Ed Snowden’s Attorney to Speak in Nashville Oct. 17

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 12, 2015

CONTACT
Lindsay Kee, communications director, 615-320-7142

Nashville – Ben Wizner, director of the national ACLU Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology and lawyer to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, will discuss the NSA’s mass surveillance program and its impact on privacy, free speech and democracy on Saturday, October 17, 2015.

“Surveillance State: Can Democracy Survive?” is free and open to the public. Registration will begin at 1:30 p.m. and the conversation with Wizner will follow from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Nashville Public Library Conference Center at 615 Church Street.

A screening of “Citizenfour,” winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, will precede the discussion from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The film, which features Wizner, is an account of journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras's encounters with Snowden in Hong Kong in the days before and after he exposed the U.S. government's mass surveillance program to the world, sparking a global debate on our right to privacy.

Wizner has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberties abuses, including challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition and torture. He has appeared regularly in the media, testified before Congress, and traveled several times to Guantanamo Bay to monitor military commission proceedings. He is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law and was a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology is dedicated to protecting and expanding the First Amendment freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry; expanding the right to privacy and increasing the control that individuals have over their personal information; and ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology.

At the forefront of civil liberties battles across Tennessee, ACLU-TN employs a range of strategies including advocacy, education, legislative lobbying and litigation to ensure that Tennesseans’ constitutional freedoms are being protected. An affiliate of the national ACLU, ACLU-TN is a private, non-profit, non-partisan membership organization.

The event is being co-sponsored by the Nashville Public Library. The programs, services and activities of the Nashville Public Library are open to all. To request a disability (ADA) accommodation, please call the Equal Access Division at 615-862-5750.

For more information, call 615-320-7142.