Nadia KAYYALI, USA, Activist at Electronic Frontier Foundation

Nadia Kayyali is an Activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in San Francisco, California. They focus on street level surveillance technology such as IMSI catchers and drones, US national security policy, privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression. Nadia has worked on EFF’s Street Level Surveillance and Surveillance Self-Defense projects, advocated for anonymity and privacy with governmental bodies and companies, and has coordinated a variety of US campaigns to limit surveillance at the national and local level. As a Syrian-American, Nadia got especially interested in surveillance because of the experiences of Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11. Nadia holds a B.A from UC Berkeley in Cultural Anthropology, and a J.D. from UC Hastings College of the Law.

Ms Raegan MACDONALD, Canada, Senior Policy manager, EU principal at Mozilla

Originally from Canada, Raegan is based in Brussels, Belgium, where she leads Mozilla’s Public Policy work in the EU, and specialises in net neutrality, privacy and data protection. Raegan is a member of the Steering Group for Code Red, a global initiative to accelerate reform of security organisations. She is also an Advisory Board member of the Brussels Privacy Hub, an academic research institute focused on privacy and data protection. Since March 2014, Raegan is a Privacy by Design Ambassador, an award from the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada. Prior to joining Mozilla, Raegan led Access’ (accessnow.org) Brussels presence as European Policy Manager. Prior to that, Raegan worked with European Digital Rights (EDRi), an association of 34 privacy and civil rights groups across Europe. Raegan is a graduate of the University of Vienna (Austria) and the University of Leipzig (Germany) where she received her Masters in Global Studies.

Mr Dirk VAN EECKHOUT, Belgium, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Belgium at the Council of Europe

Having two masters in philosophy and management, the ambassador’s interests vary as much as his impressive hat collection. Mr Van Eeckhout has represented Belgium in Japan, Nigeria and Chile. Recently, he chaired the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from November 2014 until May 2015. More specifically to the topic of the debate, he is the thematic coordinator for the information society. You can catch a bigger glimpse into his life and interests (i.e. social media and digital diplomacy) by following him on twitter (https://twitter.com/dirk_van_e) and facebook (https://www.facebook.com/belgiumincoe).