Cindy Cohn

Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF's overall legal strategy and supervising EFF's 11 staff attorneys and fellows. Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1995, when the EFF asked her to serve as the lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on cyberspace issue. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America.

Extended Bio

Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF's overall legal strategy and supervising EFF's 11 staff attorneys and fellows. Issues that Ms. Cohn handles directly include:

NSA Spying. Ms. Cohn serves as coordinating counsel for over forty national class action lawsuits against the telecommunications carriers and the government seeking to stop the ongoing dragnet warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. EFF filed the first such case, Hepting v. AT&T, against telecom giant AT&T for violating its customers' privacy. When Congress attempted to block those lawsuits, EFF filed Jewel v. NSA, against the government and government officials, seeking to stop the warrantless wiretapping and hold the government officials behind the program accountable.

Google Book Search and Privacy Ms. Cohn represents a coalition of authors and publishers—including best-sellers Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and technical author Bruce Schneier—in urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy rights for readers and writers.

Online Activism
Advising individual activists and nonprofit organizations on the legal issues arising from protest activity online.

Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1995, when the EFF asked her to serve as the lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful federal court challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. The Bernstein case was one of the major catalysts for decision by the U.S. government in January, 2000, to dramatically loosen its restrictions on the export of encryption software. It has also served as the foundation for the now settled caselaw requiring that government attempts to regulate or restrict conputer programs require 1st Amendment analysis.

Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on cyberspace issues, interviewed on the BBC, NPR, CNN, CBS News, Frontline and the Newshour, the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek and many other online and offline media outlets. In 2007 Ms. Cohn was named one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America and in 2006, she was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, both by the National Law Journal. In 2001, Ms. Cohn and the EFF were honored by the Editorial Board of Daily Journal. In 1997, Ms. Cohn was named as one of the "Lawyers of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine.

Ms. Cohn is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics. For 10 years prior to joining the EFF, she was a civil litigator in private practice handling technology- related cases. Before starting private practice, she worked for a year at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Ms. Cohn also serves on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit the Verified Voting Foundation and is counsel to the plaintiffs in Bowoto v. Chevron , two lawsuits in San Francisco arising from Chevron's involvement in human rights abuses against environmental protesters in Nigeria.

Past issues Ms. Cohn have handled include:

Electronic Voting
Coordinates national litigation strategy for electronic voting machines and assisting technologists and others who are concerned about the security and accountability of those. EFF's projects include assisting grassroots activists nationwide in considering and bringing legal challenges to insecure voting machines,filing amicus briefs in support of activists nationwide, including in litigation in Maryland, California, Texas, Ohio and New Jersey, assisting members of IEEE working groups, advising those engaged in the political and legal discussions on those issues, advising technologists who wish to do research in this area.

Anonymity or John Doe cases
Representing anonymous speakers in a variety of cases, including bringing In Re 2TheMart.com, which helped established core legal standards for protecting the identity of online speakers sought by civil subpoena.

Misuse of Copyright Infringement notices (DMCA 512(f))
Argued the OPG v. Diebold case where e-voting machine manufacturer Diebold was held liable for sending out unfounded cease and desist notices to ISPs in an effort to stop public discussion of the flaws in its electronic voting machines evidenced in a published internal e-mail archive.

Sony BMG DRM case
Represented a national class action in suing Sony BMG for placing dangerous DRM on customers' computers, as well as raising claims about Sony BMG's overreaching EULA (end user license agreement).