Sharon Bradford Franklin

Sharon Bradford Franklin is the policy director for New America's Open Technology Institute and co-director of New America's Cybersecurity Initiative. She directs the broad range of OTI's policy work on issues including broadband access, cybersecurity, encryption, freedom of expression online, government surveillance, net neutrality, privacy, and transparency and platform accountability.

 

Prior to joining OTI, Franklin served as executive director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal agency that reviews counterterrorism programs to ensure that they include appropriate safeguards for privacy and civil liberties. Her work included reviewing government surveillance programs, cybersecurity, and other counterterrorism activities. Previously, Franklin served as senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonprofit legal watchdog group, where she worked on a range of issues involving national security and privacy and civil liberties, including surveillance policies, cybersecurity, government secrecy, individual privacy, and detention policies. She also served as a member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee for the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

 

Previously, Franklin served as a trial attorney in the Housing & Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, worked on civil rights policy matters as a special counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, and served as executive director of the Washington Council of Lawyers. She began her legal career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth. Franklin graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School.