Jim Dempsey

Executive Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California, Berkeley

Jim Dempsey is Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at the UC Berkeley law school. From 1997 to 2014, he was at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he held a number of leadership positions, including Executive Director (2003 to 2005) and head of CDT West (2005 to 2014).

From August 2012 to January 2017, Jim also served as a part-time member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent federal agency charged with advising senior policymakers and overseeing the nation’s counterterrorism programs.

Prior to joining CDT, Dempsey served as Deputy Director of the non-profit Center for National Security Studies and Special Counsel to the National Security Archive. From 1985 to 1995, Jim was Assistant Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. He practiced law as an associate at Arnold & Porter, in Washington, DC, and clerked for Judge Robert Braucher of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Jim is author or co-author of articles in law reviews and other journals, including “The Path to ECPA Reform and the Implications of United States v. Jones,” Univ. of San Francisco L. Rev. (2012), and “Privacy as an Enabler, Not an Impediment: Building Trust into Health Information Exchange,” Health Affairs, (2009). He is co-author of the book Terrorism & the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security (New Press, Third edition, 2006) (with Prof. David Cole of Georgetown).  With Fred Cate, he has edited the forthcoming volume Bulk Collection: Systematic Government Access to Private-Sector Data (Oxford 2017).