executive Team Coordinator for Electronic Frontier Foundation's Executive Team. Prior to joining EFF, she worked for an educational non-profit for 10 1/2 years. When not problem solving for the Exec Team, you will find her creating elaborate meals, rooting for all East Bay Pro Teams, watching Hallmark Movies, and supporting all things Disney.
Will is a Staff Technologist on the Tech Projects team. He's currently developing Certbot and has two perfect little cats, Kira and Dax.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Technologist
Bill Budington is a long-time activist, cryptography enthusiast, and a Senior Staff Technologist on EFF's Tech Projects team. His research has been featured in the The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and cited by the US Congress. He is the lead developer of Panopticlick, led HTTPS Everywhere from 2015-2018, and has contributed to projects like Let's Encrypt and SecureDrop. Bill has spoken at USENIX Enigma (2016), HOPE (2014, 2016, 2018, 2020), CCC (2017), InfoSec Southwest (2017), ShmooCon (2019, 2020), and other infosec conferences. Bill's primary interest lies in dismantling systems of oppression, building up collaborative alternatives and, to borrow a phrase from Zapatismo, fighting for a 'world in which many worlds fit.' He loves hacker spaces and getting together with other techies to tinker, code, share, and build the technological commons.