Rebecca MacKinnon (born September 16, 1969) is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists,[1] a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative[2] and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.