2008 Privacy Coalition Participant Bios

14th Annual Privacy Coalition Meeting Participant Bios

January 24-26, 2008

Washington, DC

1. Bayer, Mark is Deputy Chief of Staff and Legislative Director for Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA). His legislative responsibilities include data privacy, and he has worked with Rep. Markey on an array of privacy and security issues relating to health IT, HIPAA, prescription drug monitoring, and the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which included a Markey-authored data privacy provision signed into law last year. Mark has a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. from Cornell University.

1. Bradley, Lynne is Director of the Office of Government Relations of the American Library Association where she has worked for 14 years. ALA has long been involved with privacy issues. Its members have been grassroots activists working to preserve privacy based upon a deeply rooted commitment to the principle of protecting patron privacy. ALA has opposed the REAL I.D. Act, strongly supported the Readers' Privacy Protection Act, and worked on many other bills and proposals related to the USA PATRIOT Act and other FISA issues - always to protect privacy, demand accountability and seek appropriate congressional oversight and court review on issues such as National Security Letters. Lynne has also worked on telecommunications and government information policy issues for ALA.

1. Brooks, Diallo began working for the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in May 1999 as Coordinator of the Northeast Policy Leaders Forum, later becoming Director of CPA's Southeast Regional Forum. Currently, Diallo is Director of Legislator Relations and is responsible for working with state legislators, state policy organizations, and grassroots leaders to move a broad progressive agenda through leadership development, technical assistance and building statewide, regional, and national networks. Diallo serves as the project manager of CPA’s juvenile justice program and provides training as a faculty member for CPA’s Flemming Fellows Leadership Institute. Prior to CPA, Diallo worked as Client Services Coordinator for Millennium Communication Group, a strategic communications consulting firm working with nonprofits and foundations with a mission of social change. Diallo also serves as Co-Chair for Black Youth Vote and is a board member of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Diallo holds a bachelors of science degree from Shepherd University.

1. Coney, Lillie is Associate Director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. She is the Public Policy Coordinator for the National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI), and has testified before the Election Assistance Commission. She served on the Brennan Center Taskforces on the Security and Usability of Voting Systems. She also served as a member of the ACM Committee on Guidelines for Implementation of Voter Registration Databases. She participated as a contributor in the academic paper "Towards a Privacy Measurement Criterion for Voting Systems." She has written several law journal articles on voting, and contributed to the development of the Election Incident Reporting System. She is a contributor to the New York Times Best Seller, 50 Ways to Love Your Country. She serves in an advisory capacity to several organizations, which include Verified Voting, ACCURATE, Voting System Performance Rating, and Open Voting Consortium. She is also on the board of Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility.

1. DeWeese, Tom is president of the American Policy Center, which is a grassroots activist organization focusing on private property rights, privacy rights, education and limited government intrusion in our lives. .

1. Friedman, Philip is a leading consumer attorney in Washington, DC. His cases have established important precedent concerning the legal remedies available to consumers, and also provided significant financial support for law school clinics and consumer advocacy organizations throughout the Washington, DC area. Mr. Friedman is also a specialist in election law. Mr. Friedman is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Maryland and California. Mr. Friedman is also a member of the American Trial Lawyers Association, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

1. Gellman, Robert is a privacy and information policy consultant in Washington, D.C. He advises large and small companies, privacy and other organizations, U.S. government agencies, and foreign governments how to develop, implement, and maintain policies for personal privacy and fair information practices. Website at

1. German, Michael is a Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union and a former FBI undercover agent working on domestic terror assignments. Mike was a highly regarded FBI agent working on domestic terrorism cases for 16 years before resigning in frustration in Summer 2004. In the early 1990s, he successfully infiltrated a white supremacist group that was plotting to blow up synagogues and a church attended by African Americans. After the Oklahoma City bombing, he again went undercover, joining a militia group that was conspiring to harm federal agents. Both cases led to prosecutions and more importantly, prevented terrorist acts. He can appreciate the importance of finding those intent on doing this nation harm, while not being distracted by information that is irrelevant, unproductive, or false. Michael is currently working on a report for the ACLU that investigates the use of Fusion Centers in the collection, processing, and dissemination of information for law enforcement, intelligence, and non-government purposes.

