Nicole A. Ozer is the Technology and Civil Liberties Director for the ACLU of California. Nicole has led the organization’s cutting-edge work in California to defend and promote civil liberties in the modern digital world since 2004. Nicole sets the strategic vision for the Technology and Civil Liberties Project and its statewide team and implements an integrated advocacy approach that coordinates work in the courts, in communities, with companies, and California policymakers to achieve maximum impact.
Nicole is a nationally recognized expert on issues at the intersection of privacy and government surveillance and free speech and the Internet. Nicole spearheaded the passage of the landmark California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA) and California Reader Privacy Act, designed groundbreaking local surveillance reform strategies now used across the country, and also developed the ACLU’s national online privacy campaign, Demand Your dotRights. She is frequently called upon for testimony, presentations, and media appearances. She regularly tweets @nicoleozer and blogs at www.aclunc.org/tech.
Nicole is spending the spring of 2019 on sabbatical as a Visiting Researcher at Berkeley Law and as a Non-Residential Fellow at the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab.
Nicole graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, studied comparative civil rights history at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and earned her J.D. with a Certificate in Law and Technology from from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Before joining the ACLU, Nicole was an intellectual property attorney at Morrison & Foerster LLP. Nicole has been honored with the Privacy Award by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Young Bear Award by the University of California, Berkeley. The Recorder recognized Nicole as a 2018 Woman Leader in Tech Law and San Jose Magazine selected her as one of 20 “Women Making a Mark” in Silicon Valley.