Privacy & Surveillance
Protecting the privacy vital to free thought and expression
Our laws restricting surveillance and data collection are struggling to keep pace with new technology that can track and reveal our expressive lives in ever more detail, and with new business models that rely on the aggregation and exploitation of this information.
Our work is meant to illuminate the scope and impact of surveillance by government and private corporations, promote stronger legal protections for privacy, and enrich public understanding of the interplay between privacy and the freedoms of inquiry, speech, and association.
Featured
Press Statement
Federal Court Says Warrant Required for Device Searches at the Border
Cites concerns about chilling effects of warrantless searches on free speech & press freedom
LATEST NEWS & ANALYSIS
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Institute Update
New Podcast on Speech & the Border
Season three of “Views on First” looks at the frontiers of censorship and surveillance
By Lorraine Kenny
LITIGATION & ADVOCACY
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Amicus Brief
United States v. Kamaldoss
A Second Circuit case addressing warrantless cellphone searches at the border
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Amicus Brief
United States v. Alisigwe
A Second Circuit case addressing warrantless cellphone searches at the border
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Amicus Brief
Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs
A case challenging broad police searches of the digital devices of housing-rights advocates
RESEARCH
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Essays and Scholarship
Privacy, Autonomy, and the Dissolution of Markets
Pathways from platform capitalism
By Kiel Brennan-Marquez & Daniel Susser -
Essays and Scholarship
Licensure as Data Governance
Moving toward an industrial policy for artificial intelligence
By Frank Pasquale -
Essays and Scholarship
The Keys to the Kingdom
Mathias Vermeulen on overcoming GDPR concerns to unlock access to platform data for independent researchers
By Mathias Vermeulen
Events
Riverside Church and online
Regardless of Frontiers: The First Amendment and the Exchange of Ideas Across Borders
A symposium and exhibition exploring the international border as a venue, justification, or pretext for censorship or surveillance
In-person and online
Secret Surveillance
Countering spyware’s threats to freedom of the press and expression
10:00 am - 12:00 pm ET
Columbia Journalism School - Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall
Spyware and the Press
A discussion about the threat that malicious surveillance technology poses to press freedom around the world