1. Grant, Susan is Director of Consumer Protection at Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit association of some 300 non-profit consumer groups that was established in 1968 to advance the consumer interest through research, education, and advocacy at both national and state levels. Ms. Grant works specifically in the areas of privacy, deceptive marketing, online safety and security, fraud, electronic and mobile commerce, and general consumer protection issues. Ms. Grant is also involved in global consumer protection issues through her work in the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, a group of consumer organizations in the United States and the European Union countries that provides input on cross-border consumer issues to the U.S. and EU governments, and her participation in the U.S. government delegation to the Committee on Consumer Policy at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

1. Harper, Jim is Director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, staunch defender of Liberty, Limited Government, Free Markets and Peace. As director of information policy studies, Jim focuses on the difficult problems of adapting law and policy to the unique problems of the information age. Harper is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Mr. Harper wrote the book Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood. Harper is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy, and he maintains online federal spending resource Washington Watch.com. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings College of Law.

1. Hendricks, Evan, author, investigative journalist and consumer privacy law expert. Since 1981, Evan Hendricks has been Editor/Publisher and founder of Privacy Times, a newsletter based in the Washington, D.C. area. Through the newsletter alone, he has published nearly 3,000 pages covering a wide range of privacy and information law subjects, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Privacy Act, Freedom of Information Act, Gramm-Leach Blilely, and the USA Patriot Act. Mr. Hendricks regularly testifies before Congress, with eight appearances between 2003-2006. He is a regular presenter at Federal Trade Commission workshops. The courts have qualified him as an expert witness in FCRA and identity theft cases. Mr. Hendricks has served as a consultant on privacy issues to Federal and State governmental organizations, and businesses. He has been a featured American presenter at events in Paris, France, Venice, Italy, Cardiff Wales, London, England and Ottawa, Ontario. Mr. Hendricks has a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College, Columbia University. He attended there after transferring from University of Oregon.

1. Joel, Alexander is the Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). His responsibilities include ensuring that the policies of Intelligence Community agencies include adequate protections for privacy and civil liberties, reviewing privacy and civil liberties complaints relating to ODNI programs, and ensuring that the use of technology sustains privacy protections. Mr. Joel’s prior experience includes working as an attorney for the CIA, serving as the privacy and e-commerce attorney for Marriott International, working as a technology attorney for a major D.C. law firm, and serving in the U.S. Army JAG Corps. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan and his B.A. degree from Princeton University.

1. Kang, Jerry, Professor, is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College (physics) and the Harvard Law School. He writes on race, communications, and their intersection. On race, he has focused on the Asian American community on matters ranging from affirmative action to the Japanese American internment. He is a co-author of Race, Rights, and Reparation: The Law and the Japanese American Internment (Aspen 2001). He also helped launch the "behavioral realism" movement, which calls on the law to be more responsive to what the mind sciences have revealed about human decision-making and behavior, especially in the context of interracial interactions. EPIC Board members.

1. Kaplan, Dave: Over a 30-year career, investigative journalist David E. Kaplan has reported on organized crime, terrorist groups, corporate polluters, corrupt cops, neo-Nazis, the banking industry, and the intelligence community. In June 2007, Kaplan left as chief investigative correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, where he covered national security and wrote the magazine's popular Bad Guys blog. His stories at U.S. News included high-profile exposés of U.S. government spying, Saudi funding of terrorist groups, and the looting of Russia. Kaplan is co-author of the book YAKUZA, widely considered the standard reference on the Japanese mafia; and author of Fires of the Dragon, on the murder of journalist Henry Liu and the activities of „friendly‰ foreign intelligence agencies in America. His work has won or shared more than 15 awards, including honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the American Bar Association, Overseas Press Club, and World Affairs Council. Kaplan has reported from two-dozen countries and has trained over a thousand reporters in his workshops on investigative journalism. He now teaches journalism at Georgetown University and is a media consultant.

1. Knight, Allison is EPIC Staff Counsel and Director of the Privacy and Human Rights Project. Her work focuses on international privacy law. She has testified before both the US House and Senate on privacy issues. She articled with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, where she completed rotations in litigation, policy, tribunal adjudication, and health privacy law. She has written articles on civil liberties and human rights, a manual on Canadian open government laws, and is Research Director for EPIC's annual Privacy and Human Rights report. She holds degrees in Music and in Law from the University of Western Ontario.

1. McGilvray, Jessica is a graduated from Florida State University with a master degree in Library and Information Studies. While pursuing her degree she worked at the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University. There she worked on many different research projects, focusing her attention on e-government issues. She is now working at the American Library Association’s Washington office as the Assistant Director of the Office Government Relations.

