Alex Alben

Alex Alben (born New York City), American technology executive, author and law professor, served as the first Chief Privacy Officer of Washington State from April 2015 to May 2019.

[1] His career spans work for innovative Internet media companies with influential positions in industry groups seeking to create new laws for digital distribution of content.

Alben is the author of "Analog Days—How Technology Rewrote Our Future," and consults to public sector organizations, high tech and energy companies on privacy and security related matters.

After graduating Stanford University in 1980, Alben began his career working for CBS News in New York as a research assistant to anchorman Walter Cronkite.

In testimony before the Senate in 2002 as Vice President of public policy for RealNetworks, Alben predicted that web video was evolving so rapidly that one day all television programs would be found on the Internet.

Regarding Our Man in Mongoa, Publishers Weekly wrote: "Alben writes smoothly, with terrific pace and even better humor, which, deliciously deadpan, skewers even moving targets."

Stanford Law Professor Paul Goldstein commented: "In his new book, Alex Alben provides a first-person account of working at two of the pioneer companies that laid the groundwork for the modern web.

Alben ran a centrist campaign, according to "September Primary A Necessary Vote," The Seattle Post Intelligencer, August 5, 2004, emphasizing his experience in the high tech world and his active participation in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other issues affecting the software industry.

[12] As guest columnist for The Seattle Times and contributor to other publications, Alben writes about issues confronting our culture as a result of new digital devices and applications.

His most recent columns invoke "nomophobia," the fear of losing a cell phone, the "digital afterlife," and the influence of social media on American politics.