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

Document Date: September 25, 2012

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 & Technology Project. For more than fifteen years, he has worked at the intersection of civil liberties and national security, litigating numerous cases involving airport security policies, government watch lists, surveillance practices, targeted killing, and torture. He appears regularly in the global media, has testified before Congress, and is an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. 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.
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Esha Bhandari is a deputy project director of the ACLU’s 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. Sessions, a First Amendment challenge to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on behalf of researchers who test for housing and employment discrimination online, and Alasaad v. Nielsen, a challenge to suspicionless electronic device searches at the U.S. border. Esha was previously an Equal Justice Works fellow with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she was involved in litigating cases concerning a right to counsel in immigration proceedings and immigration detainer policies. Esha is a graduate of McGill University, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Columbia Law School, and 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 project 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, seeking to establish 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 legal fellow in the ACLU’s National Security Project, where he was involved in litigation seeking transparency and accountability for targeted killing and challenging unlawful detentions at the U.S. prisons in Bagram and Guantanamo. 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.
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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.
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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.”

Elizabeth Gyori is a William J. Brennen Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Prior to joining the ACLU, Elizabeth was a Skadden Fellow/Staff Attorney at Legal Services NYC’s Tenants’ Rights Coalition, where she carried out litigation, direct client representation and policy advocacy focusing on the rights of public housing tenants facing the privatization of their buildings in NYC. She also served as a Judicial Law Clerk to Judge Jenny Rivera of the New York Court of Appeals. Elizabeth is a graduate of Harvard Law School and New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. During law school, she interned with the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Prior to law school, Elizabeth worked for three years in human rights at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School.

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.

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.
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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.

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.

Laura Moraff is a William J. Brennan fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School where she was co-president of the Stanford Law and Technology Association, co-coordinator of the Housing Pro Bono Project, a writer for the Iraq Legal Education Initiative, and a research assistant on various First Amendment projects. Laura spent her summers interning with SPT and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before law school, she studied information science and linguistics at Cornell University, and worked as a cashier, videographer, and mascot.

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.

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.

Adeline Lee is a paralegal with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She is an alumna of the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs and a graduate of Wellesley College, where she served as student body president. Prior to the ACLU, Adeline helped establish the Campus Free Speech Program at PEN America, working with university officials, faculty, and campus activists to advance dialogue on speech and inclusion following major expression- and race-related controversies. She is a co-author of “Chasm in the Classroom: Campus Free Speech in a Divided America,” a report analyzing over one hundred instances of Trump-era campus speech infringements and debates, and served in 2019 on education-technology company EVERFI’s first National Advisory Board for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

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