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Andrés is Technology Projects Manager for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A Telecom and Electronics Engineer, he previously worked for Mobile Operators managing and developing projects from the Radio and Core networks to IT systems like Spotify Premium for Movistar.
Seeing the state of privacy in the digital world from previous experiences, he joins the EFF to help develop tools that address these issues.
Caroline moved to San Francisco in the '90's from New Jersey. She began money management and bookkeeping in a variety of professions; retail, service, and corporate, by temp-ing and taking different jobs. She mostly found a home as Office Manager and bookkeeper at DNA Lounge, for over a decade.
Taking the next step, she finally went back to school and completed her accounting degree at Golden Gate University. After getting her accounting degree, she worked for a publicly traded software company in San Mateo, but is happy to be back in the city now with the EFF!
Vivian creates and maintains websites for EFF. Previously, she worked as a web developer in a technology and design cooperative where she built sites for social change organizations. Some of her other past projects include applying machine learning to birdsong and mapping Oakland campaign finance data. For fun she likes giving haircuts, reading about economics, cooking with friends, and writing to her pen pal.
Bill is a long time activist, programmer, and cryptography enthusiast. He works on EFF's Tech Projects team as a security engineer and technologist, currently maintaining HTTPS Everywhere and Panopticlick. He has also contributed to projects such as Let's Encrypt and SecureDrop. Bill can be found talking to crowds of people on soap boxes and stages in far off places, or doing digital security trainings for organizations. He loves hacker spaces and getting together with other techies to tinker, code, share, and build the technological commons. Er spricht auch gern Deutsch!
Mark Burdett is Senior Engineer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Mark previously served as EFF's technology operations director. Before joining EFF, Mark was a lead developer of VozMob (Mobile Voices), a mobile-based community journalism platform designed by and for migrant workers, and co-founded a worker-owned cooperative providing technology services for community-based organizations, green technology firms and universities such as MIT and the University of Southern California. Mark also works on media activism projects, provides tech support for social movements through the Movement Tech Working Group, builds community wireless networks, jaywalks avidly and, of course, teaches ducks how to program.
Ben is a person. He likes a number of things. He participates in a number of activities. Being vague is maybe among the things he enjoys in a staff profile situation. One non-vague thing: Ben loves working at EFF with many amazing people doing important work.
Shahid leads EFF's grassroots and student outreach efforts. He's a constitutional lawyer focused on the intersection of community organizing and policy reform as a lever to shift legal norms, with roots in communities across the country resisting mass surveillance. From 2009 to 2015, he led the Bill of Rights Defense Committee as Executive Director.
After graduating from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he grew immersed in the movement to stop the war in Iraq, Shahid worked for a decade in Washington, D.C. He first worked in private practice for a large California-based law firm, with public interest litigation projects advancing campaign finance reform, and marriage equality for same-sex couples as early as 2004, when LGBT rights remained politically marginal. From 2005 to 2008, he helped build a national progressive legal network and managed the communications team at the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, and in 2008 and 2009 he founded the program to combat racial & religious profiling at Muslim Advocates.
Outside of his work at EFF, Shahid also DJs and produces electronic music, writes poetry & prose, kicks rhymes, organizes guerilla poetry insurgencies, plays capoeira, speaks truth to power on Truthout, occasionally elucidates legal scholarship, and documents counter-cultural activism for the Burning Man Journal. He also serves on the Boards of Directors of Defending Rights and Dissent, the Center for Media Justice, and the Fund for Constitutional Government.
Nate is a Senior Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s digital civil liberties team. In addition to his focus on free speech and privacy litigation, Nate works on EFF's Who Has Your Back? report and Coders' Rights Project. Nate has projects involving cryptography and the law, automotive privacy, government transparency, hardware hacking rights, anonymous speech, electronic privacy law reform, Freedom of Information Act litigation, and resisting the expansion of the surveillance state. A 2009-2010 EFF Open Government Legal Fellow, Nate spent two years in private practice before returning to his senses and to EFF in 2012. Nate has a B.A. in Anthropology and Politics from U.C. Santa Cruz and a J.D. from U.C. Hastings where he has taught first-year legal writing and moot court. He brews his own beer, has been to India four times, and watches too much Bollywood.
