Meet the former CDT staff and fellows whose careers continue to shape technology, policy, and the public interest, and learn how their time at CDT helped influence the paths they’re forging today.
Dr. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, former Chief Technologist at CDT and now Distinguished Technologist at the Internet Society, reflects on building a career at the intersection of technology, policy, and human rights, and how principled, pragmatic leadership continues to shape his work advancing a safer, more trustworthy Internet. Read our conversation with Dr. Hall to learn more about his career journey, his experience at CDT, and the work he continues to do in technology policy and the public interest:
What are you currently working on, and how does it connect to the issues you care about most
I’m currently a Distinguished Technologist at the Internet Society, where I lead our Security & Safer Internet portfolio. My work focuses on strengthening the Internet ecosystem through online trust and safety, cybersecurity research, and safer Internet grantmaking—including our forthcoming Online Trust and Safety Hub, the NDSS Symposium, and the Common Good Cyber Fund. We connect the unconnected and protect the connected.
Until recently, I also led our open and trustworthy Internet work, which is where much of our policy advocacy sits. As that work has grown in scope and complexity, I’m delighted that we are welcoming Raegan MacDonald as our new Head of Advocacy to lead that critical part of the Internet Society’s mission. That allows me to focus more deeply on the Security & Safer Internet portfolio and on connecting technical expertise, community engagement, research, and funding to advance a safer Internet.
Across these efforts, the goal is to help people benefit from the Internet in ways that are safer, more secure, more private, and more empowering, while preserving the openness that makes the Internet such a powerful global resource. That connects directly to the issues I’ve cared about throughout my career: making complex technologies understandable, accountable, and useful in the service of civil liberties, human rights, and the public interest. I help government get tech right and tech get governance right.
What initially drew you to CDT, and what made your time there meaningful to you?
What drew me to CDT was its principled pragmatism. There are organizations I deeply respect that are principled to the brim, and there is absolutely a place for that. But I have always felt most at home in work that combines strong values with a serious commitment to making progress in the world as it actually is.
CDT has long understood that protecting rights in the digital age requires working across science, technology, law, and policy—and recognizing that none of these domains is magic. Technology is not magic. Law is not magic. Policy is not magic. They are human systems, built by people, shaped by incentives, and capable of being improved when people are willing to do the hard work of understanding them and working across disciplines.
That made CDT a deeply meaningful place for me. It valued technical rigor, legal and policy seriousness, and the practical work of building coalitions. It also understood that generative technologies—technologies that allow people to create, communicate, organize, learn, and build—are special precisely because they expand human capacity. Protecting what is special about them requires both principle and pragmatism.
What projects, campaigns, or moments from your time at CDT stand out most in your memory?
A few projects stand out because they captured what CDT does unusually well: bring rigorous technical thinking into policy debates at moments when that thinking is urgently needed.
One was the CALEA II paper, “Risks of Wiretap Modifications to Endpoints”, which came out in May 2013, right before the Snowden revelations. That paper was an important contribution to what became a renewed phase of the crypto wars. It explained why requiring communications products to be built or modified to enable endpoint wiretapping would pose serious security risks—not only to individual privacy but also to the security of the Internet ecosystem more broadly. I remain proud that CDT helped coordinate such an expert technical contribution at a critical moment.
I also often think about our work on strict product liability and the Internet of Things. That work tried to grapple with a hard question that has only become more important: what happens when software, networks, and autonomous capabilities are embedded into physical objects that can cause real-world harm? It was an early attempt to connect cybersecurity, consumer protection, tort law, and product design in a way that recognized the increasingly physical consequences of digital systems.
And, perhaps, the only original idea I have ever had: radio-frequency “license plates” for drones. The basic idea was that if drones were going to operate in public airspace, often with cameras and sensors, there ought to be some practical way for people on the ground to identify them. The proposal was for drones to broadcast an identifier—a kind of radio-frequency drone ID—that could support transparency and accountability. It was a very CDT kind of idea: technical enough to be concrete, policy-relevant enough to matter, and pragmatic enough to be worth testing.
How did your experience at CDT shape your career path or perspective on technology policy and advocacy?
CDT shaped my career enormously. It helped me understand that, while I am a decent nerd, advocate, and manager, I increasingly felt called to leadership.
Leadership, put simply, is seeing something that needs to be changed in the world and realizing that you cannot do it yourself. You have to convince, compensate, cajole, coordinate, and sometimes apply pressure in order to get people to join your enterprise. You have to build enough shared purpose for others to bring their own talent, credibility, labor, and judgment to the work.
That lesson has stayed with me. Nonprofit advocacy and public-interest technology work can benefit enormously from good leadership. CDT knows that well. It has had—and continues to have—some of the great leaders in tech policy on staff, and the organization has left a deep and significant wake across the field over many decades. My time at CDT helped me see that leadership in this space is not about having all the answers. It is about creating the conditions where the right people can do meaningful work together.
Are there any colleagues, mentors, or lessons from CDT that have stayed with you over the years?
I actually keep a list of my mentors. It is both a good thing and, occasionally, a liability. Jim Dempsey, Emma Llansó, and Chris Calabrese are each on that list for different reasons, and I literally cannot count how many CDT colleagues I still hold very close to my heart.
One lesson from CDT that has stayed with me is the importance of credibility and humility in public work. I learned to be very careful about how one describes oneself and one’s accomplishments. The version of that lesson I still carry around is: write your bio as if Representative Zoe Lofgren might read it aloud on C-SPAN to all of America, the camera might cut to you next, and you would rather not be beet red after listening to your own puffery.
That lesson came from testifying before the Committee on House Administration, and, sigh, it remains excellent advice. Public-interest work requires confidence, but it also requires perspective. The work should matter more than the performance of importance.
What advice would you give to current CDT staff, fellows, or interns looking to build a career in this space?
I would encourage people to collect and synthesize sets of skills rather than just disciplines. Formal disciplines matter, and formal education can be incredibly valuable. But some of the most effective people in this field are those who can bring together technical understanding, legal reasoning, policy judgment, communication skills, institutional sense, and enough curiosity to keep learning as the issue evolves.
Sometimes that comes from school. Often, it comes from hard work, good friends, generous colleagues, and a willingness to ask basic questions until the thing finally makes sense. The ability to connect skills—and to help the people around you become more effective—is incredibly powerful.
I continue to believe that translation is our currency. Communication is at the heart of what we do. If you can explain a difficult technical issue in a way that lawyers, policymakers, advocates, journalists, engineers, and affected communities can all use, you can move the world a little. To borrow the spirit of American hip-hop artist YG’s point: “my enemies sing my songs”; that is, when your opponents start repeating your ideas, language, or policy positions, you know you are making an impact.
What’s one thing you’re especially proud of accomplishing during your time at CDT?
I’m proud of helping strengthen CDT’s role as a place where serious technical expertise could inform civil liberties advocacy. In policy debates, technical details can be treated as obstacles, window dressing, or something to be handled later. CDT gave me the opportunity to help show that technical depth is central to protecting rights, shaping better policy, and building a healthier Internet ecosystem.
I am also proud that so much of the work was practical. CDT was not just saying “no,” and it was not just saying “trust us, we’re experts.” At its best, CDT helped policymakers, companies, advocates, and technical communities understand where the real trade-offs were, where risks were misunderstood, and where better choices were possible.
That has been a through-line in my career ever since.