The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Tuesday appointed an Internet-start-up veteran and public-policy consultant as its new executive director.
Tara Lemmey, a technology and marketing expert with close ties to both Silicon Valley and Washington, is charged with raising funds, building membership, and elevating the foundation's profile in Washington and the industry.
"What EFF has done very well from Day One is to help to set the agenda and get people to think about the next wave and the next frontier. We will continue to do that," said Lemmey, whose first day on the job was Tuesday.
"Tara is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the issues that EFF has always held as basic tenets, from free speech to privacy to IP," said EFF chairman Lori Fena. "She has demonstrated that knowledge as both an entrepreneurial CEO, as well as a private citizen."
The foundation serves as the United States' leading advocate for civil rights in the digital age. The group engineered the Blue Ribbon campaign that mobilized opposition to the Communications Decency Act. It also supported former executive director John Gilmore in his efforts to expose vulnerabilities in the DES algorithm and demonstrate the fallibility of US cryptography policy.
"We are very much agents of change -- we like to look at the world from different perspectives," Lemmey said. "We want to continue to identify the changes in technology and consider solutions that we can come up with that will allow us to look at it differently."
A 10-year veteran of the Internet industry and founder of Internet advertising-technology company Narrowline, Lemmey is well-versed in the social and political aspects of electronic commerce.
She sits on the board of directors of Truste, a nonprofit devoted to increasing awareness of Internet-privacy issues, that was spun off from the EFF several years ago.
Lemmey has taken a leading role on policy issues in Washington and abroad, testifying at Federal Trade Commission hearings and advising the US Postal Service on e-commerce issues, such as the .us domain.
