Sophia Cope is a Staff Attorney and the first Ron Plesser Fellow. Ms. Cope joined CDT in October 2006 and will fulfill a two-year fellowship term. She is focusing on online free expression and child safety; the privacy implications of government identification programs and RFID technology; and threats to human rights on the global Internet.

Ms. Cope came to CDT after finishing a two-year fellowship with the First Amendment Project, a public interest law firm in Oakland, California. There she litigated on behalf of environmental activists seeking to exercise and defend their rights to freedom of speech, petition and access to information.

Ms. Cope received her J.D. in 2004 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. During law school, Ms. Cope was a law clerk for the civil litigation firm Ragghianti Freitas LLP, an intern at the environmental nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment, and an assistant to David Faigman, a constitutional law and evidence professor. Ms. Cope also was a policy intern for Pacific Research Institute's Center for Technology Studies, a production intern for the public affairs talk show "Forum" on KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, and she taught seventh graders as part of the Street Law program. Ms. Cope published an article in the Gonzaga Law Review in 2004 entitled "Ripe for Revision: A Critique of Federal Rule of Evidence 706 and the Use of Court-Appointed Experts."

Prior to law school, Ms. Cope worked for two years in high-technology public relations in Silicon Valley. Ms. Cope graduated cum laude from Santa Clara University in 1999, receiving a B.S. in biology and a minor in communication. She focused on ecology and studied abroad in Trinidad & Tobago. She also wrote for the student newspaper The Santa Clara. Ms. Cope was born and raised in San Diego, California.