Chris Conley is a Policy Attorney with the Technology and Civil Liberties Project of the ACLU of Northern California, where he works to ensure that emerging technologies support rather than undermine individual rights.
He has recently focused on issues of government surveillance, including the role of community input and oversight into law enforcement use of surveillance technology and the privacy implications of metadata collection by the NSA and other government agencies.
His past work includes looking at the role of mobile and social media platforms in protecting individual rights, exploring non-regulatory approaches to the “right to be forgotten,” and developing a “Facebook quiz about Facebook quizzes” and other multimedia tools to help educate consumers about privacy and free speech issues. He has been invited to speak on various topics before the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Federal Trade Commission, the California legislature, and at various conferences including SXSW Interactive and DEF CON.
Prior to joining the ACLU of Northern California, Chris was a Fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where he studied international Internet surveillance. He previously worked as a software engineer and data architect for various corporations and non-profits.
Chris holds a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Michigan, a S.M. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.