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
Appeals Court Revives Journalists’ Case Against Spyware Manufacturer NSO Group
Spyware manufacturers should be held accountable in U.S. courts for actions violating U.S. law, Knight Institute says
LATEST NEWS & ANALYSIS
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Press Statement
First Week of Trial in Challenge to Trump Administration’s Ideological Deportation Policy Wraps Up
AAUP v. Rubio Day 5 Trial Update
LITIGATION & ADVOCACY
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Lawsuit
Pilant v. Democracy for the Arab World Now
A case defending human rights advocates from abusive discovery demands
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Amicus Brief
United States v. Belmonte Cardozo
A Fourth Circuit case addressing the constitutionality of warrantless cellphone searches at the border
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Lawsuit
Knight Institute v. Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District
A public records lawsuit seeking information about a school district’s use of surveillance systems to monitor students’ digital activities.
RESEARCH
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Essays and Scholarship
Surveilling Border Lawyering
Lawyers who serve migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border face surveillance and attempts to suppress their work by U.S. and Mexican government officials
By Jaya Ramji-Nogales & Nicole Ramos -
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
Events
Surveillance Ascendant, Democracy in Free Fall
A convening addressing the threats to speech and privacy enabled by commercial surveillance in our quickly shifting democratic landscape
Digital Authoritarianism and the Fight for Democracy
How new tools of surveillance and censorship are fueling rights violations around the world
How new tools of surveillance and censorship are fueling rights violations around the world
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