Meet, Ben Hayes

Ben Hayes is Strategy Director at AWO, a consultancy and law firm specialised in data protection, data rights litigation and technology policy development. He is an international data protection law and policy expert specialised in the protection of vulnerable data subjects, new technologies, challenging processing environments and applied ethics. He has worked as a Legal Advisor to the International Committee of the Red Cross, developing data protection frameworks for complex innovation projects, including the ICRC’s Biometrics Policy. Prior to this he undertook similar work for the UN Refugee Agency.

Ben has 20 years’ experience working more broadly at the intersection of human rights and social policy. He has conducted ground-breaking research on inter/national security, counterterrorism, surveillance, border control, technology transfer, financial regulation and climate change, and worked with various NGOs and research institutes including the Transnational Institute, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the Peace Research Institute Oslo. He has worked extensively on the human rights impacts of AML/CFT regulations and practices including de-risking, financial exclusion, data protection, sanctions, due diligence, KYC and artificial intelligence, advising international organisations, civil society and private clients.