Prior to joining EFF, Kim was director of student development of an alternative, private high school in San Francisco and worked as assistant director of a French immersion school in Illinois. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is ready to get back to her journalistic roots working with EFF’s International Team. In her free time, Kim enjoys running, crafting like Martha, and eating yummy, artisanal cheese.
A graduate of the University of California, Merced, Fidel comes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation with an eclectic background in politicking and non-profit work.
As a member of the development team, he focuses on ensuring that every one of EFF’s 30,000+ supporters remains content.
In his spare time, Fidel likes to tinker in the kitchen, peruse local thrift stores, dance in the rain and engage in local government.
Michelle joins EFF as a designer who has worked primarily in startups and non-profits. A San Francisco native, she likes introducing the city's hidden gems (in her humble opinion.) When she is not freaking out over design, dancing, diving, Disney, and doggos, Michelle enjoys volunteering at the California Academy of Sciences where she wrangles snakes, explains science to humans, and watches the shenanigans of NightLife. Her alternate persona is former pageant queen and emcee (M.C.), which has been a fascinating community-centric growth experience. Michelle's natural habitat is anywhere with large bodies of water nearby and/or trees. She hopes to help create a safe environment for everyone in the physical and digital realms.
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.
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.
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.
Sophia Cope is a 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 a decade 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 call San Diego her hometown.
Keri is the Operations Assistant 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 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. Keri attended the California State University at Chico where she studied both Psychology and English.
Andrew is a 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.
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.
Cynthia supports the Civil Liberties team at EFF, joining the organization in January 2016. She studied the asylum policies of the European Union at Mount Holyoke College and Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. Prior to EFF she was a paralegal for law and financial services firms. She has previously taught English in Spain and ran an artisanal gluten-free, vegan bakery in New York City.
Peter Eckersley is Chief Computer Scientist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He leads a team of technologists who watch for technologies that, by accident or design, pose a risk to computer users' freedoms—and then look for ways to fix them. They write code to make the Internet more secure, more open, and safer against surveillance and censorship. They explain gadgets to lawyers and policymakers, and law and policy to gadgets.
Peter's work at EFF has included privacy and security projects such as Let's Encrypt and Certbot, Panopticlick, HTTPS Everywhere, and the SSL Observatory; helping to launch a movement for open wireless networks; fighting to keep modern computing platforms open; helping to start the campaign against the SOPA/PIPA Internet blacklist legislation; and running the first controlled tests to confirm that Comcast was using forged reset packets to interfere with P2P protocols. He is currently leading a new EFF initiative on the policy, strategy and governance questions raised by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
Peter holds a PhD in computer science and law from the University of Melbourne; his research focused on the practicality and desirability of using alternative compensation systems to legalize P2P file sharing and similar distribution tools while still paying authors and artists for their work. His other activities include serving on the boards of the Internet Security Research Group and the US branch of the Centre for Effective Altruism; on the Advisory Council of the Open Technology Fund; as an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and as advisor to 3D microscopy startup 3scan.
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.
Ernesto Falcon is Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation with a primary focus on intellectual property and open Internet issues.
Prior to joining EFF, Ernesto worked as a legislative staffer for two Members of Congress (2004-2010). He then became Vice President of Government Affairs at Public Knowledge where he advocated on behalf of consumers on copyright issues and broadband competition. During his tenure, Public Knowledge was successful in achieving one of the largest consumer victories in telecom policy by defeating AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile. The following year, PK and EFF scored a major victory for consumers by rallying the Internet community to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
After eight years in Washington DC, he returned to his home state of California to go to law school at McGeorge School of Law in order to strengthen his digital rights advocacy. Now, as an attorney, he is excited to rejoin the fight for consumers and Internet freedom.
