Barry Steinhardt served as Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union between 1992 and 2002. He has been Director of the ACLU's Program on Technology and Liberty, since 2002.

Steinhardt has advocated for privacy and information technology issues tirelessly, speaking to audiences ranging from the National Conference of State Legislatures, to the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence, to the annual conference of the World’s Privacy Commissions. He has written widely on privacy issues and free expression issues in a variety of periodicals ranging from USA Today, to CIO Magazine, to the journal of the Davos World Economic Forum.

Steinhardt is a frequent guest on news and talk programs and has appeared on such programs as the Today Show, CNN's Crossfire, CBS's Face the Nation and Morning News,.

Steinhardt was chair of the 2003 Computer Freedom and Privacy Conference (CFP). He has served on a wide variety of panels and Boards, including the Department of Transportation’s Negotiated Rule Making on national driver’s license standards, the Advisory Committee to the US Census, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Genetics of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Advisory Board to Privacy international. He also was selected to be a member of the US delegation to the G-8 Government and Private Sector Tokyo conference on Cyber Crime and served as an advisor to the Czech Helsinki Committee.

In 1998, Steinhardt took a leave of absence from the ACLU to serve as President of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

As Associate Director, Steinhardt was responsible for providing structural and managerial assistance to the ACLU's 51 affiliates and oversaw the ACLU's offices in Puerto Rico, the Dakotas and Wyoming. Steinhardt previously served as Executive Director of the Vermont and Pennsylvania Affiliates of the ACLU.