About the IAPP

Peter Swire is the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech, and Professor of Law and Ethics in the Scheller College of Business. He is Research Director of the Cross-Border Data Forum. He has served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine Forum on Cyber-Resiliency (2015-21) and Study Committee on The Future of Encryption (2020-22).

Swire is also Senior Counsel with the law firm of Alston & Bird, LLC, providing counsel to clients globally on privacy and cybersecurity topics.

In 2019, the Future of Privacy Forum honored him for Outstanding Academic Scholarship. In 2018, Swire was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for research on “Protecting Human Rights and National Security in the New Era of Data Nationalism.” In 2015, the International Association of Privacy Professionals, which has over 75,000 members, selected Swire for its annual Privacy Leadership Award. In 2013, he served as one of five members of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. Prior to that, he was co-chair of the global Do Not Track process for the World Wide Web Consortium.

Under President Clinton, Swire was the Chief Counselor for Privacy, in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. He was the first person to have U.S. government-wide responsibility for privacy policy. In that role, his activities included being White House coordinator for the HIPAA medical privacy rule, chairing a White House task force on how to update wiretap laws for the Internet age, and helping negotiate the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor agreement for trans-border data flows. Under President Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

Swire is author of seven books, numerous scholarly papers, and op eds in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified often before the Congress, and been quoted regularly in the press.

Swire graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and the Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.