1. Mocny, Robert A. is the director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program, the most innovative and integrate biometrics-based immigration and border management program in the world. Mr. Mocny has served at US-VISIT since its inception, first as deputy director and then as acting director before his appointment to director in April 2007. Today, he leads the strategic development and deployment of US-VISIT and is a leading authority on the evolution to an automated entry-exit border system in the United States. Before joining US-VISIT, Mr. Mocny served in senior positions related to U.S. immigration policy and operations at the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

1. Mortensen, Kenneth P. is the Acting Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer for the U.S. Department of Justice. As the former Deputy Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security and a practicing privacy attorney, Mr. Mortensen brings expertise not only in protecting and safeguarding privacy and civil liberties, but also integrating those protections and safeguards into an operational framework for law enforcement and national security. Within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, he determines appropriate privacy processes collaborating in the development of policy to support the mission of the Department. Additionally, he serves as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General on privacy and civil liberties matters concerning agency operations and oversees the implementation privacy and civil liberties policy throughout the Department, including its constituent bureaus. He also serves as the co-chair of the CIO Council's Privacy Committee with Karen Evans, Administrator, Office of E-Government & Information Technology at the Office of Management & Budget and as co-chair of the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment's Privacy Guidelines Committee with Alex Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

1. Ngo, Melissa is Senior Counsel and Director of EPIC's Identification and Surveillance Project. Her work focuses upon federal and state identification proposals, including the REAL ID Act and the US-VISIT program, and their impact on U.S. citizens and immigrant communities. Her work also includes Spotlight on Surveillance, a monthly evaluation of federal and state surveillance programs (such as camera surveillance systems, RFID or biometrics technology, and the federal watch lists) and their costs to civil liberties. She has testified about such programs before legislators and government agencies. She also works on the EPIC Open Government Project, which pursues Freedom of Information Act litigation. She is co-editor of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws (FOIA) 2006. She previously worked as a journalist at USATODAY.com and The Washington Post. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas and Georgetown University Law Center.
2. Nojeim, Gregory T. is a Senior Counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Director of its Project on Freedom, Security & Technology. CDT is a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to keeping the Internet safe, innovative and free. Mr. Nojeim conducts much of CDT’s work in the areas of national security, terrorism, and Fourth Amendment protections. He is also Co-Chair of the ABA Coordinating Committee on National Security and Civil Liberties of the ABA's Individual Rights section. Prior to joining CDT in May 2007, Mr. Nojeim was the Associate Director and Chief Legislative Counsel of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office.

1. O'Neill Green, John, J.D, Criminal Defense Lawyer, specializing in Constitution Law related to Privacy, Security and Monetary Policy. Counselor Green is a Criminal Defense Lawyer and a Founding Member and Security Officer of the Andrew Jackson Society. The Andrew Jackson Society is a public advocacy society promoting constitutional fiscal policies in order to ensure America's financial stability, sound monetary system and constitutionally protected personal privacy though the use of fungible lawful money.

1. Ostrolenk, Michael is the Co-founder and National Director of the Liberty Coalition. He is also Director of Government Affairs for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Mr. Ostrolenk is a Co-founder and President of the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He is also Co-Director for Reuniting America. Michael has his undergraduate degree in government with a minor in business from West Virginia Wesleyan College. His Masters Degree is in Counseling Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. He did post-graduate training in psycho-cultural development, health and somatic psychology. Michael is certified in Spiral Dynamics, Wade Mindsets and conflict resolution and is a licensed psychotherapist (CA).

1. Otto, John works at the National Center for Transgender Equality, where he manages the Privacy and Documentation Program. This program addresses identity document and information privacy issues for transgender people. He has a Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts in multidisciplinary gender/sex studies from The Evergreen State College.

1. Patten, Wendy is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Society Institute in Washington, where she handles U.S. human rights and civil liberties issues and also monitors immigration issues. Ms. Patten spent five years as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, principally as Senior Counsel in the Office of Policy Development and as Special Counsel for Trafficking in Persons in the Civil Rights Division. She also served as Director of Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House and as U.S. Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. Ms. Patten is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Princeton University and studied international relations at the Université de Strasbourg in France.
2. Peel, Deborah PhD, is the founder of Patient Privacy Rights, based in Austin, Texas, and one of the leading advocates for medical privacy in the United States. A practicing psychiatrist for 27 years, she understands that people will avoid or refuse necessary medical treatment if they think others can see or use their private and personal medical records. She has provided testimony to Congressional committees on genetic privacy and medical record privacy. She recently led a coalition of 26 organizations across the political spectrum that urged Congress to insure that patients control access to their medical records in all electronic health systems.

1. Prothmann, Andreas, PhD. Counselor (Political), Embassy of Germany.