Catherine Crump is an assistant clinical professor at Berkeley Law School who focuses on the laws around data and surveillance.

Why you should listen

Catherine Crump is a civil liberties lawyer whose work focuses on combating government surveillance and protecting the free speech rights of political protesters. She has filed cases challenging the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security. Crump is an assistant professor at Berkeley Law School; previously she was an attorney for ACLU for nine years.

In her writing for the ACLU, Crump warns against the dangers of national mass surveillance technology, which can all too easily end up as tools for local police forces. She writes, "Not only our country as a whole, but also the police, will be better off in the long run if we have an open debate about what today’s technology can do, versus what it should do."

Catherine Crump’s TED talk

More news and ideas from Catherine Crump

Fellows Friday

Are you being tracked? A TED Fellow on how law enforcement follows your movements, and why you should care

January 9, 2015

Did you know that across the United States, cameras are automatically taking pictures of your car’s license plate as you drive by, recording your plate number and your locations over time? In a chilling talk given at TEDGlobal 2014, civil liberties lawyer and TED Fellow Catherine Crump called attention to the ubiquity of mass surveillance technology […]

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Live from TEDGlobal

Save the whales (and the humans too): A recap of TED Fellows Session 1 at TEDGlobal 2014

October 6, 2014

It’s time for TED Fellows Talks, the Rio edition! Twenty TED Fellows and Senior Fellows opened the conference in the stunning Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace Hotel. In Session 1, learn more about a grassroots marine conservation movement in Madagascar, a vending machine that dispenses food staples in Chile and a new database of African genetics. […]

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