John Grant

John Grant has been working in the privacy field for more than a decade. After graduating from Duke University in 2000, John began work as a U.S. Senate aide where he helped develop privacy-related policy (among other issues) for two Senators. Privacy and civil liberties quickly became a passion for John, and he focused on these issues while attending night classes at the Georgetown University Law Center, finally obtaining his J.D. in 2007. By then he had joined the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as Counsel to the Ranking Member, where he handled the intelligence oversight portfolio in addition to privacy and civil liberties issues. Over the course of four years with the Committee, he gained significant insight into the practical difficulties inherent in integrating sound privacy policy into data analysis and data sharing programs, as he wrote legislation related to the management of the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office, developed proposals to rewrite the U.S. Privacy Act, helped strengthen the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and worked to incorporate numerous privacy-related provisions to numerous pieces of legislation. In 2010, John joined Palantir Technologies as the company’s first Civil Liberties Engineer responsible for assisting Palantir engineers to build and deploy privacy-protective technologies in their products.