American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology (SPT) 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. The project is currently working on a variety of issues, including political protest, freedom of expression online, privacy of electronic information, journalists’ rights, scientific freedom, and openness in the courts.

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 Guantanamo 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 Ninth Circuit.

Aden J. Fine is a Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. He specializes in First Amendment and privacy matters, particularly cutting-edge issues relating to the impact of new technologies on free speech and privacy rights. He was counsel to the plaintiffs who successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, the federal government’s most recent attempt to restrict free speech on the Internet, and appears regularly in the press as an expert on free speech and civil liberties issues. Prior to coming to the ACLU, Aden was an attorney at Farella, Braun & Martel in San Francisco, CA, where he focused on intellectual property and complex commercial litigation matters. Aden clerked for United States District Judge William J. Rea of the Central District of California. He graduated from Harvard Law School, cum laude, in 1996, and received his B.A. in Political Science, with Distinction, in 1992 from Stanford University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.

Chris Hansen is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. Chris has been a civil liberties lawyer for over 30 years, arguing cases in the United States Supreme Court and federal and state courts all over the country. His most prominent cases include the effort to reform Willowbrook, a New York State institution for mentally retarded citizens (NYSARC v. Carey), the remedy phase of the original school desegregation case (Brown v. Board of Education), and a series of cases seeking reform of state or county child welfare agencies. Chris led the ACLU’s litigation effort to ensure that the strongest free speech protections apply to the new communications medium of the Internet. He was lead counsel for the ACLU in ACLU v. Reno, the case holding unconstitutional an effort by Congress to criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet.

Jay Stanley is Senior Policy Analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, where he researches, writes and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues and their future. He is the Editor of the ACLU's "Free Future" blog and has authored and co-authored a variety of influential ACLU reports, white papers and fact sheets on such topics as government and private-sector surveillance, network neutrality, scientific freedom, privacy-enforcing institutions, data mining, NSA spying, the Patriot Act, video surveillance, and airline passenger security. Jay was co-chair of the successful 2009 Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference in Washington DC. Before joining the ACLU in 2001, Jay was an analyst at the technology research firm Forrester, where he focused on Internet policy issues. He also served as the American politics editor of Facts on File’s World News Digest, where he covered Congress and presidential politics, and as national newswire editor at Medialink. He is a graduate of Williams College and holds an M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia.

Catherine Crump is a Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. She specializes in free speech and privacy litigation, particularly regarding the impact of new technologies on First and Fourth Amendment rights. She is lead counsel in Abidor v. Napolitano, a challenge to the government’s suspicionless searches of laptops at the international border, and is litigating a series of cases challenging the government’s claim it can track the location of people’s cell phones without a warrant; and was counsel in Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court’s most recent case addressing the free speech rights of public school students. Catherine is a non-residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the ACLU, Catherine clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a 2004 graduate of Stanford Law School, served as a Fulbright Fellow from 2000-2001, and was a 2000 graduate of Stanford University.

Kate Wood is the William J. Brennan Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. At the ACLU, she has been involved in litigation challenging the disparate treatment of demonstrators based on viewpoint, the Federal Communications Commission’s broad indecency policies, and the criminalization of false statements. Kate is a graduate of New York University and Brooklyn Law School, where she was an Edward V. Sparer Fellow. Prior to law school, Kate worked on First Amendment and Human Rights issues at the ACLU, including a challenge to a federal statute restricting free speech on the Internet, advocacy for student speech rights online, and the integration of human rights strategies into domestic civil rights work.

Sarah Roberts is a Legal Assistant with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. At the ACLU, she has researched issues including internet free speech, DNA collection, and new surveillance technologies, contributed to legal briefs, and written about the Project’s work for the ACLU blog. Prior to joining the ACLU, Sarah was a Program Associate at Project Pericles. She is a 2009 graduate of Harvard College.

Avinash Samarth is a Legal Assistant with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and Human Rights Program. At the ACLU, Avinash has assisted in cases involving political protests and warrantless searches of electronic devices, researched issues including blood sample collection and cell-site tracking, and has contributed to the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Avinash is a 2011 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.