Lizzie O’Shea

Lawyer, writer & digital rights advocate

Tech for people, not users, and the role of human rights in technology

Lizzie O’Shea is a lawyer, writer and digital rights advocate. Her commentary is featured regularly on television programs and radio, about law, technology, or human rights. In print, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.

Lizzie is a Founder and the chair of Digital Rights Watch, which advocates for human rights online. She also sits on the board of Blueprint for Free Speech and the Alliance for Gambling Reform. At the National Justice Project, Lizzie worked with lawyers, journalists and activists to establish a Copwatch program, for which she was a recipient of the Davis Projects for Peace Prize. In June 2019, Lizzie was named a Human Rights Hero by Access Now.

As a lawyer, Lizzie has spent many years working in public interest litigation, on cases brought on behalf of refugees and activists, among others. She represented the Fertility Control Clinic in their battle to stop harassment of their staff and patients by anti abortion fanatics, as well as the Traditional Aboriginal Owners of Muckaty Station, in their successful attempt to stop a nuclear waste dump being built on their land.

Lizzie’s book, Future Histories (Verso, 2019), looks at radical social movements and theorists from history and applies them to debates we have about digital technology today.