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
Oct 30, 2015
FBI Documents Reveal New Information on Baltimore Surveillance Flights
![Flight path over Baltimore -- screen capture from Flightradar24.com by Pete Cimbolic](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/baltimore_flight_screenshot_by_pete_cimbolic_0-400x400.jpg)
Oct 23, 2015
Police Citing “Terrorism” to Buy Stingrays Used Only For Ordinary Crimes
![X-ray image of stingray animal](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/stingray_by_smithsonian-400x400.jpg)
Jul 31, 2015
Taking Warrantless Location Tracking to the Supreme Court
![Image of radio signal in sky](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/radio_signal_by_tau_zero_500x280-400x280.jpg)
Jun 26, 2015
FBI Releases Details of 'Zero-Day' Exploit Decisionmaking Process
![Internet data](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/internetdata_500x280_0_0-400x280.png)
May 4, 2015
FBI Slow-Walking Toward End Of Illegitimate Stingray Secrecy
![X-ray image of stingray animal](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/stingray_by_smithsonian-400x400.jpg)
Mar 10, 2015
Cell Phone Records Can Show Where You Sleep and Where You Pray
![Cell phone tower](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/cell_tower_by_arlo_bates_500x280_1-400x280.jpg)
Feb 22, 2015
ACLU-Obtained Documents Reveal Breadth of Secretive Stingray Use in Florida
![Photo of cell phone tower disguised as a palm tree.](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/palm_tree_cell_tower_by_jimmy_bramlett_500x280_credit-400x280.jpg)
Nov 4, 2014
The Government is in Pursuit of a Less Secure Internet
![Data Tunnel](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/internetdata_500x280_0-400x280.png)
Sep 24, 2014
Documents in ACLU Case Reveal More Detail on FBI Attempt to Cover Up Stingray Technology
![Blurry Street by Thomas Hawk](https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2019/09/blurry_street_by_thomas_hawk_500x280-400x280.jpg)