Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for purposes of well-intent, while at the same time reducing its potential for harm. It advocates for transparency, accountability, and limiting the collection of personal information.
China Digital Times is a US-based 501(c)(3) organization that runs a bilingual news website covering China. The site focuses on news items which are blocked, deleted or suppressed by China's state censors.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
Kay Coles James is an American public official who has served as secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia since January 2022, and as the director for the United States Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Previous to the OPM appointment, she served as Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans.
Howard Anthony Schmidt was a partner with Tom Ridge in Ridge Schmidt Cyber LLC, a consultancy company in the field of cybersecurity. He was the Cyber-Security Coordinator of the Obama Administration, operating in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He announced his retirement from that position on May 17, 2012, effective at the end of the month.
Laura DeNardis is an American author and a scholar of Internet governance and technical infrastructure. She is the Professor and Endowed Chair in Technology, Ethics, and Society at Georgetown University. DeNardis is an affiliated Fellow of the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School and served as its Executive Director from 2008-2011. She previously served as a Senior Fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Director of Research for the Global Commission on Internet Governance. With a background in information technology engineering and a doctorate in Science and Technology Studies (STS), her research studies the social and political implications of Internet technical architecture and governance. Domestically, she served as an appointed member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP) during the Obama Administration. She has more than two decades of experience as an expert consultant in Internet Governance to Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and government agencies.
Michael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as reported in the October 1994 issue of Wired. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011, he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. In April 2019, he was elected to the Internet Society board. From 2015 to 2020, he was general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute. In August 2020, he and the Blackstone Law Group filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of the employees of TikTok, and worked there between June 2021 and June 2022. Since October 2022, he has worked as the policy and privacy lead at Anonym.
Ari M. Schwartz is an American cybersecurity and technology policy expert. He is the former Special Assistant to the President and senior director for cybersecurity on the United States National Security Council Staff at the White House, having left the role in October 2015. Previously, Schwartz worked in both the Executive Branch and civil society as on cybersecurity, privacy, civil liberties, and policy. He is an advocate for vulnerability disclosure programs.
Michael H. Posner is an American lawyer, the Founding Executive Director and later the President of Human Rights First, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) of the United States, currently director for the Center of Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern School of Business, as well as Professor of Business and Society at New York University Stern School of Business, and a board member of the International Service for Human Rights.
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley is an American diplomat, attorney, political activist and philanthropist who is the United States Ambassador to Brazil in the Biden administration. She previously served as the United States Ambassador to Portugal from 1994 to 1997.
Beth Simone Noveck is New Jersey's first chief innovation officer, at Northeastern University where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change, the Governance Lab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is also affiliated faculty with the Institute for Experiential AI. She is the author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix our Government and Change Our World, Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Government, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful, and co-editor of the State of Play: Law and Virtual Worlds.
The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is a group of 17 American media, policy and community leaders formed to assess the information needs of communities in the United States in the 21st Century, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funded the Commission and commissioned the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program to run it. The co-chairs of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy are Theodore B. Olson, American lawyer and former Solicitor General of the United States, and Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. The Commission held its first public meeting in Washington, D.C. on June 24, 2008, and subsequent meetings or community forums in Aspen, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; Missoula, Montana; Mountain View, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Washington, D.C. The Knight Commission released its report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age on October 2, 2009.
Beryl Alaine Howell is the Chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was a federal judge supervising the grand jury for special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
David R. Johnson is lawyer specializing in computer communications. He is a senior fellow at Center for Democracy and Technology, and a former chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Pamela B. Gilbert is an American lawyer and has been a partner of the law firm Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, LLP since 2003, where she heads the firm's lobbying practice. Gilbert is a noted consumer rights advocate who has testified before Congress over fifty times and made dozens of appearances in the national print and electronic media. Gilbert leads the Committee to Support Antitrust laws (COSAL), an organization supportive of antitrust legislation.
Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, having been appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. After serving her term as ambassador, Donahoe was appointed as Director of Global Affairs for Human Rights Watch. In 2014, she was also appointed to the board of International Service for Human Rights. She is also an affiliate of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Cyber Policy Center working at the intersection of governance, technology and human rights.
The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 was a United States bill designed with the stated intention of increasing enforcement of laws related to the prosecution of child pornography and child sexual exploitation offenses. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), sponsor of H.R. 1981, stated that, "When investigators develop leads that might result in saving a child or apprehending a pedophile, their efforts should not be frustrated because vital records were destroyed simply because there was no requirement to retain them."
Nuala O'Connor is Senior Vice President and Chief Counsel for Digital Citizenship for Walmart. From 2014 to 2019, O’Connor served as the President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). O'Connor is an expert on digital human rights and civil liberties, technology policy, privacy, and information governance. From 2003–2005, O'Connor served as the first Chief Privacy Officer for the US Department of Homeland Security.
Professor Daniel J. Weitzner is the director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative and principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab CSAIL. He teaches Internet public policy in MIT's Computer Science Department. His research includes development of accountable systems architectures to enable the Web to be more responsive to policy requirements.
Katherine Roberts Maher is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