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, Kazakhstan. When she is not collecting new and exotic malware, she practices aerial circus arts and learning new languages.
Gennie does research and advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on consumer privacy, surveillance, and security issues. Her work revolves around the conviction that, as access to information and communication technologies expands and becomes more complex, so too do threats to user security and privacy.
Gennie earned a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington, where her thesis with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering's Security & Privacy Research Lab investigated user reactions to censorship. Other past work and research has explored zero-rating in Ghana, mobile access and technology terms in Burma, public Internet access in Laos, and Internet censorship in Thailand. While at the UW, Gennie also co-founded and led a university-wide Open Access initiative. Outside work, she is also a cyclist, avid CouchSurfer, laptop sticker enthusiast, and friend to all cats.
At a young age Jeremy was sidetracked from his ultimate goal of protecting digital civil liberties by the allure of building and programming robots, which was the focus of his work in college and grad school. Having worked on drones and autonomous cars he is aware of their potential benefits for society, but is also that much more prepared to guard against the dangers they present to privacy and civil liberties.
Of course, having worked at EFF for nearly a year Jeremy has covered a wide variety of tech topics, including mobile devices, big data, and net neutrality, just to name a few.
A strong believer in never taking the straightforward path to anything, Jeremy went to Caltech for undergrad, then got his PhD in computer science from Stanford University by working on robotics projects with a professor in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
Starchy Grant might not know the warm embrace of the sunlight, but at least he keeps the servers running on time. When not securing all the things or replacing the small shell script he replaced himself last year with with a slightly smaller yaml file, he enjoys gaming, ultramarathon running, scuba diving, mountain hugging, and dumb ideas poorly disguised as art.
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.
Karen Gullo is an award-winning writer who has reported on public affairs, business, government, and law for more than a decade. As a reporter for Bloomberg News from 2002 to 2015, Karen broke the story of Google’s legal challenge over FBI national security letters, in addition to writing about court battles over government surveillance, the fight to legalize gay marriage in California, concerns over how social media companies use customers’ confidential information, the Barry Bonds perjury trial, and much more. Before joining Bloomberg, Karen was a reporter for The Associated Press in Washington covering politics—including the 2000 presidential election and the Justice Department—as well as campaign finance and federal contracting practices 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 is a native of Chicago and resides in San Francisco.
Lena comes from a background of journalism, international development, and tech for non profits. She studied the emergence of Open Source communities in Latin America, and later worked as a trainer, product manager and media producer with human rights groups in the field. She lead part of the Twitter i18n-l10n team and later managed the Engineering team at Hypothes.is.
Luis comes to us from a background in business operations with other small tech startups,including HR, bookkeeping, recruitment, and sales. In his free time, he enjoys running, cooking, eating, and trying to master the Ukulele as he enjoys all Hawaiian culture and entertainment.
Elliot is an activist at EFF, focusing on patent law, open access, and copyright reform. He's interested in ways that IP law can accelerate innovation rather than hinder it.
Before coming to EFF, Elliot served as director of communications at Creative Commons, an organization that helps creators share their works via open copyright licenses. Before that, he worked as a writer and curator for TechSoup, a technology resource for the nonprofit community. Outside of work, he writes and occasionally performs poetry. He has a Bachelor's degree from the University of South Dakota and a Master's in writing from the California College of the Arts.
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. One 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.
Max is a technologist and a humanist. He leads the team of designers and software engineers who build EFF's web applications. Before he teamed up with EFF in 2013, he helped organizations like CiviCRM and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition use data to tell stories about their work. He spends his free time playing open-world RPGs, riding cross bikes through the redwoods, and helping small nonprofits with online campaigns.
Rebecca Jeschke is 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 has a Bachelor of Arts in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.
Aaron directs fundraising and 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.
