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Sharon Bradford Franklin is Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Prior to her appointment as Chair, Ms. Franklin served as Co-Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), leading advocacy on a broad range of issues involving surveillance, cybersecurity, encryption, civil liberties, and civil rights. Previously, she was the Policy Director for New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), directing OTI’s policy work on issues including cybersecurity, encryption, freedom of expression online, government surveillance, privacy, and platform accountability.

From 2013 through 2017, Ms. Franklin served as Executive Director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. She supervised and directed the PCLOB’s staff in reviewing federal counterterrorism activities in support of the Board’s mission to ensure that such programs include appropriate safeguards for privacy and civil liberties.

Ms. Franklin previously served as Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonprofit legal watchdog group, where her work included participating as a member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee for the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. She has also served as a Trial Attorney in the Housing & Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, worked on civil rights policy matters as Special Counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, and served as Executive Director of the Washington Council of Lawyers.

Ms. Franklin began her legal career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth. She graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School.