Please be respectful of the time of our attorneys. Direct all legal inquiries, not to the individual attorney, but to info@eff.org. All inquiries will be routed to info@eff.org. For expedited responses to media inquiries, please email press@eff.org.
Veridiana coordinates EFF's activities with local organizations and activists in Latin America and the Caribbean, 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 and holds a Masters degree in Economic Law from the University of São Paulo Law School, where she is currently a PhD candidate in Human Rights.
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.
Some of these include Privacy Badger, Panopticlick, HTTPS Everywhere, impact on technology from regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and Forensics.
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.
Josh is the Receptionist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He majored in Media Studies at the University of San Francisco and has previously worked in restaurants and the virtual reality industry. Josh is happy to support the hardworking teams at EFF by keeping them comfortable, caffeinated, and well supplied so they can focus their energy on fighting the creeping dystopia that threatens the very fabric of our society.
In his spare time Josh likes to hang around the Richmond District with his wife Desirée and his two cats Hero and Starlee. He also enjoys producing unlistenable electronic music and drinking way too many iced lattes.
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 for a few years, but was glad to make the move to working in the non-profit sector, especially here at 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, and is the lead developer for 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 loves working at EFF with many amazing people who are doing important work.
Shahid leads EFF's grassroots, student, and community 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. In 2018, Shahid ran for Congress, seeking to represent California's 12th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He received over 17,000 votes in the primary election.
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 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, before founding the program to combat racial & religious profiling at Muslim Advocates in 2008.
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.
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 a good crossword puzzle.
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.
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.
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 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.
Keri is the Administrative Support 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.
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.
Bennett is an engineer on the Tech Projects team, where he works on Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere.
Before EFF, Bennett was at Access Now and MIT, and he has a Master's of Engineering for work on privacy-preserving machine learning. He cares about privacy, transparency, data ownership, and digital equity. He wishes ad companies would kindly stop tracking everyone. Outside of work he has hobbies and likes fun.
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.
When not doing computer stuff at EFF, Ben works on community wireless networks, open source, and recreational mathematics.
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.
Camille Fischer is a Frank Stanton Fellow working on EFF’s free speech and government transparency projects. Camille came to EFF from D.C. where she worked in the Obama White House and in the Department of Commerce advocating for civil, human rights, and due process protections in national security and law enforcement policies. She also ran projects to increase consumer security and privacy, like the move to chip cards (sorry not sorry), and has war stories about ECPA Reform, MLATs, and encryption. Camille graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs). She takes pics and bakes pies.
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 conducts and manages research and advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on consumer privacy, surveillance, and security issues.
Prior to joining EFF, Gennie earned a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington Information School, where she published on Internet censorship in Thailand and zero-rating in Ghana, as well as investigating mobile access and technology terms in Myanmar (Burma) and public Internet access in Laos. While at the UW, she also co-founded and led a successful initiative for a university Open Access policy.
Outside work, Gennie is a cyclist, avid CouchSurfer, sticker enthusiast, and friend to all cats.
Dr. Gillula began his career in academia doing research in the fields of robotics and machine learning. As a participant in the DARPA Desert Grand Challenge, he did work on computer vision systems and sensor fusion systems for unmanned autonomous ground vehicles. During his doctorate, his research focused on how to design guaranteed safe control algorithms for hybrid systems, with a focus on unmanned aerial vehicles. His thesis focused on the design of guaranteed-safe machine learning systems, fusing control theoretic and machine learning techniques.
Since finishing his Ph.D., Dr. Gillula has turned his attention to the intersection of technology and civil liberties issues, including mobile devices, big data, net neutrality, and algorithmic fairness and transparency. He provides technical expertise to lawyers and activists who work on digital civil liberties, and has given a multitude of talks to conferences, invited groups, and policymakers.
A strong believer in never taking the straightforward path to anything, Dr. Gillula 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 came here to preserve uptime, fight for your rights online, run ultramarathons, and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum.
Will is an Operations Engineer attempting to tame the EFF's menagerie of servers. He's passionate about democratizing computer security and fighting for a more just application of technology in society. When he's not doing that, though, he's all about tabletop gaming, running, and learning cool new stuff.
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.
