What Happened To Peter Eckersley? How Did Peter Eckersley Die?

We are saddened to announce the death of Peter Daniel Eckersley, an Australian computer scientist, computer security researcher, and activist whose death occured on Sept. 2.

What happened to Peter Eckersley? Peter was diagnosed with cancer on 31 August.

How did Peter Eckersley die? He died at age 43 of complications during pre-operative preparations to treat the disease.

Eckersley earned a Ph.D. in computer science and law from the University of Melbourne in 2012 and from 2006 to 2018, he worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including as chief computer scientist and head of AI policy.

In 2018 he left the EFF to become director of research at the Partnership on AI, a position he held until 2020. In 2021 he co-founded the AI Objectives Institute.

While at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Eckersley started projects including Let’s Encrypt, Privacy Badger, Certbot, HTTPS Everywhere, SSL Observatory, and Panopticlick.

Eckersley was an outspoken advocate on topics including internet privacy, net neutrality, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.