Advisory Board

UPDATE 11/24/2014: Thank you for your interest in the Cookie Clearinghouse. We have stopped work on this project.

This page remains for historical reference only.

The purpose of the Cookie Clearinghouse Advisory Board is to bring together potential stakeholders from a variety of perspectives to give input and feedback on Cooking Clearinghouse criteria and processes to the Cookie Clearinghouse Director.

Please note: being a member of the Advisory Board does not imply any endorsement of the Cookie Clearinghouse approach, and does not imply a commitment that a company will use the resulting block- and allow-lists.

We thank Cookie Clearinghouse Advisory Board members for their time and wisdom. An initial list follows. Invitations are still being made.

Aleecia M. McDonald

Director of the Cookie Clearinghouse

Director of Privacy, Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Aleecia M. McDonald is the Director of Privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society. Her research focuses on the public policy issues of Internet privacy, and includes user expectations for Do Not Track, behavioral economics and mental models of privacy, and the efficacy of industry self regulation. She co-chaired, and remains active in, the WC3’s Tracking Protection Working Group, an ongoing effort to establish international standards for a Do Not Track mechanism that users can enable to request enhanced privacy online. This effort brings together over 100 international stakeholders from industry, academia, civil society, privacy advocates, and regulators to reach an open, consensus-based multi-party agreement that will establish a baseline for what sites must do when they comply with an incoming request for user privacy. Aleecia’s decade of experience working in software startups adds a practical focus to her academic work, and she was a Senior Privacy Researcher for Mozilla (part-time, 2011-12,) while working for CIS as a Resident Fellow (part-time, 2011-12.) She holds a PhD in Engineering & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon where she studied online privacy as a member of the Cylab Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS) research laboratory. Her findings have been featured in media outlets such as the Washington Post, Ars Technica, Free Press’ Media Minute. She has presented findings in testimony to the California Assembly, and contributed to testimony before the United States Senate and the Federal Trade Commission.

Haakon Flage Bratsberg

Privacy Officer, Opera Software

Haakon Flage Bratsberg is the product counsel and privacy officer at Opera Software ASA. He has been working at the intersection between law, policy and technology since 1992 as a research assistant at Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law (University of Oslo), research scientist and research manager at Telenor. At NRCCL he created one of the first websites about computers and law in 1993. He has worked extensively on a wide range issues including internet governance, privacy, electronic signatures and PKI, copyright, telecommunications law,  and net neutrality.  He has served as chair of the Norwegian Computer and Law Association, as a member of  the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Committee for .no, and in the Creative Commons Norway working group. He holds the degrees cand. jur. (Candidate of Law) from University of Oslo, and MBA from Norwegian School of Economics.

Jonathan Mayer

Ph.D. Student, Stanford University

Jonathan Mayer is a Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University, where he received a J.D. in 2013. Jonathan is a Cybersecurity Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Junior Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society, and a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow. He earned his A.B. at Princeton University in 2009, concentrating in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Jonathan has consulted for both federal and state law enforcement agencies, and his research on consumer privacy has contributed to multiple regulatory interventions. A proud Chicago native, Jonathan is undaunted by freezing weather and enjoys celery salt on a hot dog.

Rick McFarland

Vice President – Data Services, Hearst Corporation

Rick McFarland is Vice President of Data Services for the Hearst Corporation. He is a statistician and data evangelist with a broad background in online retail, media, financial services, and management consulting. Prior to Hearst, McFarland was with Amazon for 5 years where he led analytics teams in both the global marketing and Kindle departments. These teams were responsible for building and utilizing large-scale data resources focused on customer analytics and marketing effectiveness measurement. From 1998 to 2008, McFarland took on lead analytical roles in the financial services and management consulting industries. He managed data platforms and analytics teams for Bank of America and Washington Mutual Bank; he was a partner with the financial services consulting firm, Novantas; and a Director at Digitas. McFarland graduated from the University of Virginia with a PhD in Statistics in 1997, Stanford University in 1992 with a MS in Operations Research, and from University of Kansas in 1990 with a BS in Mathematics.

Arvind Narayanan

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University

Arvind Narayanan (Ph.D. 2009) is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton. He studies information privacy and security and has a side-interest in technology policy. His research has shown that data anonymization is broken in fundamental ways, for which he jointly received the 2008 Privacy Enhancing Technologies Award. Narayanan has published and blogged about technical solutions for minimizing online tracking, including “Adnostic.” He was one of the researchers behind the “Do Not Track” proposal in its early stages. Narayanan is an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton and an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. You can follow him on Twitter at @random_walker.

Jules Polonetsky

Director, Future of Privacy Forum

Jules Polonetsky has served since November 2008 as Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a think tank seeking to improve the state of online privacy by advancing responsible data practices. His previous roles have included serving as Chief Privacy Officer at AOL and before that at DoubleClick, as Consumer Affairs Commissioner for New York City, as an elected New York State Legislator and as a congressional staffer, and as an attorney. In 2011, Jules was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. He has served on the boards of groups such as TRUSTe, the IAPP, the Network Advertising Initiative, the Privacy Projects, and the Better Business Bureau (NY Region).

Craig Spiezle

Director, Future of Privacy Forum

Craig is recognized as a thought leader and pioneer on the convergence of interactive marketing, society and digital commerce. Leveraging his deep understanding of privacy, security and data stewardship, Craig is a champion of best practices to help protect consumer trust and the importance of promoting the vitality and innovation of the internet. Craig frequently briefs members of Congress representing the roles and shared responsibility of members of the ecosystem and the importance of meaningful self-regulation. Prior to OTA, Craig spent over a decade at Microsoft in several management roles. Most recently he was the Director of Security & Privacy Product Management, driving development of anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-malware and privacy enabling technologies. Hired by Microsoft in 1992, Spiezle held various managerial positions including international channel development, product management, licensing and product support. During his tenure, Spiezle championed digital inclusiveness and the societal impact of internet literacy and access. Spiezle holds a Bachelors of Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a MBA from Seattle University. Craig is on the board of the Identity Theft Council, and the Federal Communications Commission’s Communication Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council In addition, Craig is an active member of InfraGard a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the Anti-Phishing Working Group, (APWG) and the London Action Plan, an international spam enforcement network.

Sid Stamm

Lead Privacy Engineer, Mozilla

Sid Stamm is the Lead Privacy Engineer at Mozilla and is responsible for overseeing a team of engineers focused on integrating transparency and privacy into the fabric of the Web by building tools to give users more choice and control over their personal data online. Sid joined Mozilla in 2009 and has designed and developed many of the security and privacy-related features in Firefox including Do Not Track and Content Security Policy. He is the author of a number of privacy-related Firefox Add-ons including, Force TLS and Universal Behavioral Advertising Opt-Out. Sid has written and published numerous papers on privacy and security and holds a Ph.D in computer Science from the Indiana University.

Rob van Eijk

Computer Science Researcher

Rob van Eijk is a computer science researcher and PhD candidate at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His research is focused on Web privacy measurement, data protection and Internet regulation. He served as an expert for the Council of Europe at the Internet Governance Forum. Since 2010 he works for the Dutch Data Protection Authority as a technologist. He represents the Dutch DPA in international meetings such as the Technology Subgroup of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, and the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT aka Berlin Group). He represents the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party in the W3C multi-stakeholder negotiations on Do Not Track. Prior to serving as a technologist he conducted IT forensics and fraud investigations as a contractor and ran an IT management business which he founded in 1999.