Greg Nojeim

Greg Nojeim is Senior Counsel and Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C. non-profit public policy organization fighting to advance civil right and civil liberties in the digital age. He specializes in protecting privacy as against intrusion by the U.S. government, and by other governments. He is a recognized expert on the PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the application of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to electronic surveillance in the national security, intelligence and criminal arenas. 

Companies, Congress, and colleagues seek Greg’s advice on a wide range of privacy and surveillance matters. Most recently, those matters have included artificial intelligence, immigration enforcement, and the privacy of location information in the criminal context. 

Greg led CDT’s efforts to protect privacy in the context of cross border data demands. He provided analyses of the legislation that culminated in the adoption of the CLOUD Act in the United States. Greg also directed CDTs initiatives that respond to the 2013 disclosures about NSA surveillance and was engaged in CDT’s successful efforts to promote the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015, the bill that ended bulk collection of telephone call records under the PATRIOT Act. Nojeim also spearheaded CDT’s initiative to promote judicial supervision of surveillance conducted under 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He was also deeply involved in CDT’s multi-year, broad-based project to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to account for new technologies, and to impose warrant requirements for governmental access to communications content and to location information generated by the operation of digital devices.  

Until 2024, Greg sat on the Board of Directors of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder group of companies, human rights and press freedom organizations, academics and investors who collaborate to advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector.  He now sits on the Steering Committee of the Global Encryption Coalition which CDT helped found in 2020 and which now includes over four hundred members around the world.

Prior to joining CDT in May 2007, Greg was the Associate Director and Chief Legislative Counsel of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office.  There, he analyzed the civil liberties implications of terrorism, national security, immigration and informational privacy legislation. Greg also served for four years the Director of Legal Services of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and conducted much of ADC’s work on immigration, civil rights, and human rights.  He was an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart (now K&L Gates) where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, securities law, and international trade.

Greg graduated from the University of Rochester with a B.A. in Political Science. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia and sat on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Journal of International Law.