Gus Hosein

Gus has worked at the intersection of technology and human rights for over twenty-five years. He developed national, regional, and global campaigns on communications privacy. He worked on national security and anti-terrorism policy, and led global advocacy against border registration, biometric collection, tracking of migration, travel profiling, and mass surveillance of financial data flows. He led research and co-authored a book on identity systems and policy, Global Challenges for Identity Policy (Palgrave).  He founded regional and global networks of civil society organisations to work on technology and rights. 

He has acted as an external evaluator for UNHCR, advised the UN Special Rapporteur on Terrorism and Human Rights, and has advised a number of other international organisations. In March 2020, he was invited to join the UK Government's Ethics Advisory Board for the NHSX Covid-19 contact tracing app.

Gus has held visiting fellowships at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Columbia University, and University College London. He was a Visiting Scholar at the American Civil Liberties Union and an advisor to their Technology and Liberty Project. He holds a B.Math (Hons) from the University of Waterloo and a PhD from the University of London.  

He's previously been on the boards of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (advisory), medconfidential, the Omidyar Network Digital Identity Portfolio (advisory), Simply Secure and Tactical Tech.

In 2018 Gus was awarded the International Champion of Privacy award by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Gus shared number 42 of Silicon.com's list of top 50 agenda setters in 2005.

Gus is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).

GPG key fingerprint: 018D F80B F296 6C6E EC3F 3AFF 48DB 6E99 F91A B0A8