Alessandro Polidoro

Attorney at law,

Digital rights advocate

& Tech lawyer

TECH AND CRIMINAL LAWYER, DIGITAL RIGHTS ADVOCATE

WITH A GREAT PASSION FOR LEGAL CYBERNETICS, GLOBAL ISSUES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

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Alessandro Polidoro is an attorney at law experienced in tech law and digital forensics, with a strong dedication to advocacy and strategic litigation in the field of digital rights where he works closely with many civil society groups, activists and hackers. His professional expertise revolves around the creation and implementation of new policy for the digital world fostering pluralism and decentralization.

He and he is currently affiliated with the foundation Cyber Rights Organization where he operates as Senior Advocacy Officer. He also collaborates with the law-tech firms The Start-Up Lawyers in Berlin and Tre14 in Milan being responsible for cases pertaining to data protection law, cybercrimes and the safeguard of workers’ rights. Core activity of his work is offering legal protection against hate crimes and gender-based violence, particularly with regard to image-based sexual abuse.

In collaboration with other CSOs and advocates, he coordinates the Digital Intimacy Coalition that is fostering new policy in the digitally mediated parts of everybody’s intimate life. This group urged the European Commission to enforce the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the sector of online pornography, pushing for the designation of major porn tech-giants as Very Large Online Platforms, successfully obtained in December 2023. He also launched the strategic litigation campaign #StopDataPorn having the role of Lead Attorney. The aim of this initiative is to address the systemic violation of data protection law within the porn industry and it was made possible thanks to the support of Reset and Digital Freedom Fund.

Alessandro has been the Head of Legal of Tracking Exposed, now rebranded into Ai Forensics, a non-profit organization focused on algorithmic auditing and platform accountability, where he coordinated several projects in partnership with stakeholders coming from both public and private sector. In this position he supported diverse strategic litigation and investigations related to digital policy issues, such as counteracting unlawful profiling of minors online and harmful military propaganda on social media.

He has contributed as legal expert to the Data Knowledge Hub, a community created within the project Upgrade Democracy that aims to provide a central resource for monitoring social media platforms and online discourse, thanks to the support of Bertelsmann Stiftung. He has also been a component of the Legal Advisory Board for the project Algocount focused on the influence of algorithms over public opinion, made possible thanks to the support of Fondazione Cariplo.

Previously, he has been part of the campaign #intimitàviolata that led to the criminalization of non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, so called NCII, in Italy with the introduction of Article 612 ter to the Italian Criminal Code.

In the field of legal cybernetics, Alessandro has partaken in several research projects envisioning how digital technology can empower non-hierarchical societal frameworks and horizontal decision-making processes. This area of study is one of the most challenging as it aims to bridge the gap between law and information technology, promoting change for the organizational models of our society through means like federated networks and distributed ledger technology.