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William P. Crowell, Prominent National Security Expert, Joins OSET Institute Board of Directors
[October 13, 2021]

William P. Crowell, Prominent National Security Expert, Joins OSET Institute Board of Directors


Today, the OSET Institute announced that William P. Crowell, a venture capitalist and former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency (News - Alert), has joined the OSET Institute's Board of Directors. Mr. Crowell brings a potent mix of physical and digital security experience in both government and private industry. He is currently a Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, where he serves as the anchor for its security practice.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211013005350/en/

William P. Crowell (Photo: Business Wire)

William P. Crowell (Photo: Business Wire)

Mr. Crowell is an expert on network and information security issues. William served as Chairman of the Senior Advisory Group for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) from 2007 through 2014, and he currently serves on the Hughes (News - Alert) Research Laboratory Advisory Board. In December 2008 Security Magazine selected him as one of the 25 most influential people in the security industry. In May 2007 he co-authored the book, "Physical and Logical Security Convergence," published by Elsevier. He has been quoted in many trade and business publications including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today, Information Week, Network World (News - Alert), Computer World, Federal Computer Week, CIO Magazine and the San Jose Mercury News. William has also appeared on CBS MarketWatch, CNET News, CNBC, and The Charlie Rose Show.

"Mr. Crowell brings a wealth of experience and knowledge in digital and information security to board-level strategic planning for the Institute," observed OSET co-founder and COO, Gregory Miller. "Election infrastructure plays a critical role in defense of democracy, and Bill will provide enormous value in executing on our mission to create a highly verifiable, accurate, secure and transparent publicly-owned election administration technology framework."



"I have decades of experience dealing with the threats to our democracy, and at the top of that list are efforts of authoritarian nation states to undermine our confidence in our election systems," explained Mr. Crowell. "In addition to the risks of subversive attacks on election infrastructure, using mis- and disinformation and influence operations delivered by agents of influence, these nation-states for years have planted the seeds of distrust in the integrity and validity of our elections. They have attacked the processes, our election officials, and they often inject contextual conflict into many channels of communications to the American public." Bill adds that "This is not a new phenomenon, but it is a more powerful approach, given the growth of the global Internet and the voice that it gives to those who want to undermine our elections."

"Mr. Crowell will bring tremendous value to our election technology R&D efforts given his long involvement in the creation and testing of security systems and processes," added OSET co-founder and CTO John Sebes. "Fortifying our security-centric engineering principles and practices, Bill will bring unique insight into the challenges of building far more secure voting systems that are universally trusted by the public. What's more, he uniquely understands that these challenges extend to all 'five Ps' of the democracy ecosystem-people, process, platform, policy and politics."


Crowell added, "The pandemic amplified some of these security challenges with the emphasis on by-mail voting and challenges associated with staffing in-person voting locations. I've witnessed parallel challenges in other sectors of critical infrastructure and national security, so I look forward to helping raise the visibility of election security as a top priority of national security-and that has to be a patriotic mission, not a partisan matter."

"William Crowell's work in national defense has given him a set of skills and insights that will be of enormous value to our nonprofit organization's work," said Christine Santoro, OSET Institute's Chief Legal Officer.

Mr. Crowell begins his Board duties this week at the Institute's 3rd quarter Board meeting.

More About William P. Crowell
More can be learned about Mr. Crowell by reviewing his biography on the Alsop Louie Partners web site, and his LinkedIn (News - Alert) profile:

About the OSET Institute
The OSET Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit non-partisan election technology research, development and education organization founded in late 2006, based in the Silicon Valley. A team of veteran technologists leads the Institute with extensive software, hardware and systems design experience from well-known companies including Apple, Mozilla, Netscape, and Sun Microsystems (News - Alert). The Institute's mission is to make election technology more verifiable, accurate, secure, and transparent as a matter of national security in defense of democracy. The OSET Institute's TrustTheVote® Project provides publicly available software technology, such as the 3rd party voter registration platform used by RockTheVote™ and others, and provides other election administration technology to governments. Work is based on open-source principles to ensure this critical government technology is an imperative public asset.


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