Background

Pam Dixon is the executive director and founder of the World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public interest research group focused on conducting research on societal issues, particularly those where privacy intersects with technology. Through the World Privacy Forum, Dixon works nationally and internationally.

Dixon’s work in privacy includes substantive longitudinal research studies which are much-cited and highly regarded, journal articles, testimony before lawmakers and state and federal agencies, as well as work with the international community. Dixon speaks frequently as an expert lecturer in the US and abroad. She also works with other NGOs to create consensus on key issues in privacy.

Prior to founding the World Privacy Forum, Dixon was a researcher at the Denver University School of Law’s Privacy Foundation during Richard M. Smith’s tenure there. While there, her work focused on workplace and job applicant privacy, including a study on resume databases and the first study to document privacy issues in the online job search industry and online job searching sites.

Dixon’s work in privacy is focused in the area of health, online privacy, workplace, and data flows (including Internet and trans-border data flows). Her work often breaks critical new ground, for example, she was the first to explore the topic of medical identity theft, documenting the crime and its impact on victims for the first time in a major report. Dixon’s research work in identity theft has led to the creation of new consumer protection laws at the state and federal level.

• You can find a chronology of Dixon’s privacy work here: (Note: this chronology also lists World Privacy Forum work done by other staff and collaborators) http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/chronology.html

• And a selection of testimony, research, and writings here: http://www.pamdixon.com/articles.htm