Joseph Lorenzo Hall is the Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Democracy & Technology based out of the Washington D.C. area. He has served as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkely within their well-respected School of Information. Before that he got a Master of Information Management and Systems, a Master of Arts, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of California as well.
With such an extensive education within the information and technology space, Joseph Lorenzo Hall is a perfect fit to lead the tech efforts at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). The mission of this nonprofit organization is to promote the rights of everyone when it pertains to their use of the web. The organization focuses its time and effort on influencing policy decisions on crucial topics that impact the freedom we have when using the internet.
Joseph Lorenzo Hall is obviously a big believer in the importance of free access to the internet for everyone. His involvement with this organization and his dedication to this industry, in general, makes that very clear. Lately, his work now seems to be focused mostly on impacting the trajectory of which way political decisions go when it comes to the web in general.
One of the issues that Joseph has been vocal on in the past is e-voting. According to Hall, there’s a difference between electronic and internet voting, with each bringing their own set of potential problems that you need to navigate. From a security perspective online voting brings about an absolute requirement for things to be buttoned up, and it’s optimistic to think that it’s completely possible.
It’s obvious that Joseph Lorenzo Hall has no problem jumping into the hard problems and getting his hands dirty. This is the kind of attitude that you love to see when it comes to enacting change in a murky environment like politics. There’s so much democracy and outdated thinking when it comes to tech in the political scene, that you have to be passionate and persistent.
In summary, Joseph Lorenzo Hall is someone that the internet really needs. With so many instances of rights and privacy being neglected, we need people to step up and fight back. With help from the work that Joseph has done in the past, and continues to do today, the internet is going to continue being a useful tool for billions forever.
If you want to stay up to date on what Joseph Lorenzo Hall is up to you have a couple of great options. You can follow him on Twitter where he’s quite active and engages with followers quite regularly. He also has a personal website that gives a lot of additional information and ways you can contact him.