Alan Davidson is Staff Counsel at the Center
for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington
D.C. non-profit group working to promote civil liberties
on the Internet and other new digital media. Mr. Davidson
is currently leading CDT's efforts to promote encryption
policies that protect privacy and free expression in
the information infrastructure. He has written and
spoken widely on the civil liberties implications of
public policies that restrict encryption, and has been
directly involved in the ongoing Congressional debate
over cryptography legislation.
Mr. Davidson also works more broadly on issues
relating to Internet policy including free speech
and censorship, Internet governance, digital signatures,
and electronic commerce, domain name issues, and
online gaming. He took part in CDT's coordination
of one of the two victorious challenges to the Communications
Decency Act at the Supreme Court in ACLU v. Reno.
His other research interests lie generally in the
areas of privacy, free speech, and the special problems
posed by the interaction of technology, public policy,
and the law.
Mr. Davidson was a computer scientist before joining
the legal profession. A graduate of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, he received an S.B. in Mathematics
and Computer Science and later returned for an S.M.
in Technology and Policy. Mr. Davidson worked as
a Senior Consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, designing
the information systems for NASA's Space Station
Freedom Project. He has also worked on technology
and policy issues at the U.S. Congress Office of
Technology Assessment and for the White House Office
of Policy Development Health Care Task Force.
Mr. Davidson attended law school at Yale, where he
was Symposium Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He recently
completed a 4-year term as a Trustee of the MIT Corporation. |
