What Happened?
San Francisco, CA-based Electronic Frontier Foundation has Promoted Cindy Cohn as Executive Director of Legal
About the Company
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the leading organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. For decades EFF has worked tirelessly in the courts and with activists to protect the freedom to hack, tinker, remix, and create for the long term good of society. EFF defends free speech on the Internet, fights illegal surveillance, supports freedom-enhancing technologies, and much more. The EFF team consists of a unique blend of activists, technologists, and attorneys that work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows.
About the Person
Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF`s overall legal strategy and supervising EFF`s fourteen staff attorneys. Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1993, when the EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on digital rights and has traveled onto the Internet with Stephen Colbert. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "[I]f Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award. Cohn serves as counsel in Jewel v. NSA, and First Unitarian Church v. NSA, each seeking to stop the ongoing dragnet warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. Ms. Cohn also served as coordinating counsel for over forty national class action lawsuits against the telecommunications carriers and the government seeking to stop the warrantless surveillance. EFF filed the first such case, Hepting v. AT&T, in 2006 against telecom giant AT&T for violating its customers` privacy. Ms. Cohn works to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in light of the tragic death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Cohn is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics. For 10 years prior to joining the EFF, she was a civil litigator in private practice handling technology- related cases. Before starting private practice, she worked for a year at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Ms. Cohn also served as counsel to the plaintiffs in Bowoto v. Chevron, two lawsuits in San Francisco arising from Chevron`s involvement in human rights abuses against environmental protesters in Nigeria. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit the VerifiedVoting.org and the Verified Voting Foundation.
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