As associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Barry Steinhardt helped spearhead the fight to overturn the Communications Decency Act – an effort that signaled the ACLU's emergence as a player in cyberspace. Now he is moving on to become president and CEO of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Founded eight years ago as the world's first cyber rights group, the EFF has since inspired spin-offs from EFFlorida to EF Australia. Nevertheless, in the post-CDA political landscape, the San Francisco-based EFF has been struggling to overcome cash shortages and a cloudy agenda.
Steinhardt has his work cut out for him. With a budget of US$1 million this year and membership hovering at 3,000, the EFF needs a strong leader who can effectively shepherd the organization into maturity. In his 17 years at the ACLU, Steinhardt gained a reputation as an uncompromising civil libertarian, and recently he has been an outspoken opponent of Internet content-filtering systems. "Since the CDA decision," he says, "there has been a headlong rush to embrace tools that may well create a régime of private-sector censorship that's every bit as troubling as the CDA."
He's right, but such comments may alienate Steinhardt's neighbors in Silicon Valley and frustrate policymakers in Washington, DC. Steinhardt, however, insists that he'll be able to balance civil liberties principle with fiscal pragmatism. "We need a strategic approach," he says. "That means being a little out ahead and saying some difficult things."
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Wired magazine.
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