Nathan Freed Wessler is a civil-liberties lawyer and deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. His work focuses on surveillance, digital privacy and constitutional protections for personal information. He graduated from Swarthmore College and New York University School of Law. He previously clerked for Judge Helene N. White on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Relative to the government's claim that using technology removes Fourth Amendment protection, Wessler expressly rejects that legal characterization. He welcomes the warrant requirement for historical cellphone location records.
In Carpenter v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a five-to-four majority that the government generally needs a warrant for historical cellphone location records. Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented, arguing the records belonged to the carriers as business records.
