Blog of Rights
Ben
Wizner

Ben Wizner is the Director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, which is dedicated to protecting and expanding the First Amendment freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry; expanding the right to privacy and increasing the control that individuals have over their personal information; and ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology. He has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberties abuses, including challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition, and torture. He has appeared regularly in the media, testified before Congress, and traveled several times to Guantánamo Bay to monitor military commission proceedings. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law and was a law clerk to the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

06/10/2013
Patriot Act

Checks, Balances, and the National Security Agency

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU & Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:14am

Over the course of three days, the usually invisible National Security Agency has become ostentatiously visible and many Americans...

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05/16/2012
No-Fly List

Ninth Circuit Presses Government Lawyer on Watch Lists: “What Would You Do?”

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 1:53pm

A few weeks ago, Jay Stanley posted here about some of the dangers of “Big Data,” a sanitized term for data mining. When it’s employed by government security agencies in the search for terrorists, Jay wrote, there’s a substantial risk “that people will be tagged and suffer adverse consequences without due process, the ability to fight back, or even knowledge that they have been discriminated against.”

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04/26/2012
Wikileaks

The Government’s Overreach on Bradley Manning

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:04am
Today a military judge overseeing the court martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning will rule on the motion to dismiss the charge of "Aiding the Enemy."
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04/23/2012
U.S. Torture

A Question for America About Torture

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:58am

Today the Supreme Court was asked if federal officials responsible for the torture of an American citizen on American soil may be sued for damages under the Constitution.

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09/09/2011
U.S. Torture

The Accountability Shell Game

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 3:48pm

There are many awful legacies of the Bush administration's criminal embrace of torture in the months and years following the 9/11 attacks. Among the most agonizing — for the torture victims themselves, and for the lawyers who have represented them — is that not a single one of those victims has had his day in court. And not a single court that has been faced with a torture suit has addressed the core question of whether the victims' legal rights were violated.

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10/07/2009
Guantánamo

The End of the Beginning? Or the Beginning of the End?

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 4:04pm

Nearly four years have passed since I first traveled to Guantánamo to observe proceedings in the military commission prosecution of Canadian Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when seized in Afghanistan and has now spent fully a third of his life in captivity. In an ordinary justice system, Khadr's trial – and very likely any possible sentence – would have been completed long ago. Here at Guantánamo, we were back to square one with the dismissal of one of Khadr's lawyers and the introduction of two new defense lawyers – numbers 10 and 11 by my count – who are unfamiliar with the case and will need quite a bit of time to get up to speed. In other words, it's déjà vu all over again.

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08/07/2008

The Travesty Continues: Hamdan's Sentencing

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 2:30pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

There’s been little time for blogging, but then there’s been less need — Hamdan is front-page news worldwide today, and you can read excellent accounts of Wednesday’s remarkable proceedings here, here, and here.

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08/04/2008
Guantánamo

Weekend in Camp Justice

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 11:27am

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

On Friday, Hamdan's lawyers wrapped up their defense with dramatic written testimony from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the essence of which was that Hamdan — as the evidence had already demonstrated — was a menial figure in the Al Qaeda universe. The day before, all trial observers without top-level security clearances had been excluded from the courtroom for the testimony of two defense witnesses, so it is conceivable (though highly unlikely — these were defense witnesses, after all) that a verdict could be returned on the basis of evidence that the world will never see.

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07/31/2008
Guantánamo

"It's My Country, Too."

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 11:29am

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

On Wednesday, we discovered that the government may actually be more intent on covering up its own criminality than in establishing Hamdan's. Or perhaps the prosecution simply recognizes that an acquittal is virtually inconceivable in any military commission trial. Whatever the reason, the government demonstrated that it would rather lose the testimony of a key witness than allow Guantánamo's secret interrogation regime to be exposed to public or judicial scrutiny.

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07/29/2008
Guantánamo

In the Eye of the Beholder

By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 11:35am

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

It was movie day at the military commission trial of Salim Hamdan — or rather, in the government’s words, “motion picture presentation” day. The motion picture in question was The Al-Qaida Plan, a 90-minute video commissioned by the Pentagon for use at military tribunals and prepared and presented by one Evan Kohlman, a 29-year-old self-described “International Terrorism Consultant” who has been dubbed “the Doogie Howser of Terrorism.” The purpose of this exercise was to allow the prosecution to present a stockpile of footage depicting bearded Arabs firing guns, charred bodies, gruesome beheadings, and the September 11 carnage — even though every single government witness to take the stand has testified that Hamdan had no role in the planning or execution of any terrorist attack, let alone 9/11.

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