Kevin Bankston
Kevin Stuart Bankston (born July 2, 1974) is an American activist and attorney, who specialized in the areas of free speech and privacy law. He is currently Privacy Policy Director at Facebook, where he leads policy work on AI and emerging technologies. He was formerly the director of the Open Technology Institute (OTI) at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Education 
Bankston earned a BA at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2001 he completed a Juris Doctorate at the University of Southern California.

Career 
In his early career Bankston served, from 2001 until 2002, as a Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York City. At the ACLU he litigated Internet-related free speech cases.

He then joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2003 as an Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. From 2003 until 2005 he studied the impact anti-terrorism-related surveillance initiatives had on online privacy and free speech after 9/11. At the EFF he specialized in free speech and privacy law and later became senior staff attorney. In the EFF’s lawsuits against the National Security Agency (NSA) and AT&T where the lawfulness of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program was challenged, Bankston was a lead counsel.

After working for almost ten years at the EFF Bankston joined the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) in Washington, D.C. in early 2012. As senior counsel and the director of the Free Expression Policy Project he advocated a variety of internet and technology policy issues at the Nonprofit organization. In November 2013 he spoke before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law on The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013.
He later became the director of the Open Technology Institute (OTI) at the New America Foundation in Washington DC.

Affiliations 
 Since 2005 he serves on the board of the First Amendment Coalition, a non-profit public interest organization
 He was a nonresidential fellow at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society

Publications 
 The Washington Post, Opinions: The books, films and John Oliver episodes that explain encryption (March 25, 2016)
 Just Security: It’s Time to End the "Debate" on Encryption Backdoors (July 7, 2015)
 Lawfare, encryption: Ending The Endless Crypto Debate: Three Things We Should Be Arguing About Instead of Encryption Backdoors (June 14, 2017)
 Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF Analysis of the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (S. 1709) (October 30, 2003)
 CNN: A year after Edward Snowden, the real costs of NSA surveillance (Co-author with Danielle Kehl)
 While working for EFF, Bankston wrote dozens of articles for "Deeplinks Blog"

References 

1974 births
Living people
American civil rights activists
American lawyers
University of Texas at Austin alumni
USC Gould School of Law alumni
American Civil Liberties Union people
Electronic Frontier Foundation people
Stanford Law School faculty
American political writers
New America (organization)