Jennifer Jones is a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, Jones spent three years as a legal fellow and staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. Her work with the organization’s Technology and Civil Liberties Project included litigating a variety of matters involving privacy, government surveillance, and public access to information. She was a member of the team litigating Williams v. San Francisco, a case brought by local activists challenging the San Francisco Police Department’s use of a private camera network to spy on demonstrators during the 2020 protests against police violence. She also helped lead the ACLU’s litigation in ACLU v. ICE, a Freedom of Information Act suit seeking records related to federal immigration enforcement agencies’ acquisition and use of face surveillance systems.

Jones defended Californians’ privacy and free expression rights by investigating and challenging various forms of surveillance deployed by local and state government agencies in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic and mass uprisings. She was at the forefront of the ACLU’s public records investigation exposing the California Highway Patrol’s widespread aerial recording of protesters in more than 25 cities across the state during the summer of 2020. She also helped investigate family regulation agencies’ use of predictive analytics systems and led advocacy efforts targeting the California State Bar’s use of face surveillance to verify examinees’ identities and public school districts’ use of spy tech to track students’ online activity and communications.

Jones has been published in the UCLA Law Review and UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute’s Tech x Belonging series. She has been quoted in Reuters, The Guardian, Protocol, the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Standard, and WIRED.

Jones holds a B.A. in Sociology from UCLA, an MSW with an emphasis in community organizing, planning, and administration from the University of Southern California, and a J.D. from UCLA Law School. During law school, she served as an editor of the UCLA Law Review and National Black Law Journal, interned at the Advancement Project, and received the UC Human Rights Fellowship for her work at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Prior to law school, she spent six years coordinating care for youth exiting the family regulation system and advocating for equitable local and state education policies in California.