Matthew Guariglia is a policy analyst working on issues of surveillance and privacy 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 a frequent contributor to the Freedom of Information-centered outlet Muckrock and his bylines have also appeared in the Washington Post and Motherboard. Matthew will be a visiting scholar in the department of history at UC Berkeley 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)
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.
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 lead 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.
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.
Alexis works to secure the web by working on HTTPS Everywhere. She has previously been a web developer and system administrator for 5 years and a statistician in the education realm. She has earned degrees from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Technology and The New School in Organizational Change Management. She is very passionate about encryption and tech equity for all. Alexis can be found either online ranting about bad security & surveillance policies, crocheting, or tinkering with a new tech toy.
Elliot is the activism director at EFF. He advocates for free speech and the right to innovate online, with particular emphases on patents, copyright, open access, and Section 230.
Before coming to EFF, Elliot served as director of communications at Creative Commons, an organization that helps creators share their works with the public via open copyright licenses. Before that, he worked as a writer and curator for TechSoup, a technology resource for the nonprofit community. He has degrees from the University of South Dakota and 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. 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.
Max is a technologist and a humanist. Max manages a team of engineers who maintain Certbot, STARTTLS Everywhere, and other projects to encrypt the Internet. Before teaming up with EFF in 2013, Max helped organizations like CiviCRM, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, and the United Nations with fundraising, advocacy, and data visualization software. Max serves on the board of the Internet Security Research Group.
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.
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 is on the Advisory Board for the Internet Freedom Festival and on the Board of Directors of Alameda Family Services.
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.
Maggie is the Membership Program Manager at EFF. Since 2012, she's been thrilled to be a part of 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.
Jason Kelley is a Digital 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. Make it go quicker.”
Rocket is a Senior 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 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.
Sydney primarily works on EFF's initiative to secure the entire Internet, like finally securing email delivery via STARTTLS Everywhere. She also helps develop the Let's Encrypt Certbot client, which secures communications with web users via HTTPS. Otherwise, she cares a lot about decentralizing state and corporate power, censorship resistance, puzzles, illustration, and noodles.
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, and in 2017, the First Amendment Coalition awarded her its Free Speech and Open Government Award for her work opening up public access to police surveillance records. Jennifer has written influential white papers on biometric data collection in immigrant communities and law enforcement use of face recognition. 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.
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.
As EFF's senior investigative researcher, Dave Maass is a muckraker/noisemaker, covering issues related to police surveillance, free speech, transparency, and government accountability. In addition to leading deep-dive investigations, Dave coordinates large-scale 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 edited EFF's first science fiction collection, Pwning Tomorrow. He also researches virtual reality as part of the team that developed Spot the Surveillance, EFF's first VR experience. Contact him with questions or information on police technology (e.g. automated license plate readers, biometric identification), prisoner rights, or public records laws.
Dave is currently Visiting Professor of Media Technology at the University of Nevada, Reno Reynolds School of Journalism.
Aaron works on free speech, 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.
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.
Alex is a Staff Attorney on EFF’s intellectual property team, focusing on legal issues that affect innovation and creativity of all kinds. Before joining EFF, Alex practiced complex commercial litigation at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York and Durie Tangri LLP in San Francisco, where she handled patent, copyright, trademark, contract, and antitrust matters for a wide range of clients in state and federal courts across the country. After graduating from Stanford Law School, Alex developed a a particular passion for patent law while clerking for the Honorable Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Before law school, Alex worked with independent recording artists at Rough Trade America and Alan McGee Management.
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.
Joe Mullin is a policy analyst on EFF’s intellectual property team, where he works on patent reform, copyright issues, and free speech 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.
Danny O'Brien has been an activist for online free speech and privacy for over 20 years. In his home country of the UK, he fought against repressive anti-encryption law, and helped found the Open Rights Group, Britain's own digital rights organization. He was EFF's activist from 2005 to 2007, its international outreach coordinator from 2007-2009, and international director from 2013-2019. He now supervises EFF's medium and long-term strategy, with an eye to maintaining the organization's global impact and reputation.
In a previous century, 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 over 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 watching permaculture videos on YouTube. She occasionally plots to overthrow Monsanto.
Soraya is a designer passionate about education and media production. 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.
