Samuel (Sam) Adams is a Policy Counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum where his work involves Advertising Technologies and Platforms as well as U.S. policy and law. Prior to FPF, Sam was a Westin Fellow at the International Association of Privacy Professionals where he led research into FTC enforcement history, international privacy legislation, and the changing landscape of American privacy law.
In 2022, Sam accepted a position as a civil attorney at his state’s centralized law enforcement agency, assisting in the writing of statewide policy on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. Also in 2022, Sam dedicated himself to campaigning (in his spare time) for his state’s House of Representatives in the November 2022 election.
Sam is a bar-certified attorney and earned his J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law. During law school, Sam interned at FPF for a full academic year where he earned broad exposure to FPF’s work, including brain-computer interfaces, health and genetics, de-identification, and more.
He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with his wife, a tenure-track professor of musicology at the University of Alabama School of Music. In a previous life, Sam lived in a small southwest Colorado ski town where he worked as a newspaper reporter, marketing consultant, wine store clerk, and chairlift operator in order to fund his alpine skiing habit.
