Get ready for RightsCon Brussels: March 29-31, 2017!

Raman Jit Singh Chima

Policy Director, Access Now

Raman Jit Singh Chima serves as Policy Director at Access, leading the organisation's team of global policy staff in protecting an open internet and advancing the rights of users at risk across the world. He is a founding volunteer with the SaveTheInternet.in Net Neutrality Coalition and assisted the legal team involved in the Supreme Court of India's landmark Shreya Singhal v. Union of India judgment on internet free speech. Prior to this, he served as Policy Counsel and Government Affairs Manager with Google based in Delhi across 2010-2014 and advised government, industry bodies and academia on technology policy issues.

He is an India qualified lawyer enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi and clerked for Justice V.S. Sirpurkar of the Supreme Court of India, in addition to training with India's National Judicial Academy and National Human Rights Commission. Raman has studied internet regulation as an independent research fellow with the Sarai programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and contributed to Freedom House's inaugural Freedom on the Internet report in 2009. He holds a Bachelors in Arts and Law (Honours) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, where he was Chief Editor of the Indian Journal of Law and Technology.

Cindy Cohn

Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

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.

Malkia Amala Cyril

Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice

Malkia Amala Cyril grew up believing that "everyone deserves a public voice". Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, national network of 175 organization working to ensure media access, rights, and representation for marginalized communities. A prolific writer and public speaker, Cyril's articles and quotes have appeared in the Huffington Post, Essence Magazine, and dozens more.

Ron Deibert

Director of the Citizen Lab, author, and founder of Psiphon

Ron Deibert (PhD, University of British Columbia) is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development hothouse working at the intersection of the Internet, global security, and human rights. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects.

Deibert was one of the founders and (former) VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon Inc. Deibert has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on issues related technology, media, and world politics. He was one of the authors of the Tracking Ghostnet report that documented an alleged cyber-espionage network affecting over 1200 computers in 103 countries, and the Shadows in the Cloud report, which analyzed a cloud-based espionage network. He is a co-editor of three major volumes with MIT Press: Access Denied: The practice and policy of Internet Filtering (2008), Access Controlled: The shaping of power, rights, and rule in cyberspace (2010), and Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (2011). He is the author of Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communications in World Order Transformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), and the forthcoming book Black Code: the battle for the future of cyberspace (forthcoming: McClelland & Stewart, 2013). He has been a consultant and advisor to governments, international organizations, and civil society/NGOs on issues relating to cyber security, cyber crime, online free expression, and access to information. He presently serves on the editorial board of the journals International Political Sociology, Security Dialogue, Explorations in Media Ecology, Review of Policy Research, and Astropolitics.

Deibert is on the advisory board of Access Now, Privacy International, and is a member of the board of directors of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.

Deibert was awarded the University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award (2002), the Northrop Frye Distinguished Teaching and Research Award (2002), and the Carolyn Tuohy Award for Public Policy (2010). He was a Ford Foundation research scholar of Information and communication technologies (2002-2004).

Eileen Donahoe

Director of Global Affairs, Human Rights Watch

Eileen Donahoe is the Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch where she represents the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity and Internet governance. She served as the first US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva from 2010-2013.

Donahoe is a Co-Chair of the NETmundial Initiative on global multi-stakeholder Internet governance. She serves as a member of the Freedom Online Coalition Working Group on Freedom & Security focused on bringing a human rights based approach to cybersecurity policy. She is an Affiliate at the Center for International Security & Cooperation and a Visiting Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Research interests include implications of digital technology for human rights, adaptation of the international human rights law framework for the digital context, cybersecurity through a human rights lens, development of the multi-stakeholder Internet governance ecosystem, international norms governing use of force, UN reform, and ethical justifications for humanitarian military intervention.

In her earlier career, Donahoe was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, a master’s of theological studies from Harvard, a master’s in East Asian studies from Stanford, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from GTU at UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House and the Council on Foreign Relations.

David Kaye

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

Prof. Kaye’s scholarship and teaching focus on public international law, especially international human rights law, international humanitarian law, accountability for violations of human rights, and the law governing the use of force. He is just as interested in efforts to translate international law—especially human rights law—in a domestic American context, whether in courts, legislatures, or the executive branches of government, at federal and state levels.Prof. Kaye has been appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to serve as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, effective August 1, 2014, for three years.

With the assistance of students in his International Justice Clinic, Prof. Kaye will report to the UN on some of the key issues in free expression worldwide, such as the safety of journalists, severe restrictions placed on Internet access and usage, the chilling effects of electronic surveillance, hate speech and incitement to violence. Prof. Kaye began his legal career with the U.S. State Department, handling such subjects as international claims, nuclear nonproliferation, international humanitarian law, and accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Prior to joining UC Irvine, he co-founded UCLA’s International Human Rights Program and founded its International Justice Clinic, working on projects dealing with accountability for international crimes around the world.

