Bio
Nathan Freed Wessler (@NateWessler) is a deputy director with 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, a case that established 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 staff attorney in the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and legal fellow in the ACLU National Security Project. 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.
Featured work
Apr 30, 2024
Police Say a Simple Warning Will Prevent Face Recognition Wrongful Arrests. That's Just Not True.
![A closeup of a young African American man whose face is being scanned by facial recognition software.](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/04/facial-recognition-scan-of-black-man-b-400x400.jpg)
Jan 18, 2023
How the Arizona Attorney General Created a Secretive, Illegal Surveillance Program to Sweep up Millions of Our Financial Records
![A sign that reads "Western Union Money Transfer."](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/01/WU_Blog-400x400.jpg)
Nov 23, 2022
Warrantless Pole-Camera Surveillance by Police is Dangerous. The Supreme Court Can Stop It.
![A close-up of a black surveillance camera on a black pole in Chicago.](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2022/11/POLICE_POLE_CAMERA-Blog-400x400.jpg)
May 17, 2022
Impending Threat of Abortion Criminalization Brings New Urgency to the Fight for Digital Privacy
![A protest sign that reads “My Body, My Business.”](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2022/05/Data_Blog-400x400.jpg)
Dec 2, 2020
The U.S. Government Is Secretly Using Cell Phone Location Data to Track Us. We’re Suing.
![A pair of hands holding a cell phone at night with street lights in the background.](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2020/12/WEB20-Holding-Cellphone-Dark-WordPress-1110x740-1-400x400.jpg)
Sep 28, 2020
Wi-Fi is Another Way We Can Be Tracked 24/7
![A man holding iPhone with navigation map app open on screen.](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2020/09/Wifi-Police-Search-Header-Image-400x400.jpg)
May 28, 2020
We’re Taking Clearview AI to Court to End its Privacy-Destroying Face Surveillance Activities
![Clearview AI facial recognition software logo on the glowing screen and blurred faces from social media on the background](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2020/05/Clearview-AI-Header-Image-400x400.jpg)
Nov 13, 2019
Federal Court Rules That Border Officers Can’t Arbitrarily Search Our Electronic Devices
![Hands hold a cellular telephone, with a security screening conveyor belt and other people in the background](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/11/cell-phone-security-OPT-400x400.jpg)
Aug 9, 2019
A Federal Court Sounds the Alarm on the Privacy Harms of Face Recognition Technology
![A screen displaying Facebook's facial recognition technology](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/web19-facebook-facial-recognition-ap-blogimage-1160x768-400x400.jpg)
Jun 28, 2019
The Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Ruling for Privacy in the Digital Age, One Year In
![Phone Tower](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/web18-phonetower-1160x768-400x400.jpg)