Lindsay is the Project Manager for the Activism Team. Before joining the EFF in 2017, she managed the nonprofit accelerator program at Geeks Without Bounds, focusing on open source technology solutions to humanitarian and disaster relief challenges, as well as working with a number of nonprofit, civil society, and social enterprise organizations on capacity-building for diverse communities. Prior to her forays into civic technology, Lindsay worked as a public high school teacher, and holds both a BA in English from Loyola University Chicago and a MAT in Secondary English Education from National Louis University. In her copious spare time (lol), she makes costumes and races suped-up Power Wheels.
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.
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 served as a researcher in Thailand on projects to amplify the voices of marginalized women in international climate negotiations and to enhance the human rights obligations of transnational corporations. She then returned to the U.S. to work for local and national organizations doing things like learning about the importance of accessible legal aid in combating poverty, writing about developments in human rights law, and researching the military industrial congressional complex in support of a weapons divestment campaign. She’s also a big fan of live music, good food, other people’s dogs, traveling far and wide around the planet, and writing fiction (that at least her older sister thinks is very good).
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 also works 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.
Nicole supports EFF's fundraising efforts and specializes in donor correspondence and outreach. 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 offering customized programmatic services. She has also supported fiscally sponsored projects at both the Tides Center and the San Francisco Parks Trust. In her spare time, she enjoys frolicking with baby goats and making pickles.
Cooper is a security researcher and Senior Staff 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.
Rainey Reitman serves as the Chief Program Officer for EFF. She focuses on organizational development, leadership development, internal systems, and ensuring that all of EFF's programmatic teams develop and achieve impactful strategies.
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.
From 2010-2018, Reitman served as the Activism Director for EFF. 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). In 2018, CNET named Katitza one of 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".
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 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.
Still ain't slept, watching law and order and eating handfuls of coco puffs out the box.
Laura Schatzkin is a front-end web developer who works with EFF's amazing designers and brilliant engineers. In 2018, Laura was selected to participate in the Mozilla XRStudio Residency program, where she coded EFF's first virtual reality project, Spot the Surveillance, using Aframe. She has also worked on many of EFF's digital activism projects, including the team behind EFF's net neutrality campaign, Check Your Reps; the digital privacy guides Surveillance Self-Defense and the Security Education Companion, StartTLS Everywhere and Fix It Already. She has worked in tech for over 20 years with a focus on working with non-profits and artists.
She has a parallel life as a visual artist. On the weekends she is usually outdoors enjoying the nature of the San Francisco 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 EFF. Mitch focuses on copyright, trademark, antitrust, telecommunications, and free speech. He has worked for years to fight the use of copyright as a tool for censorship, and to keep the Internet open for creativity and innovation from far and wide. His recent projects include formulating new approaches to antitrust and competition policy in Internet industries, litigation on the copyright status of mandatory safety codes, and cases on Internet TV and radio. Mitch also counsels clients on the use of open licenses for software and media.
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 and coordinated the security research efforts of hackers on three continents. Mitch has a JD from Boston University School of Law and a BA in Public Policy Analysis and Computer Science from Pomona College.
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 Elbo Room.
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.
Katharine is the Manager of Policy and Activism at EFF, focusing on 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, while also contributing occasionally to io9’s sister publications Deadspin, Jezebel, and Gizmodo. 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 lead to her going to law school with an eye to learning more about fair use and copyright law. She’s excited to be melding both her legal and writing background together at the EFF.
Hayley Tsukayama is a legislative activist for 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 has an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri and a BA in history from Vassar College. She was a 2010 recipient of the White House Correspondents' Association scholarship.
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 including Huckleberry Youth Programs. 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!
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.
Brad Warren is a Senior 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.
Jamie Williams is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she is part of EFF's civil liberties team. Jamie focuses on the First and Fourth Amendment implications of new technologies, and is part of EFF’s Coder’s Rights Project, which protects programmers and developers engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology. Jamie joined EFF in 2014. Prior to joining EFF, Jamie clerked for Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in the Northern District of California, and practiced at Paul Hastings LLP, as an associate in the firms’ litigation department. Jamie was also a 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.
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'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.
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 leads Onlinecensorship.org and works on platform censorship and accountability; state censorship; and digital security. Jillian writes regularly for the New Internationalist and her work has also been featured in Motherboard, Buzzfeed, 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 filtering and worked on the OpenNet Initiative and Herdict. 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 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. She alternately resides in the Internet or on an airplane and can often be found blogging or tweeting, as @jilliancyork.
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.
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.