After attempting to volunteer with the EFF for a long time, Amul did the next best thing and joined the organization as a staff member in March 2014. Amul is particularly interested in EFF's work relating to new technologies being used to investigate crimes and their constitutional implications.
At EFF, Amul helps our staff spot opportunities where it would be helpful for EFF to add its voice. He mostly works with our attorneys in keeping a pulse on emerging legal digital rights issues, and finding opportunities for us to get involved. He engages our activists in identifying issues that are worthy of advocacy—especially when legal action is not necessarily the best approach. He flags digital liberties threats outside of the United States to members of our international team. When users have questions or concerns regarding our technology projects, he works with the appropriate technologist to address them and communicate how our tools contribute to a private, secure, and open web. He also assists our membership team in answering member questions with the goal of making sure that our members feel excited about supporting our important work.
In addition to communicating one-on-one with the general public and our supporters, Amul writes on EFF's Deeplinks blog on issues ranging from intellectual property to the overbroad nature of computer crime statutes. Amul also has public speaking experience discussing EFF’s work to a diverse constituency ranging from high school students to ACLU chapters.
Amul attended University of California, Berkeley and studied Political Science and Public Policy. Prior to EFF, he was a Cal-in-Sacramento fellow at the California Lieutenant Governor's Office and worked as a field organizer on a successful congressional campaign. In his free time, Amul enjoys reading, making new friends, and keeping it real.
Maggie is the Membership Coordinator at EFF. After starting in 2012 as a Membership Assistant, she's truly happy to now lead the Membership Team and go to events around the country sharing information out about the work of our super skilled teams of technologists, activists, and lawyers. As ever, she is here to help support the future of the digital rights movement with all you activists, makers, hackers, and folks passionate about the future of the Internet.
Amiee is a native and life-long resident of the Bay Area and graduate of UC Berkeley. (Go Bears!) Prior to joining EFF, Amiee held a variety of positions in both for and non-profit including at Berkeley Hillel and the Bill Graham Archives. She is active in local politics and was campaign manager in 2015 for Stuart Schuffman's run for mayor of San Francisco. She still writes an occasional article for his website BrokeAssStuart.com. Amiee volunteers on a regular basis and serve on the leadership of the New Israel Fund, The Kitchen and Californians Advancing Civic Education, where she regularly grills high school students on issues of the US Constitution. She is always on the hunt for the best burger in San Francisco.
Stephanie is a long-time indigent criminal defense trial attorney and immigration defense activist who graduated from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 2004. Before coming to EFF, she worked as a Deputy Federal Defender for two years at the Federal Defender’s Office of San Diego trying federal felony cases ranging from illegal entry into the US to drug and alien smuggling. Then she spent the next decade working at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office trying dozens of cases ranging from robbery to attempted murder. She continues to speak truth to power by protecting your civil rights from government overreach as part of the Civil Liberties Team at the EFF. She speaks conversational Spanish, basic Tagalog, and is an avid musical theater and salsa dancing enthusiast.
Rocket is an Infrastructure Engineer at EFF. They are passionate about security and privacy in the digital world. In their spare time, they enjoy tinkering with electronics, hiking, and snuggling with cats.
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 the EFF by keeping the day to day things that the organization needs to keep running, including making sure that staff never runs out of coconut water.
Jennifer Lynch is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and works on privacy and civil liberties issues in new technologies as part of EFF’s Street Level Surveillance and Transparency Projects. Jennifer is a frequent speaker and lecturer at law schools and legal conferences on law enforcement surveillance programs, government transparency, domestic drones, location data, and biometrics. She has written an influential white paper on biometric data collection in immigrant communities and has testified about facial recognition and its Fourth Amendment implications before the Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. In Jennifer's transparency work, she successfully sued the Federal Aviation Administration and Customs and Border Protection to obtain thousands of pages of previously unpublished drone records and the FBI to obtain new and revealing information about its Next Generation Identification face recognition program. She has also written numerous amicus briefs in federal and state courts on cell site location information and DNA.
