Peter Swire is senior counsel on Alston & Bird’s Privacy & Data Security Team. He has been a leading privacy and cyberlaw government official, academic, and practitioner since the rise of the Internet in the 1990s.
In 2019, the Future of Privacy Forum honored him for Outstanding Academic Scholarship. In 2018, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for his project on cross-border data flows. In 2015, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (with over 50,000 members) awarded Peter its annual Privacy Leadership Award. Peter served as one of five members of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, formed after the Edward Snowden revelations. He was co-chair of the global Do Not Track process for the World Wide Web Consortium. Under President Clinton, Peter was the chief privacy counselor in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. His responsibilities included White House lead on the HIPAA Privacy Rule, chairing a White House task force on how to update wiretap laws for the Internet, and serving on the negotiating team for the Safe Harbor agreement with the European Union. He served under President Obama as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.
Peter is the Elizabeth and Thomas Holder Chair at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, with appointments by courtesy with the College of Computing and School of Public Policy.