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About the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology

Document Date: July 30, 2024

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 (@benwizner) is the director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, which works to protect and expand the First Amendment freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry, and ensure that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology. For more than two decades at the ACLU, Ben has litigated cases involving the right to protest, freedom of expression online, government surveillance practices, airport security policies, targeted killing, and torture. Since July of 2013, he has been the principal legal advisor to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. 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.

Esha Bhandari is a deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where she works on litigation and advocacy to protect freedom of expression and privacy rights in the digital age. She also focuses on the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on civil liberties. She has litigated cases including Sandvig v. Barr, a First Amendment challenge to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on behalf of online discrimination researchers, Alasaad v. Wolf, a constitutional challenge to suspicionless electronic device searches at the U.S. border, and Guan v. Mayorkas, in which she represents journalists questioned about their work by border officers. She argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Hansen, a case that significantly narrowed a federal law that, on its face, criminalized First Amendment-protected speech about immigration.

Esha was previously an Equal Justice Works fellow with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. She is a graduate of McGill University, where she was a Loran Scholar and received the Allen Oliver Gold Medal in Political Science, of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and of Columbia Law School, where she received the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize in Constitutional Law and the Archie O. Dawson Prize for Advocacy. She served as a law clerk to the Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Nathan Freed Wessler (@NateWessler) is a deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where he focuses on litigation and advocacy around surveillance and privacy issues, including government searches of electronic devices, requests for sensitive data held by third parties, and use of surveillance technologies. In 2017, he argued Carpenter v. United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, a case that established that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to get a search warrant before requesting cell phone location data from a person’s cellular service provider.

Nate was previously a staff attorney in the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and legal fellow in the ACLU National Security Project. Prior to that, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Helene N. White of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Nate is a graduate of Swarthmore College and New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern public interest scholar. Before law school, he worked as a field organizer in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office.

Brian Hauss is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, where he focuses on free speech litigation and advocacy. Brian has litigated cases involving political boycotts, municipal advertising restrictions, defamation, and speech crimes, among other issues. Brian was previously a staff attorney with the ACLU Center for Liberty, where he challenged religious refusals to comply with anti-discrimination laws, and a William J. Brennan fellow with the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Brian is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to the Hon. Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Brett Max Kaufman is a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, where he works on a variety of issues related to national security, technology, surveillance, privacy, and First Amendment rights. Mr. Kaufman is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas School of Law, where he was book review editor of the Texas Law Review and a human rights scholar at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. After graduation from law school, Mr. Kaufman spent one year in Israel, serving briefly as a foreign law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Asher Dan Grunis and then as a volunteer attorney at Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. He then completed two clerkships in New York City — with the Hon. Robert D. Sack of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and with Judge Richard J. Holwell and (after Judge Holwell’s resignation) Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In 2012, he joined the ACLU as a legal fellow in the ACLU’s National Security Project, followed by one year as a teaching fellow in New York University’s Technology Law & Policy Clinic (where he continued to serve as an adjunct professor of law from 2015 to 2023). In 2015, Brett returned to the ACLU’s Center for Democracy as a staff attorney.

Emerson Sykes is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project where he focuses on First Amendment free speech protections. Prior to joining the ACLU in 2018, he was a legal advisor for Africa at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). Emerson previously served as assistant general counsel to the New York City Council, and in 2011, he was as senior policy fellow in the office of a member of Parliament in Ghana. Emerson holds a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar for public interest law, and a Master of Public Affairs degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Before graduate school Emerson conducted research and wrote about U.S. foreign policy for The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and worked for the National Democratic Institute’s Central and West Africa Team. He earned his undergraduate degree in political science at Stanford.

Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the new surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights. Granick is the author of the book American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, published by Cambridge Press and winner of the 2016 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. Granick spent much of her career helping create Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. From 2001 to 2007, she was Executive Director of CIS and founded the Cyberlaw Clinic, where she supervised students in working on some of the most important cyberlaw cases that took place during her tenure. For example, she was the primary crafter of a 2006 exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows mobile telephone owners to legally circumvent the firmware locking their device to a single carrier. From 2012 to 2017, Granick was Civil Liberties Director specializing in and teaching surveillance law, cybersecurity, encryption policy, and the Fourth Amendment. In that capacity, she has published widely on U.S. government surveillance practices, and helped educate judges and congressional staffers on these issues. Granick also served as the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 2007-2010. Earlier in her career, Granick spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. Granick’s work is well-known in privacy and security circles. Her keynote, "Lifecycle of the Revolution" for the 2015 Black Hat USA security conference electrified and depressed the audience in equal measure. In March of 2016, she received Duo Security’s Women in Security Academic Award for her expertise in the field as well as her direction and guidance for young women in the security industry. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) has called Granick an "NBA all-star of surveillance law.”

Scarlet Kim is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where she works on litigation and advocacy to protect free speech and the right to privacy in the digital age. Scarlet was previously a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, where she focused primarily on litigation and advocacy at the intersection of immigration and national security. Prior to joining the ACLU, Scarlet worked as a legal officer at Privacy International, an associate legal adviser at the International Criminal Court, and a Gruber Fellow in Global Justice at the New York Civil Liberties Union. She also served as a law clerk for the Hon. John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

Vera Eidelman is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where she focuses on litigation and advocacy to protect free speech online; the right to protest; and public access to secret algorithms used in criminal trials. Vera was previously a William J. Brennan fellow with the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Vera is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School. During law school, she worked in Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and interned with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before joining SPT, she served as a law clerk to the Hon. Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. PGP: 94D42DB66BE669A0876E18F6BD78D419AE72B204

Daniel Kahn Gillmor is a senior staff technologist with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. He is an active developer for Debian, one of the oldest and largest free software operating systems, in addition to many other free software projects. Daniel is also a participant in the development of Internet protocols for secure communications with the IETF. He has served on the Leadership Committee of May First/People Link, a mutual aid Internet organization for social justice advocates, and has led discussions on cryptography and data sovereignty issues at conferences from Banja Luka to Hong Kong. Daniel is a graduate of Brown University’s computer science program. PGP: 0EE5BE979282D80B9F7540F1CCD2ED94D21739E9 PGP Key

Jay Stanley (@JayCStanley) 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, policy papers and fact sheets on such topics as government and private-sector surveillance, police body cameras, drones, network neutrality, scientific freedom, and airline passenger security. Before joining the ACLU five weeks before 9/11, Jay was an analyst at the technology research firm Forrester, where he focused on internet policy issues. He is a graduate of Williams College and holds an M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia.

Tyler Takemoto is a William J. Brennan Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Prior to joining the ACLU, he was a Media Litigation Fellow at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where he litigated cases involving access to public records and the First and Fourth Amendment rights of journalists subjected to unlawful arrest and use of force. Tyler is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review, worked on a capital appellate case, and volunteered with San Quentin News.

Urooba Abid is a paralegal with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate, she was a Civic Scholar, student government chair, and columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Prior to joining the ACLU, Urooba interned with the Public Interest Law Center, the Federal Trade Commission, and Lyft’s public policy team. Before joining the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, she worked as a paralegal with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project.

Anika Venkatesh is a paralegal with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project.

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