Stewart A. Baker

Stewart Baker is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a partner at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C.

From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. As assistant secretary, Mr. Baker oversaw Department-wide policy analysis, including cybersecurity policy, international affairs, strategic planning, and relationships with private sector, advisory committees, and law enforcement.

Mr. Baker's law practice covers homeland security, international trade, cybersecurity, data protection, and foreign investment regulation.

During 2004 and 2005, Mr. Baker served as General Counsel of the WMD Commission investigating intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Baker was General Counsel of the National Security Agency, where he led NSA and interagency efforts to reform commercial encryption and computer security law and policy. From 1979 to 1981, he helped start the Education Department and served as deputy General Counsel of that Department. (That's two cabinet level start-ups, for those keeping track, and two is plenty for anyone.) He was also a law clerk to Hon. John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court, as well as to Hon. Frank M. Coffin, U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, and Hon. Shirley M. Hufstedler, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Baker has served on numerous boards and commissions. He testified before the September 11 commission on intelligence and law enforcement issues and has been a member of the President's Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration, the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on telecommunications and electronic commerce, two Defense Science Board panels on information warfare defense, and the Markle Task Force on Technology and Terrorism. He has also been an advisor to international organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Coming in June 2010: "Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism" in which Stewart Baker examines technologies we love - jet travel, computer networks, and biotech - and finds that they are likely to empower new forms of terrorism unless we change our current course a few degrees and overcome resistance to change on the part of business, international, and privacy advocates. He draws on his Homeland Security experience to show how that was done in the case of jet travel and border security but concludes that heading off disasters in computer networks and biotech will require a hardheaded recognition that privacy must sometimes yield to security, especially as technology changes the risks to both.

In a lively memoir, the author tells how he overcame the European Union's privacy campaign against US security measures in the wake of 9/11, and built a new border security strategy based on better information about travelers. He explains how that approach would deal with air security risks such as Umar Abdulmutallab (the "Christmas Day Bomber"). He admits to failures as well, showing how the privacy and business lobbies that guard the exponential status quo were able to defeat attempts at increased Internet security and stronger regulation of biotechnology. Instead of fighting all technologies that strengthen government, he concludes, privacy campaigners should must look for ways to protect privacy by working with technology, not against it.