PRESS RELEASE: EPIC Adds Ten Leading Scholars and Advocates to Advisory Board 

WASHINGTON, DC – Today the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced the addition of ten members to its Advisory Board. As EPIC celebrates our 30^th anniversary, we are thrilled to continue to grow our network of leading scholars, experts, and advocates in the privacy, civil liberties, and cybersecurity space, whose knowledge we draw on to inform and advance our work.   

“EPIC is fortunate to have deep expertise on our Advisory Board that enables us to play a leading role in debates on emerging policy issues that shape the future of the internet. The new members joining us as advisors work at the cutting edge of AI policy, cybersecurity, digital democracy, and data protection.” says EPIC Executive Director Alan Butler.  

EPIC will turn to the expertise of these new members in our research, advocacy, and litigation work at a time when states are passing privacy legislation that establishes meaningful limits on the collection and use of personal data, when tech companies seek to use the First Amendment to overturn laws that would give users privacy rights and prevent harmful platform design choices, when major data security incidents have illuminated gaps in our cybersecurity infrastructure and risks to health and other personal data, and when our democracy and civil rights are under threat from AI disinformation. 

EPIC’s new members bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in educating the public and working to protect privacy and civil liberties against the various threats that exist today.  

The new members are:  

• Jim Balsillie – Jim Balsillie’s career is unique in Canadian business. He is the retired Chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), a technology company he scaled from an idea to $20 billion in sales globally. Mr. Balsillie’s private investment office includes global and domestic technology investments including cybersecurity leader Magnet Forensics. He is the co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators based in Toronto, and Digital Governance Council, as well as founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, the Centre for Digital Rights, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and the Arctic Research Foundation. He currently chairs the boards of CCI, CIGI, Innovation Asset Collective and Digital Governance Council. He is also a member of the Board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Advisory Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre; an Honorary Captain (Navy) of the Royal Canadian Navy and an Advisor to Canada School of Public Service. Mr. Balsillie was the private sector representative on the UN Secretary General’s High Panel for Sustainability. His awards include: several honorary degrees, Mobile World Congress Lifetime Achievement Award, India’s Priyadarshni Academy Global Award, Canadian Business Hall of Fame, Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People and three times Barron’s list of “World’s Top CEOs.”  

• Lorrie Cranor – She is the Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor in Security and Privacy Technologies of CyLab and the FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-directs the Privacy Engineering masters program. She was founding co-director of the Collaboratory Against Hate: Research and Action Center at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission, working in the office of Chairwoman Ramirez. She is also a co-founder of Wombat Security Technologies, Inc, a security awareness training company that was acquired by Proofpoint.  

• Serge Egelman – He is the Research Director of the Usable Security and Privacy group at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), which is an independent research institute affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Chief Scientist and co-founder of AppCensus, Inc., which is commercializing his research by performing on-demand privacy analysis of mobile apps for compliance purposes. He conducts research to help people make more informed online privacy and security decisions, and is generally interested in consumer protection. 

• Leah Fowler – She is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. Her research explores topics at the intersection of consumer technology and health, focusing primarily on smartphone applications and social media platforms. Her scholarship is published or forthcoming in leading legal and peer-reviewed journals, including the Georgetown Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Pediatrics, American Journal of Bioethics, and others.  

• Susan Landau – She is the Bridge Professor in Cyber Security and Policy at The Fletcher School and the School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Tufts University and founding director of Tufts’s innovative MS degree in Cybersecurity and Public Policy. She has been a Senior Staff Privacy Analyst at Google, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Wesleyan University. Landau’s research lies at the intersection of privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, and law, and she has testified before Congress and briefed US and European policymakers on encryption, surveillance, and cybersecurity issues. 

• Jessica Levinson – Her work focuses on constitutional law, the law of the political process, including election law and governance issues, and the Supreme Court. Levinson is a legal contributor for CBS News, a columnist for MSNBC, and has a weekly legal segment on NPR member station KCRW. Levinson is the founding director of Loyola Law School’s Public Service Institute, which is dedicated to creating the next generation of leaders in government service. She is also the director of Loyola Law School’s Journalist Law School. 

• Dawn Nunziato – She is the Pedas Family Endowed Professor of IP and Technology Law at The George Washington University Law School, where she co-directs the Ethical Technology Initiative and The Global Internet Freedom & Human Rights Project and where she serves as an Affiliate of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics. She currently serves as Chair of the U.S. TikTok Content Advisory Council. She is an internationally recognized expert on social media regulation and free speech and is the author of the critically acclaimed book Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age (Stanford University Press).  

• Spencer Overton – He is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor and the founder and faculty director of the Multiracial Democracy Project at GW Law School. He is the author of the book “Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression” and several law review articles on the law of democracy, including “Overcoming Racial Harms to Democracy from Artificial Intelligence” and “State Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression.” Professor Overton served as president of and rebuilt the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies—America’s Black think tank—and held various senior policy leadership positions on the Obama presidential campaign and transition and in the Obama administration.  

• Andrew Selbst – He is an Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Drawing on resources from computer science, critical theory, sociology, and science, technology and society, he seeks to understand how the creation, use, and proliferation of different technologies can interfere with existing legal regimes, and how legal actors can most usefully anticipate or respond to the social effects of new technology. Over the last several years, Selbst’s research has focused on the effects of machine learning and artificial intelligence on varied legal regimes, including discrimination, policing, credit regulation, data protection, tort law, and consumer protection. 

• Zephyr Teachout – She is a Law Professor at Fordham Law School, where her research focuses on the intersection of corporate power and democratic freedoms. She has written dozens of law review articles and two books. She has previously taught law and political science at Yale and Harvard and was previously Senior Counsel for Economic Justice in the Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. Prior to becoming an academic, she was a lawyer, nonprofit executive and advocacy consultant. She serves on the board of CREW, the Nation, and is a Senior Legal Advisor to the American Economic Liberties Project. 

With the guidance of these new members, EPIC looks forward to continuing its important work to promote transparency in government and protect privacy and civil liberties in the modern age.   

### 

About EPIC 
 

EPIC was established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. Our mission is to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation. EPIC pursues a wide range of program activities, including litigating cases on emerging privacy issues, obtaining and publishing records to lift the veil on government data collection, providing expert advice to policymakers and lawmakers, and facilitating dialogue between advocates, experts, and decisionmakers. EPIC is an independent organization guided by its Board of Directors and Advisory Board, which are composed of experts in law, technology, and public policy. Visit epic.org for more information. 

References  

EPIC Advisory Board

EPIC Board and Staff