Blockchain privacy startup Nym Technologies is enhancing its behind-the-scenes team by integrating Ahmed Ghappour , an acclaimed lawyer and law professor, who will serve as the new General Counsel.
Professor Ghappour is acknowledged worldwide for his deep insights into surveillance technology law. He is a senior faculty member at Boston University School of Law, focusing on how privacy, security, and tech intersect in his curriculum. He's also the mind behind a significant paper on international hacking laws and anonymous networks, featured in the Stanford Law Review. Hence, he's recognized as a leading authority in privacy and surveillance.
Ghappour's rich history includes advocacy for human rights during the Arab Spring in Egypt and legal representation for over 40 inmates at Guantanamo with Reprieve UK, making him an excellent match for Nym's mission. The startup aspires to revolutionize the internet's privacy landscape with its innovative 'mixnet' to set privacy as the norm.
The challenge Nym aims to tackle is the ease of tracking internet traffic. Even privacy-oriented browsers like Tor can't fully protect against this. Although Tor tries to hide users' locations by relaying traffic through multiple servers, metadata remains exposed. Therefore, entities with ample resources, such as government agencies or committed cybercriminals, can deduce users' locations by analyzing data transmission timings, despite being unable to access the data content itself.
Nym combats this with a mixnet that uses proxy servers to hide the metadata generated when data is sent over the internet. It shuffles data packets together and sends them out randomly, not in their original sequence. By repeating this process, it becomes highly challenging for even the most astute observers to discern the communication patterns.
Ghappour will counsel Nym on the legal ramifications of its groundbreaking tech. His first encounter with Nym's founders, CEO Harry Halpin and Chief Scientist Claudia Diaz, was at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference in Brussels back in 2014.
'We had an all-nighter talking about AI, cyber conflicts, mass surveillance, and the issues Nym is tackling,' Halpin recalled. 'Given Ahmed's engineering background, his experience with grave human rights issues, and his profound knowledge of surveillance and cross-border legal challenges, he aligns perfectly with Nym's goals.'
Ghappour explained his decision to join Nym by highlighting the pressing necessity for robust privacy protection for ordinary users in a digital era.
'We're finally equipped with the tech needed to dismantle surveillance capitalism,' Ghappour noted. 'I eagerly anticipate collaborating with Nym to help them achieve their mission.'
