Cynthia Conti-Cook is a legal and policy strategist working at the intersection of technology and justice movements. She is the Director of Research and Policy at the Surveillance Resistance Lab, where she focuses on Digital Public Infrastructure and Democracy. Previously, she advised the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice program on the impact of emerging technologies on justice movements. 

Cynthia has been a civil rights attorney since 2007, most recently at the Special Litigation Unit of the Legal Aid Society (of New York). She founded Legal Aid’s Cop Accountability Project in 2014, led class and individual civil rights federal and state actions, trained hundreds of attorneys across the country, and worked alongside a coalition of grassroots organizations fighting police violence and state secrecy. She co-created a first-of-its-kind public database that made police misconduct information by New York City police officers available online.

Cynthia has also taught graduate and undergraduate seminars on digital technology and government and is writing a forthcoming book under contract with One Signal Publishers.

She has published op-eds in the Washington Post, LA Times, as well as articles in several law review journals and “A Bouquet for Battling Trade Secrets in the Public Sector”, a chapter in Feminist Cyberlaw (UC Press). 

Cynthia has been featured as an expert on emerging surveillance threats on CNN, MSNBC, Michael Moore’s podcast Rumble, New York Times.