Coalition letter to California Assemblymember Ed Chau regarding disparities and discrimination, abuse, accuracy, information sharing, and other issues in the proposed bill AB 2261 on facial recognition technologies.

How Data-Driven Policing Technologies Entrench Historic Racism and 'Tech-Wash' Bias in the Criminal Legal System

This NACDL Predicative Policing Task Force Report (1) calls attention to the rapid development and deployment of data-driven policing; (2) situates data-driven policing within the racialized historical context of policing and the criminal legal system; (3) makes actionable recommendations that respond to the reality, enormity, and impact of data-driven policing; and (4) suggests strategies for defense lawyers in places where data-driven policing technology is employed.

20^th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 18-20, 2021 | Held Virtually

Police departments across the country are increasing using predictive algorithms to decide where to patrol and who to investigate. These tools are also being used to create databases that label people as threats and feed them into the criminal legal system.

Letter to the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure regarding proposed changes to procedures in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

NACDL's statement to the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice regarding the need for more accountability and transparency in policing to effect meaningful, much-needed reforms.

NACDL opposes the use of data-driven policing technologies, predictive crime models, and any other system that subjects individuals to increased police surveillance. These tools perpetuate the racial profiling & hyper-criminalization of communities of color & historically overpoliced groups. Understanding this technology is already in use in many communities, NACDL also supports the adoption of policies governing transparency & accountability that detail the conditions of use by law enforcement & accessibility to all relevant information for defense lawyers whose cases involve such tools.

NACDL is working with coalition partners in New York to ban reverse search warrants. 

Coalition letter to leaders of the House Financial Services Subcommittees on Terrorism and Illicit Finance and Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit regarding proposals to expand and add penalties for information sharing and paperwork violations by banking and financial services institutions, as outlined in the discussion draft of Counter Terrorism and Illicit Finance Act (to become H.R. 6068, 2018).

NACDL's Fourth Amendment Advocacy Committee carefully and comprehensively studied issues concerning the current United States Postal Service Mail Covers regime following the revelations in The New York Times investigative report in connection with the 2014 U.S. Postal Service audit of the program. The concerns raised by this program and its operation fall squarely within NACDL's long history of advocating for the vitality of Americans' privacy and Fourth Amendment rights -- in the courts, in the legislatures, in executive agencies, and in the public arena. [Released April 2015]

Over the past several years, the government has increasingly turned to hacking and malware as an investigative technique. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun deploying software designed to infiltrate and control, disable, or surveil a computer's use and activity. The ACLU created a guide, to which NACDL and EFF contributed, that sets out key legal arguments and strategies for challenging evidence seized by government-installed computer malware. [Released March 2017]

Statement to members of the U.S. Senate regarding amendments addressing privacy concerns in the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020 (H.R. 6172).

Letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees regarding the increased overcriminalization, enforcement, and surveillance of already-marginalized communities under pandemic protocols.

Presented by: Colin Fieman Assistant Federal Public Defender, Tacoma, WA; and Paul Ohm, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

This webinar was supported in part by Grant No. 2013-MU-BX-K014 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Coalition letter to members of the Senate urging more changes to the protection of American citizens before voting on the proposed USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020 (H.R. 6172).

Brief of Amicus Curiae for the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of the Appellee.

Argument: The circuit court correctly concluded that the video recordings should have been suppressed because the State failed to follow minimization requirements. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from unreasonably intruding in citizens’ privacy. Here, the government recorded citizens over the course of several days in a day spa, where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The circuit court correctly found that the evidence should be suppressed here. Amici write to emphasize the unprecedented scope of the surveillance, as well as the importance of suppression here to protect the rights of both defendants and uncharged third parties. Traditionally, the remedy for an unconstitutional search would be suppression in a criminal trial. However, because some of the conduct surreptitiously recorded was perfectly legal, not everybody who was recorded has been charged with a crime. Furthermore, those third parties’ only recourse would be the possibility of a civil suit, which is costly. Indeed, suppression here is essentially the only way to deter the State from engaging in mass surveillance, knowing that many citizens would have little to no recourse. Any other result would encourage an “ends justify the means” approach that this Court has cautioned against.