Prior to joining EFF, Jennifer was the Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she specialized in privacy and intellectual property issues. Before the Clinic, Jennifer practiced civil litigation with Bingham McCutchen in San Francisco and clerked for Judge A. Howard Matz (now retired) in the Central District of California. She earned both her undergraduate and law degrees from UC Berkeley. She has published academically on identity theft and phishing attacks (20 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 259) and sovereign immunity in civil rights cases (62 Fla. L. Rev. 203) and has been interviewed by major and technical news media, including NBC Nightly News, 60 Minutes, NPR, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, CNet, Nova, Popular Science, Scientific American, and Ars Technica.
Dave Maass is a muckraker/noisemaker on EFF's activism team, covering issues related to police surveillance, free speech, transparency, and government accountability. In addition to deep-dive investigations, Dave coordinates crowdsourced public records campaigns, advocates on state legislation, and compiles The Foilies, EFF's annual tongue-in-cheek awards for outrageous responses to FOIA requests. He sometimes represents EFF in digital rights-themed cosplay at Dragon Con, and he recently edited EFF's first science fiction collection, Pwning Tomorrow. Contact him with questions or information on police technology (e.g. license plate readers, biometric identification), prisoner rights, freedom of information laws, California legislative affairs, or any other inquiry about EFF activism.
He currently serves on the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.
Aaron joins EFF after moving from 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 Boalt Hall in 2012, where he worked for EFF while a student in the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. 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 and a low-riding, sweet 9-year-old lab-corgi mix, Bailey.
Jeremy Malcolm joined EFF's international team in 2014 and works on the international dimensions of issues such as intellectual property, network neutrality, Internet governance, and trade. Prior to that he worked for Consumers International coordinating its global programme Consumers in the Digital Age. Jeremy graduated with degrees in Law (with Honours) and Commerce in 1995 from Murdoch University, and completed his PhD thesis at the same University in 2008 on the topic of Internet governance. Jeremy's background is as an information technology and intellectual property lawyer and IT consultant. He enjoys acting, writing and coding, and his ambitions include writing an original science fiction novel, learning to juggle and learning Japanese (ideally both at once).
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.
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). In 2015 she was named one of California's Top Entertainment Lawyers. She 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. In 2014, she testified before Congress about problems with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 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 civil 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).
Alexei works on Privacy Badger. He previously led product/engineering of Ghostery, another popular browser privacy addon.
Madeleine is a legal secretary in the intellectual property group. 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.
Daniel is a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's intellectual property team, focusing on patent reform. Prior to joining EFF, Daniel was a Residential Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He also practiced at Keker & Van Nest, LLP, where he represented technology clients in patent and antitrust litigation. Before that, Daniel was a legal fellow with the Drug Law Reform Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Daniel clerked for Justice Susan Kenny of the Federal Court of Australia and Judge William K. Sessions, III of the U.S. District of Vermont. Daniel has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Western Australia, an M.A. in philosophy from Rutgers, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Daniel is the author of The Tragicomedy of the Surfer’s Commons (9 Deakin L. Rev. 655) and Conflict and Solidarity: The Legacy of Jeff D. (17 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 499). When he is not working, Daniel can be found surfing at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.
Danny O'Brien has been an activist for online free speech and privacy for over 15 years. In his home country of the UK, he fought against repressive anti-encryption law, and helped make the UK Parliament more transparent with FaxYourMP. He was EFF's activist from 2005 to 2007, and its international outreach coordinator from 2007-2009. After three years working to protect at-risk online reporters with the Committee to Protect Journalists, he returned to EFF in 2013 to supervise EFF's global strategy. He is also the co-founder of the Open Rights Group, Britain's own digital civil liberties organization.
In a previous life, Danny wrote and performed the only one-man show about Usenet to have a successful run in London's West End. His geek gossip zine, Need To Know, won a special commendation for services to newsgathering at the first Interactive BAFTAs. He also coined the term "life hack"; it has been nearly a decade since he was first commissioned to write a book on combating procrastination.