In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Professor Kaye is an active member of the American Society of International Law, for which he served on its Executive Council and Executive Committee, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also published essays and opinion pieces in mainstream publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

As a clinical teacher, Professor Kaye aims to help students discover and put to use tools to advocate for implementation of human rights law and accountability for serious violations and to assist those worldwide who are looking to build the rule of law in their own countries. He also believes in scholarship that helps advance our understanding of how international law operates—and in translating that scholarship, as much as possible, to the broader public and policymaking communities.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Author of Consent of the Networked, Co-founder of RDR, GNI and Global Voices

Rebecca MacKinnon is director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, developing a system to rank the world's most powerful Internet, telecommunications, and other ICT sector companies on free expression and privacy criteria.

Author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom (Basic Books, 2012) MacKinnon is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online, whose Board of Directors she presently chairs. She also serves on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and was a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative. She is also a visiting affiliate at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communications Studies. Before launching Ranking Digital Rights, she was a senior research fellow (2012-2013) and Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow (2010-2012) at the New America Foundation.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief from 1998-2001 and Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2001-2003. Since leaving CNN in 2004 she has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press and Public Policy, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Open Society Foundations, and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. For two years in 2007-08 she served on the faculty of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, and taught as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Fall 2013. She received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan.

Morgan Marquis-Boire

Director of Security, FLM & Senior Researcher & Tech Advisor at the Citizen Lab

Morgan Marquis-Boire is a researcher. In addition to being a contributor to The Intercept, he acts as the director of security for First Look Media. He is also a senior researcher and technical advisor at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. Additionally, he serves as a Special Advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and as a member of the Free Press Foundation’s security advisory board. His research on surveillance, censorship, and the targeting of activists and journalists has been featured in numerous print and online publications.

Andrew McLaughlin

Medium

Andrew McLaughlin works at Medium, leading its content organization, developing new business opportunities, and expanding its presence in New York City.

Andrew is a venture partner at betaworks, a technology and media startup studio and investor based in NYC. As a partner at betaworks from 2012-2016, Andrew was an operator, a company and product builder, a strategist, and an investor, and served as CEO of two betaworks companies, Digg and Instapaper. Andrew serves on the boards of Digg and Chartbeat. Andrew chairs the board of Access Now, an organization devoted to defending and extending the digital rights of activists, journalists, and citizens at risk around the world.

He is a director of theSunlight Foundation, which puts technology to work in civic tech, open data, policy analysis, and journalism to make government and politics more accountable and transparent, and of Public Knowledge, which promotes freedom of expression, an open internet, and the public domain.

Julie Owono

Head of Africa Desk, Internet Sans Frontières

Julie Owono is a lawyer and the founder of start-up Feowl, a platform that produces data on energy in African cities. She is the head of the Africa Desk at Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders), where she focuses on Rights and Freedoms in the digital space, and develops the organization globally. She regularly writes columns for various publications, including Al Jazeera English and Quartz, on issues related to politics, law and innovation in the Gulf of Guinea. She often appears as a Gulf of Guinea expert on International TV channels (France 24 English, BBC World, Russia Today, Huff Post Live, etc).

Kyung-sin Park

Director, Open Net Korea

Professor K.S. Park is one of the founders of Open Net Korea, a forum for discussion and collaboration on ICT freedoms and human rights. He is currently Open Net’s director. Since 2006, he has also served as the executive director of the PSPD Law Center, a non-profit entity that organized several high-impact litigations in the areas of free speech, privacy, and copyright.

Additionally, K.S. was a key drafting partner in two pivotal NGO-led and standard-setting international efforts in online privacy and free speech: the Principles of Application of International Law on Communication Surveillance and the International Principles on Intermediary Liability.

Some of the notable cases he provided testimony for include the blogger Minerva, the internet real name verification law, the military’s seditious book blacklisting, the newspaper consumers’ boycott, and the case of Park Jung-Geun.

Chris Riley

Head of Public Policy, Mozilla

I went to graduate school for a long time - and along the way, I met a lot of great people and had time to figure out who I am, personally and professionally (and in all the ways in which those things intersect), for which I'm forever thankful. I'm now settled in the area of Internet policy, coming from a law and technology background. My motivation is the belief that an open Internet delivers tremendous socioeconomic benefits, and that if we as a global society don't "get" Internet policy more often than not, those benefits will go away. That path took me from computer science, to copyright, to telecom, to Internet freedom, presenting me with many opportunities to do some interesting and some disruptive things. My hope, and my goal, is always to respect and advance the interests of the world's Internet users, and to push back on concentrated power and gatekeepers where they stand in the way of innovation and global growth.

Frank William La Rue

Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, UNESCO

Frank La Rue is a Guatemalan labor and human rights law expert and served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, from August 2008 to August 2014. Along with American Human Rights attorneys, Anna Gallagher and Wallie Mason, Mr. La Rue is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) and has been involved in the promotion of human rights for over 25 years. He was nominated for (but did not win) the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Corrigan, Northern Irish peace activist and 1976 laureate. Currently, Mr La Rue is the Executive Director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Europe.

