Robert R. Belair
Mr. Robert R. Belair is a Partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of
Oldaker, Biden & Belair and, with Dr. Alan F. Westin, serves as a
Principal of the Privacy Consulting Group, a privacy and information policy
consulting firm. Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Belair served as
an Attorney for the Federal Trade Commission with responsibility for Fair
Credit Reporting Act matters. Mr.
Belair later served as Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office on
the Right of Privacy.
Mr. Belair's privacy practice centers on the representation of privacy
sensitive organizations with respect to credit and financial records,
educational records, criminal records, medical records, employment records
and telecommunications information. He
has served as General Counsel to SEARCH, the National Consortium for
Justice Information and Statistics, and as General Counsel to the National
Commission on the Confidentiality of Health Records. He has also been
chairman of an American Bar Association’s Privacy Committee.
Mr. Belair has spoken and written widely on privacy and information
law topics.
Mr. Belair's practice includes representation of clients before the courts,
federal agencies and, in particular, the Congress.
He has litigated numerous privacy and freedom of information cases,
including serving as lead amicus counsel in the Supreme Court's 1989
landmark privacy and freedom of information decision, Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press v. Department of Justice.
Mr. Belair has served as a legal consultant on privacy, freedom of
information and information policy matters to numerous government agencies
and commissions including the National Conference of Commissioners on
Uniform State Laws, the National Academy of Sciences, the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Social Security
Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Federal Paperwork
Commission.
Along with Dr. Westin, Mr. Belair is Editor of Privacy & American Business, the nation's leading privacy
sensitive publication for the business community.
Mr. Belair received his Law Degree in 1973 from Columbia University, where
he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, a Charles Evans Hughes Scholar and
Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.
Tom
Bode Sr.
Mr. Tom Bode Sr. is
Founder and General Manager of The
Bode Technology Group. Under his leadership, the company has become the
largest private forensic company in the United States. Mr. Bode has a
Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland
and an M.B.A. in Finance from Loyola College.
Prior to founding The Bode Technology Group, Mr. Bode worked at the IIT
Research Institute, where he increased operations in one research division
from $3 million to more than $30 million per year.
M. Paul Collier
Mr. M. Paul Collier serves as Executive Director of The
Biometric Foundation, which is based in Washington D.C. and dedicated
to a systematic program of research and education to reduce impediments to
wide adoption and use of all biometric technologies. Mr. Collier is a
founder of the consulting firm ID Technology Partners Inc. He has held
executive posts in the design and marketing of forensic and biometric
identification systems since 1978. Mr. Collier’s last post was General
Manager of the Biometric Solutions Division of ANADAC, a subsidiary of
Identix. His background in biometrics encompasses commercial, government,
and military applications of biometrics, including physical and logical
access control, entitlement fraud control, refugee tracking, border
control, and e-commerce and electronic funds transfer applications.
Mr. Collier has participated in virtually all government and industry
biometric standards activities, including the ANSI/NIST fingerprint
interchange standard, BioAPI, NIST Common Biometric Exchange File Format,
and the GSA Smart-card Biometric Subcommittee. He is a founding member of
the International Biometrics Industry Association and served on its board
of directors for more than two years. Mr. Colllier has served on the
Service Membership Advisory Board of the American Bankers Association and
has testified before Congressional committees as an expert witness on
biometric technology.
Capt. Thomas J. Cowper
Capt. Thomas J. Cowper is a 19-year veteran of the New York State Police.
For the last 10 years, Capt. Cowper has been involved in the
procurement, implementation and management of law enforcement and public
safety technologies, serving as the Director of Communications for the
State Police and, currently, as Associate Director of the Statewide
Wireless Network project under New York’s Office for Technology.
Capt. Cowper is Treasurer of the Society
of Police Futurists International (PFI) and a member of the FBI Futures
Working Group, a collaborative partnership between the FBI and PFI to study
and strategize about the future of law enforcement.
He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, has a BS in Mechanical
Engineering Technology from LeTourneau University and a Masters Degree in
Public Administration from Marist College.
Capt. Cowper is a published author and regular speaker regarding
emerging technologies and law enforcement.
Wayne Crews Jr.
Mr. Wayne Crews Jr. is Director of Technology Policy for the
Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation
headquartered in Washington D.C. In this capacity, Mr. Crews examines
"new economy" regulatory issues including antitrust policy,
privacy, "spam" and intellectual property; competition policy
issues such as alternatives to mandatory "open access" in network
industry structures; and various Internet governance issues. He is the
author of the annual report, Ten Thousand Commandments: A Policymaker's
Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State. Mr. Crews' writing
has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Journal of
Commerce, Washington Times, Consumer's Research, Insight, Electricity
Journal, Policy Sciences, the Journal of Regulation and Social Costs.
He has made media appearances on PBS, Fox News Channel, CNN, CNBC and Voice
of America. Before joining Cato, Mr. Crews was Director of Competition and
Regulation Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Earlier, Mr.
Crews was a Legislative Aide to Sen. Phil Gramm on regulatory and welfare
reform issues, an Economist and Policy Analyst at Citizens for a Sound
Economy Foundation, an Economist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
and a Research Assistant at the Center for the Study of Public Choice at
George Mason University. He holds a Master's of Business Administration
from the College of William and Mary, and a Bachelor's Degree in Business
Administration from Lander College in Greenwood, South Carolina. Mr. Crews
is a member of the editorial board of www.antitrust.org, and runs the Web
site www.hyperfamily.com.