Camille promotes EFF's grassroots advocacy initiative (the Electronic Frontier Alliance) and coordinates outreach to student groups, community groups, and hacker spaces throughout the country. She has very strong opinions about food deserts, the school-to-prison pipeline, educational apartheid in America, the takeover of our food system by chemical companies, the general takeover of everything in American life by large conglomerates, and the right to not be spied on by governments or corporations.
She has her BA in Societal Communication; and enjoys cooking with her husband, re-reading her old philosophy textbooks, scaring her kids with old photos (ahh! the 90s!), and rooting for pathetic football teams. She occasionally plots to overthrow Monsanto.
Soraya is a designer passionate about education, media production, and international development. She manages EFF's security education project, and is excited to support EFF's efforts in privacy, conveying technical concepts to beginners, and creating accessible materials for at-risk and under-resourced groups. Previously, she was an English teacher to elementary school students, and was the development director for a nonprofit operating a secondary school.
She has a B.A. in International Relations and a M.Ed. in Technology, Innovation, and Education. In her free time, she enjoys stand-up comedy, creating films, and making greeting cards.
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. In 2014, Opsahl was elected to the USENIX Board of Directors.
Erica develops Certbot, the web's https-enabling robot buddy. She earned her BSE in computer science at Princeton, where she researched oblivious computation for messaging privacy and took two different classes where she had to watch Star Trek for homework. Upon graduating, she protected authentication tokens in secure enclaves and experimented with searchable encryption. She likes dogs, the pouring rain, and being right.
Nicole supports EFF's donors and fundraising efforts as Donor Relations Coordinator. She also previously planned and executed annual events for EFF, including the Pioneer Awards and Cyberlaw Trivia. Before joining EFF's Development Team, she had over a decade of nonprofit experience working with individual and institutional donors, primarily at the Tides Foundation. She managed a wide range of social justice-focused philanthropic efforts by running grantmaking programs and providing customized programmatic services. She has also supported fiscally sponsored projects at both the Tides Center and at the San Francisco Parks Trust. In her spare time, she enjoys frolicking with baby goats and making pickles.
Cooper is a security researcher and technologist at EFF. He has worked on projects such as Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state sponsored malware. He has also performed security trainings for activists, non profit workers and ordinary folks around the world. He previously worked building websites for non-profits, such as Greenpeace, Adbusters, and the Chelsea Manning Support Network. He also was a co-founder of the Hackbloc hacktivist collective. In his spare time he enjoys playing music and participating in street protests.
Vera is a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s intellectual property team, focusing on patent reform. Prior to joining EFF, Vera practiced at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, where she worked primarily in patent litigation, representing clients against trolls. Vera has a B.Sc. in Mathematics from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, where she realized too late that she should have gotten a degree in computer science, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In her spare time, Vera loves exploring the wonderful food scene of San Francisco.
Rainey Reitman serves as director of the activism team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She is particularly interested in the intersection between personal privacy and technology, particularly social networking privacy, network security, web tracking, government surveillance, and online data brokers.
Reitman is a board member and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization that defends and supports unique, independent, nonprofit journalistic institutions. She, along with co-founders Daniel Ellsberg, Trevor Timm, and J.P. Barlow, received the 2013 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Journalism.
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 Private Chelsea Manning. Previously, Reitman served on the board of directors for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a nonprofit whose mission is to organize and support an effective, national grassroots movement to restore civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Prior to joining EFF, Reitman served as Director of Communications for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit advocacy and education organization promoting consumer privacy. She earned her BA from Bard College in Multidisciplinary Studies: Creative Writing, Russian & Gender Studies.
