Stewart Baker

About

Stewart A. Baker was a technology, national security and privacy lawyer who practiced for much of his career at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington, D.C., and later founded Stewart Baker Consulting PLLC. He served as General Counsel of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1994 and as the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009, and worked on encryption, surveillance and cybersecurity policy. He wrote The Limits of Trust: Cryptography, Governments, and Electronic Commerce (1998) and Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism (2010), and hosted the Cyberlaw Podcast, which he started in 2013. He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and held a J.D. from UCLA School of Law and a B.A. from Brown University. He died on 30 April 2026. At Legal Cyber Academy he taught on the FTC, privacy and data surveillance.