Helen Goff Foster, the newest partner in the privacy and security practice at Davis Wright Tremaine, believes a slew of new U.S privacy and cybersecurity laws are on the horizon. But she worries that legislatures may do more harm than good when trying to protect their constituents’ data.

Foster isn’t the type one would expect to doubt government’s role in privacy matters. After all, over the past two decades, she has worked as a senior attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, senior director of privacy policy and advocacy at the Department of Homeland Security, director for privacy and civil liberties in the Obama administration, deputy assistant secretary for privacy at the U.S. Department of Transportation and, most recently, chief privacy and FOIA officer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.