Katitza Rodriguez is EFF's international rights director. She concentrates on comparative policy of international privacy issues, with special emphasis on law enforcement, government surveillance, and cross border data flows. Her work in EFF's International Program also focuses on cybersecurity at the intersection of human rights. Katitza also manages EFF's growing Latin American programs. She was an advisor to the UN Internet Governance Forum (2009-2010). Before joining EFF, Katitza was director of the international privacy program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C., where amongst other things, she worked on The Privacy and Human Rights Report, an international survey of privacy law and developments. Katitza is well known to many in global civil society and in international policy venues for her work at the U.N. Internet Governance Forum and her pivotal role in the creation and ongoing success of the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for which she served as the civil society liaison while at EPIC from 2008 to March 2010. Katitza holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Lima, Peru. Katitza's twitter handle is @txitua.
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. If the Internet had a zip code, Cristina would live there, in a house next to Lil Bub's.
Mark is a senior staff attorney at EFF, focusing primarily on privacy, surveillance, government secrecy, and national security issues. In his time at EFF, he has brought legal challenges to surveillance programs of the DEA, the FBI, and the NSA; he has represented EFF before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; and he regularly represents EFF and other clients in cases challenging the constitutionality of new or unusual government surveillance practices. Mark is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. In his spare time, he likes doing crossword puzzles and cheering for disappointing amazing sports teams.
Schatzkin works on EFF's websites. Just before arriving at EFF, she was working as a freelance developer for non-profits, artists & writers. She's been in the tech field for more than twenty years, having worked as a computer programmer, database manager of large-scale conversions, IT manager, software quality analyst, web production assistant and web developer. She’s coded in a number of arcane programming languages, and worked in most sectors: non-profit, worker-owned cooperative, government, corporate, and start up.
She has a parallel life as a visual artist and shows her art locally. On the weekends she is usually outdoors enjoying the amazing nature of the SF Bay Area.
Seth Schoen has worked at EFF over a decade, creating the Staff Technologist position and helping other technologists understand the civil liberties implications of their work, EFF staff better understand technology related to EFF's legal work, and the public understand what products they use really do. He helped create the LNX-BBC live CD and has researched phenomena including laser printer forensic tracking codes, ISP packet spoofing, and key recovery from computer RAM after a computer has been turned off. He has testified before the U.S. Copyright Office, U.S. Sentencing Commission, and in several courts.
Adam Schwartz is a Senior Staff Attorney with the EFF's civil liberties team.
Previously, he served as a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Illinois, where he worked for 19 years. His cases at the ACLU challenged the criminalization of civilian audio recording of on-duty police, abusive border detentions of Muslim and Arab citizens caused by the federal Terrorism Screening Database, AT&T’s collaboration with the NSA’s dragnet surveillance program, and public access to information about Illinois’ Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center. He also advocated for policy reform regarding drones and location tracking, and wrote reports about surveillance cameras and fusion centers. His other ACLU cases addressed youth prisons, police detentions of pedestrians and motorists, free speech, religious liberty, and drug testing of public housing residents.
Adam clerked for Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has a J.D. from Howard University and a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University.
As EFF's Grassroots Advocacy Organizer, nash works directly with community members and organizations to take advantage of the full range of tools provided by access to tech, while engaging in empowering action toward the maintenance of digital privacy and information security.
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.
Mitch Stoltz is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Mitch works on cases where free speech and innovation collide with copyright and trademark law. His current projects include improving the legal environment for mobile software developers and tinkerers, fighting the use of copyright as a tool for censorship, litigation on the copyright status of mandatory safety codes, and legal analysis in the field of Internet television and video. Mitch also counsels clients on Internet video technology and open source software licensing.
Before joining EFF, Mitch was an associate at Constantine Cannon LLP in Washington DC, where he worked on antitrust and copyright litigation on behalf of consumer technology, advertising, medical, and transportation companies. He also represented technology companies and trade associations before the Federal Communications Commission and other agencies.
Long ago, in an Internet far far away, Mitch was Chief Security Engineer for the Mozilla Project at Netscape Communications (later AOL), where he worked to secure Web browsers against malicious Internet content and coordinated the security research efforts of hackers on three continents.
