Ben Wizner

Wizner was born in 1971 in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up on the campus of Yale University, where his father, Stephen Wizner, is a professor of law at Yale Law School and his mother is a dean.[1] He has described being drawn to social justice work from at least as early as high school; after graduating Harvard College in 1993, he worked for an organization that provided legal assistance to homeless and near-homeless people.[4][5] At New York University School of Law, he planned to work in legal services for impoverished communities, and on capital punishment cases.[4] After graduating, he clerked for judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.[2]

Wizner began working for the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles in August 2001, initially focusing on prison reform.[6][4] Following the September 11 attacks, Wizner's focus shifted to civil liberties issues relating to U.S. national security.[3][6] Around 2004, he moved to the ACLU's headquarters in New York City.[4] There, he argued legal cases relating to airport security, government watchlists, surveillance practices, targeted killing, extraordinary rendition, and torture.[2][6] He made several trips to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[4] Many of the cases Wizner took were dismissed; he later commented that "on the worst days, I believed that what we were doing ... wasn't litigation in the traditional sense. It wasn't trying to get a court to do something, it was creating a record so that ... people would be able to look back and decide whether it had been the right decision or a disastrous decision."[6]

Starting in 2005, Wizner represented Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen arrested while travelling in Macedonia on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda, who was held by the CIA at a black site in Afghanistan for five months, despite evidence that he was the wrong person. El-Masri's suit was dismissed in the U.S. on grounds of state secrecy, though the CIA ultimately admitted to making a mistake, in a report released by the U.S. Senate. The European Court of Human Rights ruled against Macedonia in the case.[6]

In 2011, Wizner became director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.[2][6]

Wizner is an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law.[7] He is a contributor to the website Lawfare, has written for Time, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and several other media outlets, and has testified before the U.S. Congress.[2][8][9][7] He has regularly appeared on television news and analysis programs, including Democracy Now!, Meet the Press, and Politicking with Larry King.

Wizner has defended a right to privacy, and has been critical of the use of extensive surveillance to enforce law. He has highlighted the role of lawbreaking in positive social change, pointing to the LGBT civil rights movement and drug prohibition as areas where illegal activities have contributed to positive changes in the law and public opinion.[6] In speaking on the U.S. intelligence apparatus, he has said that "the NSA is not uniquely evil, it's uniquely capable."[6]

Wizner has forcefully defended Snowden against calls for his punishment, stating that he broke the law for the public good, and noting that no elected officials have been held criminally liable for torture and other human rights violations since 9/11.[6]

Following the April 2019 arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London's Ecuadorian Embassy, Ben Wizner said that if authorities were to prosecute Assange "for violating U.S. secrecy laws [it] would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest."[13]