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. He presently serves as an ENE evaluator for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. 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 counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation on a variety of matters related to civil liberties, blockchain, and intellectual property.

Marta is an attorney at Ropes & Gray LLP focusing on blockchain and emerging technologies. Marta advises EFF on civil liberties issues related to blockchain and decentralized technologies, including assisting EFF in interfacing with regulators and legislators. Marta has been recognized by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Report as a pioneer in the area of blockchain law. She serves as outside general counsel to Protocol Labs, drafted the first blockchain-transferable software license, and has spoken about blockchain law around the world, including in Davos during the World Economic Forum, in testimony to the New York Senate, in European Parliament, and in U.S. Congress.

Marta has submitted briefs on behalf of EFF in high-profile civil liberties lawsuits, including in the U.S. Supreme Court. Marta also assists EFF in intellectual property matters, and is the author of EFF’s “Hacking the Patent System: A Guide to Alternative Licensing Options for Innovators.”

In addition, Marta has represented the Center for Democracy & Technology, New America’s Open Technology Institute, the National Consumers’ League, the Cato Institute, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.

Technology Fellow

Joseph is an EFF Technology Fellow focusing on tools for secure communication and HTTPS security. He is also a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University with the applied cryptography group. His research has spanned a variety of topics in cryptography and security including HTTPS and web security, passwords and authentication, cryptocurrencies, end-to-end encrypted communication tools, and side-channel cryptanalysis. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and BS and MS degrees in computer science and cryptography from Stanford University. He has previously worked as a researcher at Princeton University and as engineer at Google, Yahoo! and Cryptography Research, Inc.

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

Gwen Hinze is Special Counsel for EFF working with the international team on international intellectual property and Internet policy issues, and International Copyright Fellow at the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at U.C. Berkeley Law School. From 2002-2012 she served variously as EFF’s International Director, International IP Director, and Staff Attorney, where she focused on educating global policy-makers about the need for balanced intellectual property regimes that protect creators, promote access to knowledge, foster technological innovation, and empower digital consumers. She has testified before the U.S. Copyright Office for consumer exemptions to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and been involved in litigating various cases involving the impact of copyright law on innovation, privacy and freedom of expression online. Before EFF, she practiced at international law firm Allens, and worked for the Australian government in public policy and litigation. Gwen is a member of the State Bar of California and holds honors degrees in law and philosophy from Monash University, Australia.

Sina Khanifar
Tech Fellow

Sina is a web developer and an advocate for better technology laws. Starting in 2013, he led the campaign to legalize cell phone unlocking, which culminated in action by both the FCC and Congress. In 2014 he helped lead development of EFF’s open source action center toolset, and has spent much of the last few years building tools to help Internet users reach out to their elected representatives. He continues to work actively on DMCA reform as a board member of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition, and is also the founder of Taskforce.is, a group of volunteer developers who helped organize and run a range of campaigns, including many that EFF has actively supported. Sina is also co-founder of OpenSignal and Waveform.

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.

EFF Special Advisor

Alex is the executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute (PIPLI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the patent system promotes innovation for the public’s benefit. Prior to founding the PIPLA, she was a Staff Attorney on EFF’s intellectual property team and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. Before dedicating her practice to public interest work, she was an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York and Durie Tangri LLP in San Francisco, where she represented clients in intellectual property, contract, and antitrust matters, and a judicial clerk to the Honorable Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She has spoken about patent law at the National Academy of Sciences and in testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Before law school, Alex worked for independent record label Rough Trade.

415.436.9333 ext. 160
Technology Fellow

Yomna is a research engineer whose focus is cell network security. She was previously a core contributor to Certbot, a research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law, and has a degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo.

Danny O'Brien
EFF SPECIAL ADVISOR

Danny O'Brien 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.

Technology Fellow

Roland Shoemaker is a Technology Consultant at EFF working on the free SSL certificate authority Let's Encrypt. When not working on SSL-related subjects he is interested in various aspects of internet infrastructure and security. He is a long time supporter of the open-source movement and contributes to a number of diverse projects, both security related and otherwise, but in his down time, he enjoys tailoring, going to art galleries, and hanging out with kittens.

While originally from Sheffield in North England, Roland now lives in the much warmer and drier Oakland.

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 Advisor

Alan is a policy analyst specialized in privacy and data protection issues. He represented EFF during the Do Not Track Process at the W3C, handles policy work connected with the tracker blocking extension Privacy Badger, and coordinates with digital rights groups in the EU on data protection questions. Alan has law degrees from Trinity College Dublin (LLB) and New York University (LLM) where he was later a fellow at the Information Law Institute and the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. Long interested in the politics of law and technology, his early focus was on copyright law and peer-to-peer forms of information production. He has also worked in documentary film and is a keen linguist and bibliophile.

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.

Technologist Fellow

Yan is a Technologist Fellow at EFF working on Let's Encrypt, HTTPS Everywhere, and other projects for encrypting the web. She is also a member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group.