Mitch has a JD from Boston University and a BA in Public Policy and Computer Science from Pomona College, where he co-founded the student TV station Studio 47. When not working, he can be found tinkering with electronics or chasing new levels of suffering on a bicycle.
Noah is a Staff Technologist on the Tech Projects team. He works on the various software the EFF produces and maintains, including but not limited to Privacy Badger and Certbot. Noah also works on the security and training materials that EFF uses to teach people about internet security and privacy.
Before joining EFF Noah was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab as well as a free software/culture advocate. Noah is an avid conference organizer and has organized events such as the Roguelike Celebration, LineConf, and the Stupid Shit That Nobody Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon. He lives in the Mission District of San Francisco with his family of twitterbots.
Clare left Buffalo NY for San Francisco and has never looked back. Clare has over 15 years of customer service experience working in the non-profit sector. Most recently Clare spent 13 years as a Membership Services Representative for the Sierra Club before joining EFF. Clare enjoys spending time with her husband and son going to comedy clubs and improv shows. San Francisco Sketchfest is like a sacred holiday for Clare. Comedy is also what brought Clare to EFF. She learned of EFF while listening to Marc Maron's WTF podcast regarding patent trolls. She also likes checking out the live music scene in San Francisco. Favorite music venues include Rickshaw Stop, Bottom of the Hill, and The Elbow Room.
As a long time member of the free software movement, he has a keen interest in how technology can be used to make society more democratic and participatory. He has previously worked with Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and New America Foundation's Open Internet Tools Project. In his spare time, he is involved in a variety of social justice groups.
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.
Kit is a 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.
Brad Warren is a Staff Technologist 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.
Barak is in his second tour at EFF, this time as the Executive Assistant. In between, he was an audio engineer, leaving him in the unique position of having assisted both with the recording of Grammy-nominated songs and on cases and issues in opposition to the recording industry. In his spare time, Barak is an avid organic gardener.
Jamie is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she is part of the civil liberties team. Jamie focuses on the First and Fourth Amendment implications of new technologies. Jamie joined EFF in 2014 as a Frank Stanton Legal Fellow. Prior to joining EFF, Jamie clerked for Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in the Northern District of California. Before her clerkship, she was a litigation associate at Paul Hastings LLP and an attorney law clerk at the Alameda County Public Defender. Jamie has a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors and collecting cool rocks.
Peter builds and maintains websites for EFF. After studying math at UC Santa Cruz he got started programming for electronics and then the web.
Prior to EFF he worked with a consultant group specializing in Ruby application performance. He also helps maintain a hosting community for small label do-it-yourself musicians, and tries to keep it free from nutraceutical spam.
He likes stargazing, reading sci-fi and learning traditional tunes on his fiddle.
Leez, a second-person narrative. You find pleasure in freely-modifiable and redistributable things. While writing your college thesis on the free and open-source software movements, you rebuilt Continuing Education's course-management servers with free and open-source software. You are a social justice advocate that specializes in vehemently arguing why worker-run factories are so rad. Lately you also find pleasure in the ancient art of seafaring, the modern art of flash mobs, and trying to make music emerge from your electronic keyboard.
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. At EFF, she currently works on several projects, including Surveillance Self-Defense and Onlinecensorship.org. Jillian's writing has been featured in Motherboard, the Guardian, Quartz, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, among others. 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 researched Internet censorship. In a previous life, she lived in Morocco and worked as an English teacher and 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, and on the advisory boards of SMEX and R-Shief.
Jillian holds a BA in Sociology from Binghamton University, where—like a surprisingly large number of individuals in her field—she also studied theatre. She alternately resides in the Internet or on an airplane and can often be found blogging or tweeting, as @jilliancyork.
Mackey is EFF's resident Bernese Mountain Dog. He specializes in getting treats from interns, barking at Board members and peeing in front of visiting movie stars. He always encrypts his bones to keep them safe from the NSA.
