Kevin Bankston

"Kevin Bankston is the Director at New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute; he also serves on the board of directors of the First Amendment Coalition.

Prior to joining OTI, he was Senior Counsel and Director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology and a Senior Staff Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) specializing in free speech and privacy law with a focus on government surveillance, Internet privacy, and location privacy. At EFF, he regularly litigated issues surrounding location privacy and electronic surveillance, and was a lead counsel in EFF’s lawsuits against the National Security Agency and AT&T challenging the legality of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. From 2003-05, he was EFF’s Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow, studying the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Before joining EFF, he was the Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he litigated Internet-related free speech cases. He received his J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California and his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas."

• Advisory council, Open Technology Fund