EFF Special Counsel

Michael Barclay specializes in the fields of patent, copyright, trade secret, and trademark litigation and client counseling, with a particular focus on electronics-related areas. He formerly was a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Among other cases, Michael worked on the successful First Circuit and Supreme Court appeals in Lotus v. Borland. Before entering the legal field, Michael was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft and at Intel Corporation. Michael received his J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1979, and A.B. (Physics) and M.S.E.E. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Since joining EFF in 2010, Michael has worked on amicus briefs in many important copyright and patent cases. Examples include: Oracle v. Google, Viacom v. YouTube, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, Brownmark Films v. Comedy Partners, UMG v. Veoh (Shelter Capital), and Authors Guild v. Google.

EFF Special Counsel

Marta Belcher is president and chair of the Filecoin Foundation as well as the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, and general counsel and head of policy at Protocol Labs. Marta also serves on the Boards of the Zcash Foundation and the Blockchain Association, and is a member of Paradigm’s Policy Council. Marta is a pioneer in blockchain law and policy, and has testified in Congress and state legislatures as well as speaking in European Parliament. 

Marta has submitted briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. appellate courts for high-profile public interest organizations, including EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, the Cato Institute, the National Consumers' League, Project Gutenberg, and the Blockchain Association. Marta has been recognized by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer awards, by Law360’s list of Top Attorneys Under 40, by CryptoWeekly’s list of Most Influential Women in Crypto, and as Business Intelligence Group’s Woman of the Year.

Picture of man with short brown hair and a cat on his shoulder
EFF Special Advisor

Bennett is a former member of our public interest technology team. He works with a variety of teams across EFF, focusing on consumer privacy, competition, and state legislation. 

EFF Special Advisor

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the editor of Pluralistic and the author of young adult novels like LITTLE BROTHER and HOMELAND and novels for adults like ATTACK SURFACE and WALKAWAY, as well as nonfiction books like HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

EFF Special Counsel

Thomas E. Moore III has practiced law in Palo Alto continuously since 1984, representing individuals and start-up to mid-size technology companies in intellectual property and commercial litigation matters.  Tom is a member of Royse Law Firm, PC, which provides sophisticated, yet affordable, legal services to a variety of Silicon Valley clients.  Tom has collaborated with EFF on a variety of projects beginning in January 2000 with the DVD Copy Control Association’s case against Andrew Bunner.  Since then, he has defended the rights of on-line journalists, argued that famous trademarks do not hold a monopoly on ordinary English words and helped to explain how IP addresses can reveal important information about person’s movements and associations.  Most recently, Tom has joined EFF in its efforts to curtail the government’s mass surveillance of the American public.  He is a graduate of Stanford, and he received his law degree from U.C. Berkeley.

Danny O'Brien
EFF SPECIAL ADVISOR

Danny O'Brien is currently a Senior Fellow at the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. He has been an activist for online free speech and privacy for over 20 years. In his home country of the UK, he fought against repressive anti-encryption law, and helped found the Open Rights Group, Britain's own digital rights organization. He was EFF's activist from 2005 to 2007, its international outreach coordinator from 2007-2009, international director from 2013-2019, and director of strategy from 2019-2021. He now acts as an advisor to EFF on issues related to international advocacy and re-decentralizing the web.

In a previous century, Danny wrote and performed the only one-man show about Usenet to have a successful run in London's West End. His geek gossip zine, Need To Know, won a special commendation for services to newsgathering at the first Interactive BAFTAs. He also coined the term "life hack": it has been over a decade since he was first commissioned to write a book on combating procrastination.

From "Portraits of DEF CON" by Eli Omen, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
EFF Special Counsel

Kurt Opsahl is the Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity and Civil Liberties Policy for the Filecoin Foundation. Formerly, Opsahl was the Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel of EFF.  Opsahl was also the lead attorney on the Coders' Rights Project, and continues to assist EFF with that work.  Before joining EFF, Opsahl worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice. Prior to Perkins, Opsahl was a research fellow to Professor Pamela Samuelson at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems. Opsahl received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. Opsahl co-authored "Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook." In 2007, Opsahl was named as one of the "Attorneys of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O'Grady v. Superior Court appeal. From 2014 to 2022, Opsahl served on the USENIX Board of Directors. Opsahl is a member of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee’s Technical Advisory Council.

Special Advisor

Paul Tepper has devoted his professional career to social and economic justice for poor and low-income people. He has served as the President and Executive Director of Western Center on Law & Poverty, the Executive Director of the Weingart Center Association’s Development Corporation, and the Executive Director of Westside Legal Services. He began his career as a Community Organizer with the Alliance for Survival. Paul was also the founder of the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty, a research and policy organization that connected the academic community with community-based organizations, the public sector, philanthropic organizations, the business community and the media. He is a graduate of the Washington University School of Law and Claremont McKenna College.

He is honored to be helping the Electronic Frontier Foundation address how privacy rights are addressed in the digital sphere, particularly focusing on surveillance technology with EFF’s amazing Atlas of Surveillance team.

EFF Special Counsel

Richard Wiebe is a San Francisco lawyer with his own law practice, handling civil appeals as well as trial court litigation on a broad array of topics.  Rick also works as outside counsel with EFF on lawsuits protecting civil liberties and individual rights in the digital world, and has done so since 2001.  These lawsuits address a wide variety of public policy issues, including balancing intellectual property rights with the public interest and freedom of expression, protecting First Amendment rights of individuals and journalists, protecting individual privacy against government surveillance, and protecting voting rights.