Blog of Rights
Catherine
Crump

Prior to joining the ACLU, Crump clerked for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Crump graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School. She is a non-residential fellow with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

05/25/2011

What’s the Difference Between Facebook and a Stranger on the Street?

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:55am

“Can you guys give us a list of every friend you’ve ever had? In alphabetical order, please.” This question, posed by a pair of geeky guys to two blondes, is part of a great satire of Facebook put together by the Australian show Hungry Beast. The video makes you stop and think about just how much personal information Facebook is learning about our friends, our families, and our lives — information most of us would never share with a stranger.

Read More»
01/18/2011

What the Government Wants to Know About You

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:32pm

Earlier this month, news broke that the government got a court order to force Twitter to reveal the private account information of some people associated with WikiLeaks. What is unusual about the situation is not that the government obtained such an order, but that we found out about it at all. Our government routinely gains access to Americans’ private online information through secret court orders. Worse yet, these proceedings are one-sided, with only the government presenting arguments. In a legal system based on openness and adversarial process, this has led to troubling results that threaten our privacy.

Read More»
12/28/2010

Schools Can Teach Tolerance and Honor Free Speech

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:53am

Yesterday, the Knoxville News Sentinel ran our editorial explaining why a federal appeals court should reconsider a recent decision that sharply limits the free speech rights of public school students.  The ACLU has asked the court to consider its friend-of-the-court brief in the case, in which we explain in greater detail why it is contrary to the First Amendment to allow schools to punish students for their speech whenever they deem the speech contrary to important school policies.

Read More»
04/21/2010

North Carolina Wants to Know What You Bought from Amazon

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:29pm

On Monday, Amazon.com sued the State of North Carolina after the state issued a summons that would, according to Amazon, require it to identify what books, CDs and DVDs its customers in North Carolina had purchased. The North Carolina Department of Revenue had requested this information to ensure that Amazon is in full compliance with the state's sales and use tax laws.

Read More»
06/11/2008

Take Three: Appellate Court Hears Challenge to Internet Censorship . . . Again

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:14am

A sense of déjà vu pervaded the courtroom in Philadelphia yesterday as the ACLU presented its challenge to the Child Online Protection Act . . . again. This is not the first or the second, but the third time the ACLU has been before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that COPA, a federal Internet censorship law, suppresses vast quantities of constitutionally protected speech without doing much of anything to keep kids safe from inappropriate materials.

Read More»
11/14/2012
GPS

ACLU Asks Appeals Court to Require a Warrant for GPS Tracking

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:33pm

Yesterday we asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider our argument that law enforcement agents should have to obtain a warrant based on probable cause to attach a GPS tracker to a car and track its movements (you can read our amicus brief here).

In the case, the government suspected that Harry, Mark and Michael Katzin had robbed a number of Rite-Aid pharmacies. To confirm their hunch they attached a GPS tracker—without first going to a judge and getting a warrant—to Harry Katzin’s car. They used the GPS tracker to follow the Katzins when they traveled to another Rite-Aid, and arrested them shortly afterwards.

Read More»
11/17/2011
GPS

Judge to Feds: To Track Cell Phones, Get a Warrant

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:33pm

In a victory for the privacy rights of everyone with a cell phone, a court has held that law enforcement agents must get a warrant to access cell phone location records. The ACLU, ACLU of Texas and Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a brief urging the court to adopt exactly this position. The Constitution requires nothing less.

Read More»
02/22/2011

A Win For Protesters’ Rights

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 6:23pm

Today a federal district court judge in New Mexico handed down a great ruling for protesters' rights. Some background is in order: All throughout George W. Bush's presidency, we at the ACLU received complaints from protesters. Time and again, we heard that those wishing to protest against President Bush's policies, particularly the war in Iraq, were forced to protest far away from him, or behind buildings, or in other places where they would not be seen or heard, while the president's supporters were allowed to stand with their signs where they would be fully visible both to the president and his accompanying media entourage.

Read More»
09/19/2007

Fight for Online Free Speech Continues - Again

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 7:33pm
As expected, the government is appealing the ACLU's March 2007 victory in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) case. COPA is an Internet censorship law that makes it a crime to place content deemed "harmful to minors" on the Web unless the content is b
Read More»
10/23/2006

Online Free Speech on Trial

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:55am
It is a big day at the ACLU. After bouncing around the court system for eight years, our challenge to the federal government's Internet censorship law is finally going to trial.

The law we're challenging is called the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). COPA makes it a federal crime to put material that is "harmful to minors" on the Web. COPA would force massive quantities of c
Read More»
Statistics image