Stanford CIS
Jennifer Granick

Jennifer Granick

Non-Residential Fellow

Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights. Granick is the author of the book American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, published by Cambridge Press and winner of the 2016 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.

Granick spent much of her career helping create Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. From 2001 to 2007, she was Executive Director of CIS and founded the Cyberlaw Clinic, where she supervised students in working on some of the most important cyberlaw cases that took place during her tenure. For example, she was the primary crafter of a 2006 exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows mobile telephone owners to legally circumvent the firmware locking their device to a single carrier.

From 2012 to 2017, Granick was Civil Liberties Director specializing in and teaching surveillance law, cybersecurity, encryption policy, and the Fourth Amendment. In that capacity, she has published widely on U.S. government surveillance practices, and helped educate judges and congressional staffers on these issues. Granick also served as the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 2007-2010. Earlier in her career, Granick spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. Granick’s work is well-known in privacy and security circles.

Her keynote, "Lifecycle of a Revolution" for the 2015 Black Hat USA security conference electrified and depressed the audience in equal measure. In March of 2016, she received Duo Security’s Women in Security Academic Award for her expertise in the field as well as her direction and guidance for young women in the security industry. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) has called Granick an "NBA all-star of surveillance law.”

High Res Photo of Jennifer Granick

Photo credit: Michael Sugrue

Recent articles

Blog

Cellphone Users Rebel

Cellphone users try to wrest some of carriers control - The Boston Globe I'm quoted in this story about cell phone companies efforts to keep their customer…

Blog

Amicus filed in U.S. v. Andrus

Paul Ohm and I wrote an amicus brief in the 10th Circuit case of US v. Andrus, the opinion I wrote about in last week's Wired News column. In the case, the…

Blog

U.S. v. Andrus

My Wired News column today is Hack My Son's Computer, Please, a discussion of the Fourth Amendment opinion in U.S. v. Andrus (pdf), issued in April by the T…

Blog

US v. Heckenkamp

Last week, in United States v. Heckenkamp, the Ninth Circuit (correctly) ruled that students have a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy…

Blog

Computer History Museum

CIS recently took a field trip to the Computer History Museum.  My commentary and photos from the trip are here.…

Blog

TracFone Gets Personal

News: In a great article (which I'm asking for permission to post in full) by Louis Trager for Communications Daily, Tracfone is claiming that I received pe…

Blog

Is Using Open Wireless Networks Illegal?

Alaska police are considering pursuing criminal charges against a 21 year old who was playing online games in the parking lot of the local public library. The a…