Michael Karanicolas


Organization:	Open Government Partnership
Affiliation:	GNSO
Region:	North America
Country:	Canada

Michael Karanicolas is a human rights advocate whose work focuses on freedom of expression, the right to information, transparency and digital rights. He currently serves as the North American representative on the NCUC Executive Committee. He is also the Rapporteur for the WS2 Transparency subgroup, and the Co-Chair of the Cross-Community Working Party on Human Rights.

In addition to his work at ICANN, Michael was, until August 2017, Senior Legal Officer for the Centre for Law and Democracy, where his work included extensive experience in global human rights advocacy, including programming in Myanmar, Indonesia, the Maldives, Malawi, Palestine, Afghanistan, Jordan and Pakistan. He is based in Canada, where he has also participated in law reform processes in Quebec, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as at the federal level.

Michael is currently the President of the Right to Know Coalition, a Canadian-based NGO which works to enhance governmental transparency, as well as the Canada researcher for the Open Government Partnership. Michael has published extensively on a range of digital rights issues, including human rights rules for private-sector tech firms, mass surveillance, expanding access to the Internet, revamping intellectual property laws, and encryption and anonymization. Michael has a B.A. (Hons.) from Queen's University (Dean's List), and an LL.B. from the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University (Dean's List). You can find him on Twitter at @M_Karanicolas.