Alvaro Bedoya

Alvaro Bedoya is the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, where he is a visiting professor of law. His research and advocacy focus on the idea that privacy is for everyone. His exposés on the harms of face recognition technology have helped usher the passage of face recognition restrictions across the country, led the National Institute of Standards & Technology to conduct the first comprehensive bias audit of face recognition algorithms, and paved the way for a federal law requiring bias testing in airport face recognition systems, section 1919 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018. He also co-led a coalition that successfully pressed an Internet giant to drop ads for online payday loans, which were often served in response to searches like “I need money to pay rent” or “I need money for groceries.” Previously, Bedoya served as the first chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law upon the subcommittee’s creation in 2011. As a Senate staffer, Bedoya drafted bipartisan legislation to protect victims of sexual assault, conducted oversight hearings of technology companies, and helped negotiate and draft bipartisan legislation to rein in the National Security Agency. A naturalized citizen born in Peru, Bedoya co-founded the Esperanza Education Fund, a status-blind college scholarship that has awarded over $1 million to immigrant and first-generation students in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of CASA and CASA in Action. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Bedoya lives in Rockville, Maryland with his wife, Dr. Sima Zadeh Bedoya, a pediatric psychologist at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute. They have two toddlers.