Woodrow Hartzog

Biography

Professor Hartzog is internationally recognized for his work in privacy and technology law. He has been influential in the debate over privacy and surveillance rules and in the creation and enforcement of information and technology laws. His publications focus on the complex problems that arise when people, organizations, and governments use powerful new technologies to collect, analyze, and share human information.

Professor Hartzog’s work has been published in numerous scholarly publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Michigan Law Review and popular national publications such as The Guardian, Wired, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, New Scientist, Slate, The Atlantic, and The Nation. He has testified multiple times before Congress on data protection issues and served as a commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Facial Recognition. He is the author of Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies, published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, and the co-author of Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press (with Daniel Solove).

Professor Hartzog is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Non-resident Fellow at The Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law at Washington University, an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and an External Affiliate of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. Professor Hartzog serves on the advisory board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Before joining Boston University School of Law, Professor Hartzog was a Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University’s School of Law and Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Starnes Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. Professor Hartzog has also served as a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame Law School and the University of Maine School of Law. He previously worked as an attorney in private practice and as a trademark attorney for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He also served as a clerk for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.