April Falcon Doss
April Falcon Doss is an American attorney, intelligence expert, and author who has built a distinguished career at the intersection of law, national security, and technology policy. She served for a decade as the Senior Associate General Counsel for Intelligence Law at the National Security Agency, where she worked on some of the most complex legal questions surrounding surveillance, cybersecurity, and the use of intelligence in a democratic society governed by law. She later served as the Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Her book Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care (2020) brought her expertise in intelligence law and technology policy to a general audience. The book provides a comprehensive and accessible examination of how personal data is collected, aggregated, used, and sometimes misused by governments, corporations, and other actors in the digital economy. Drawing on her legal background and intelligence community experience, Doss explains the technical landscape of data collection while making a compelling argument for why citizens need to understand and engage with questions of data privacy, governance, and rights.
The book was praised for its clarity and its ability to navigate highly technical material without becoming either simplistic or impenetrable. It arrived at a moment of intense public debate about the role of technology companies and government surveillance in democratic societies, and it provided readers with a substantive foundation for engaging those debates as informed citizens.
Doss has testified before Congress, spoken at major policy forums, and contributed to public debate on cybersecurity, privacy law, and intelligence oversight. Her career represents a model of the lawyer-as-public-educator, using specialized expertise to empower citizens and policymakers to engage with questions of pressing democratic importance.