Beth Givens

Age: 64
Home state: California
Cause: Privacy

Working on a grant in the early 1990s to teach Californians about telephone technology, the former librarian got hooked on consumer education. Her next project was to launch, in 1992, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, which Givens still runs. The nonprofit publishes educational materials, collects reports of online privacy abuses, and pushes for safeguards like California's ID theft registry — created in 2000 to help clear victims saddled with impostors' criminal records — and a 2011 state law prohibiting the use of consumer credit reports for most employment hiring decisions. Her latest worry: the possible misuse of facial-recognition technology.

Says Givens:

Eventually, walking down the street, you could have no privacy. You could not expect to ever be anonymous."