WikiLeaks, Whistleblowers, and the War on the First Amendment

Presented at HOPE Number Nine (2012), July 13, 2012, 8 p.m. (60 minutes)

The Director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project will provide an overview of the Espionage Act and the other statutes that the government has employed to prosecute leakers and threaten publishers. Ben will discuss the ACLU’s litigation on behalf of WikiLeaks supporters whose Twitter records have been subpoenaed and whose laptops have been seized by government agents, and will place the Obama administration’s unprecedented campaign against leakers in legal and historical context.


Presenters:

  • Catherine Crump
    Catherine Crump is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She litigates cases challenging the constitutionality of government surveillance programs. She is currently litigating two cases challenging the government’s policy of engaging in purely suspicionless searches of laptops and other electronic devices at the international border. She has testified before Congress and is regularly quoted in the media about surveillance topics, and is both on the adjunct clinical faculty at NYU Law School and is a fellow affiliated with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.
  • Ben Wizner
    Ben Wizner is the director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. He has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberties abuses, including challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition, targeted killing, and torture. He has appeared regularly in the media, testified before Congress, and traveled several times to Guantanamo Bay to monitor military commission proceedings.

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