As the UN Special Rapporteur Mr La Rue promoted and protected the right to freedom of opinion and expression from 2008 to 2014. During his tenure he wrote and presented 10 landmark reports on the state of freedom of expression to the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly. The reports presented important findings on topics such as the protection of journalists, freedom of expression exercised through the internet, and the impact of state surveillance on privacy and freedom of expression.

Bruce Schneier

Security technologist, cryptographer, privacy specialist, and author

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a "security guru" by The Economist. He is the author of 13 books -- including "Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World" -- as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers.

His influential newsletter "Crypto-Gram" and his blog "Schneier on Security" are read by over 250,000 people. He has testified before Congress, is a frequent guest on television and radio, has served on several government committees, and is regularly quoted in the press. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Chief Technology Officer at Resilient Systems, Inc.

Esra’a Al Shafei

Founder and director of Majal.org

Esra'a Al Shafei is the founder and director of Majal.org, a network of online platforms that amplify under-reported and marginalized voices throughout the Middle East and North Africa. She is a recipient of the Berkman Award from Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society for "outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society," and is currently a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow. Previously, she was an Echoing Green Fellow and a Senior TED Fellow. In 2011 she was featured in Fast Company as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and awarded the Monaco Media Prize, which acknowledges innovative uses of media for the betterment of humanity.

In 2014, she was featured in Forbes' "30 Under 30" list of social entrepreneurs making an impact in the world. The same year, Majal.org (Mideast Youth at the time) received the Human Rights Tulip, awarded annually to an organization which promotes and supports human rights in innovative ways.

Brad Smith

President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft

In this role Smith is responsible for the company’s corporate, external, and legal affairs. He leads a team of more than 1,300 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals working in 55 countries. These teams are responsible for the company’s legal work, its intellectual property portfolio, patent licensing business, corporate philanthropy, government affairs, public policy, corporate governance, and social responsibility work. He is also Microsoft’s chief compliance officer. Smith plays a key role in representing the company externally and in leading the company’s work on a number of critical issues including privacy, security, accessibility, environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, among others.

Smith joined Microsoft in 1993, and before becoming general counsel in 2002 he spent three years leading the Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) team in Europe, then five years serving as the deputy general counsel responsible for LCA’s teams outside the United States.

Edward Snowden

Board Member at the Freedom of the Press Foundation

Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed the NSA was unconstitutionally seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the largest debate about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. He has received awards for courage, integrity, and public service, and was named the top global thinker of 2013 by Foreign Policy magazine. Today, he works on methods of enforcing human rights through the application and development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation in February 2014.

Amie Stepanovich

U.S. Policy Manager, Access Now

Amie Stepanovich is U.S. Policy Manager at Access Now. Amie is an expert in domestic surveillance, cybersecurity, and privacy law. At Access Now, Amie leads projects on digital due process and responds to threats at the intersection of human rights and communications surveillance. Previously, Ms. Stepanovich was the Director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, where she testified in hearings in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as in State legislatures. She was co-chair for the 2014 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference and is the Committee on Individual Rights and Responsibilities' Liason to the American Bar Association's Cybersecurity Working Group.

Amie was named as a Privacy Ambassador by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada and was recognized in 2014 as one of Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 leaders in Law and Policy. Stepanovich has a J.D. from New York Law School, and a B.S. from the Florida State University.

Nicole Wong

Former Legal Director for Products @Twitter, VP & Deputy GC for Google

Nicole Wong is the former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer focusing on internet, privacy and innovation policy. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Nicole served as Twitter’s Legal Director for Products and Google’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. She frequently speaks on issues related to law and technology, including five appearances before the U.S. Congress. Nicole chairs the board of Friends of Global Voices, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting citizen and online media projects globally, and sits on the board of WITNESS, an organization promoting the use of video to advance human rights.

She currently serves as an advisor to the the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Business School Digital Initiative, the Albright Stonebridge Group, and to several technology companies on privacy, regulatory strategy and international development.

The Honorable Ron Wyden

United States Senate

Sen. Ron Wyden has spent his career pushing for smarter federal policy on technology, co-authoring pioneering tech laws, and standing up for Americans’ privacy in the face of government overreach.

Wyden co-authored Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provided the legal foundation for today’s social media, and led the fight against the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and its predecessor, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeit Act (COICA), put a spotlight on the problematic legislation being fast tracked through Congress and served as a rallying point for the historic Internet protests that ultimately toppled the bills.

Wyden has led the congressional fight against unnecessary and invasive government surveillance programs. He spent years warning of a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which was eventually revealed to be the mass surveillance of Americans and succeeded in passing major reforms of NSA surveillance in 2015.