EFF has a new boss to lead the fight against privacy-sucking forces of doom
Cyber rights org retools for the days of AI and unrestrained government
INTERVIEW The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Tuesday appointed Nicole Ozer to succeed Cindy Cohn as the cyber rights group's executive director when Cohn departs this summer.
"The through line of my career has always been about driving greater access and equity and justice in the digital age," Ozer said in an interview with The Register. "EFF's work has been my life's work. EFF's people are my community, and EFF has been my closest partner for more than two decades ....So it feels very right to be taking the torch from the amazing Cindy Cohn and leading EFF in this next chapter."
Ozer comes to the EFF from the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco where she served as the inaugural executive director. Prior to that she spent more than 20 years at American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, where she has led the organization’s Technology and Civil Liberties Program.
Among her many accomplishments, Ozer was instrumental in the passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA) and California Reader Privacy Act. She also oversaw the ACLU's Demand Your dotRights privacy campaign.
Ozer has written more than 20 legal and policy papers and more than 50 commentaries, including her recent essay for the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, "Putting People Power into US Privacy Law."
Ozer arrives at the EFF during a time of technological, social, and political turmoil. What were once largely theoretical privacy risks, like the FBI purchasing data from commercial data brokers to track Americans, have become unabashed government practices. And developments in machine learning are forcing people, businesses, and governments to reassess assumptions about intellectual property, labor, business, and society.
"The stakes are higher than ever for the work that EFF does across strategy and across the world in defending and advancing rights and justice and democracy," said Ozer. "The work is really fundamental to the future of our country, our livelihoods, literally our lives right now."
Ozer points to artificial intelligence in particular, arguing that it's necessary to ensure the technology works for people and lifts them up rather than just benefiting the few.
"There were fights in the 1990s, but the stakes have only gotten higher in the current moment," she said. "My goal as executive director is really to build on all of the great success that EFF has had, to really ensure that we are meeting this moment and building the future that we really all need and want, which is that technology is really working for the people."
As to specifics, Ozer isn't ready to commit to an agenda or particular policy or legislative goals.
"I haven't gotten to that point," she said. "As executive director, I'm really going to be focused on making EFF as strong internally and externally as it can be and to build for the future." ®