Nancy C. Libin, the Justice Department’s chief privacy and civil liberties official, is exiting the department to join Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP as a partner in its Washington, D.C., office. The law firm specializes in technology and intellectual property rights.
Libin, the principal privacy adviser to the Deputy Attorney General for the last three years, spent much of her time at the department focused on balancing the increasing use of technology and privacy rights, according to a news release. In her time at the department, she worked on issues of cyber security and electronic surveillance, among other things.
Nancy Libin
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known as the 9/11 commission, recommended creation of Libin’s privacy post after lawmakers and civil liberties advocates raised concerns about the increasing use of surveillance and tracking technology in the national security arena.
“[My role] is a little more amorphous because you can certainly have policies that get at areas that are undecided in the law, where no court’s decided on this or it’s an unsettled area of law,” Libin told a publication of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2011. “That’s where you really have to come in and decide as a policy matter, ‘Okay there is no law that expressly prohibits this and there is no court that opined on how another law might prohibit this, so what should we do here?’”
She has also served as the department’s representative on the White House National Science and Technology Council’s privacy and internet policy subcommittee.
She previously served as counsel to then-Sen. Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before that, she worked as staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology and also held senior positions with the John Kerry presidential campaign.
She also worked as associate general counsel for regulatory policy and oversight for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Prior to that, Libin worked as an associate at the now defunct Howrey & Simon law firm.
Libin is a graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center.
