Sarah Jamie Lewis

Sarah Jamie Lewis is an anonymity and privacy researcher with published research in the fields of deanonymization and e-voting. She is the executive director of Open Privacy Research Society, a Canadian nonprofit organization specialized in privacy research and advocacy. In 2019, Lewis in collaboration with researchers from the University of Melbourne and UCLouvain published details of critical vulnerabilities impacting electronic voting systems in Switzerland and Australia

Career

Sarah Jamie Lewis is an anonymity and privacy researcher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She serves as executive director of Open Privacy Research Society, a Canadian nonprofit organization specializing in privacy research and advocacy. Her published research spans the fields of deanonymization and electronic voting security.

In 2019, Lewis collaborated with researchers from the University of Melbourne and UCLouvain to publish details of critical vulnerabilities affecting electronic voting systems in Switzerland and Australia. The findings drew significant attention to the security risks inherent in deployed e-voting infrastructure.

Research Focus

Beyond electoral systems, Lewis has conducted research into the privacy and security properties of internet-connected sex toys, a field she has referred to as "onion dildonics." Her work in this area has been cited in academic research concerning the security of such devices. Lewis has highlighted what she views as an absence of adequate legal and ethical frameworks governing connected intimate devices, noting that development in this space has proceeded without sufficient consideration of consent, privacy, or security. She has advocated for fully encrypted, peer-to-peer approaches — specifically recommending communication over Tor hidden services — as a technical response to these gaps.

More broadly, Lewis has commented on the constraints that the litigious environment around computer security research places on practitioners. In response, she has described a preference for building new, purpose-built secure systems rather than attempting to remediate existing broken ones.

Notable Work

In 2017, Lewis self-published and edited Queer Privacy: Essays from the Margins of Society, a collection of essays written by people in queer and trans communities. The volume examines the effects of technology on marginalized groups and covers topics including media representation and digital safety. Lewis both edited the collection and contributed to its publication independently.