CDT Welcomes Sharon Bradford Franklin to Its Security & Surveillance Project

(WASHINGTON) — The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is pleased to announce the appointment of Sharon Bradford Franklin as Co-Director of its Security & Surveillance Project. Franklin is one of America’s most distinguished experts on protecting civil liberties and human rights in intelligence and law enforcement surveillance, detention, cybersecurity, and encryption.

“Sharon is a fierce and determined champion of individuals’ rights to privacy, liberty, equality and the rule of law” said Greg Nojeim, who co-directs CDT’s Security and Surveillance Project. “We look forward to her leadership and counsel on many of our initiatives, such as making U.S. foreign surveillance law conform to international human rights standards, reining in law enforcement’s use of discriminatory facial recognition technology, protecting privacy and civil rights at the border, building guardrails for law enforcement access to consumers’ data, and supporting encryption to ensure safe and secure communications around the world.”

Franklin has a distinguished record of service in the U.S. government as the Executive Director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent government agency responsible for ensuring that counterterrorism programs protect privacy and civil liberties. She also served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Special Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission and as a member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

Franklin also has worked as an advocate for human rights at several nonprofit organizations, having been Policy Director for New America’s Open Technology Institute, Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, and Executive Director of the Washington Council of Lawyers. Franklin is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

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CDT is a 25-year-old 501(c)3 nonpartisan nonprofit that works to strengthen individual rights and freedoms by defining, promoting, and influencing technology policy and the architecture of the internet that impacts our daily lives.