Sharon Bradford Franklin

Policy Director, Open Technology Institute

Sharon Bradford Franklin is Policy Director at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). She directs the broad range of OTI’s policy work on issues involving broadband access, cybersecurity, encryption, freedom of expression online, government surveillance, net neutrality, privacy, and transparency and platform accountability. From 2013 to 2017, she served as Executive Director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent federal agency that reviews counterterrorism programmes to ensure that they include appropriate safeguards for privacy and civil liberties. Previously, she served as Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonprofit legal watchdog group, working on a range of issues involving national security and privacy and civil liberties. Franklin is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.