Belle Torek

Background

About Belle Torek

Belle Torek is an attorney, tech policy advocate, and researcher at the intersection of free expression and online safety. She is a Technology Safety Specialist with the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), where she works to strengthen digital safety and privacy for victims and survivors of domestic violence and technology-facilitated abuse. Torek also sits on the Advisory Committee of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) and holds affiliate roles at UNC Chapel Hill's Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), All Tech Is Human, and the Coalition for Independent Tech Research. Most recently, Torek was Senior Fellow, AI & Tech Advocacy at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), where she launched and led its tech policy program. Before that, she served as Associate Director of Tech Policy at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center for Technology & Society, where she provided subject-matter expertise on issues of online speech, advised social media platforms on their hate and harassment policies, and managed ADL's state-level legislative efforts to combat technology-facilitated abuse. Torek's career advocating for victims and survivors of online abuse began in law school as a legal fellow with CCRI. In the years since, she has contributed to articles, amicus briefs, agency comments, policy recommendations, educational resources, and working groups addressing issues of free expression, online safety, and privacy. Her writing has been featured multiple times in Tech Policy Press, including a widely circulated piece on nonconsensual deepfakes that ranked among the publication's top 15 most-read articles of 2024.