Bio
Brett Max Kaufman is a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy working on a variety of issues related to national security, technology, surveillance, privacy, and First Amendment rights. He has litigated cases including ACLU v. Clapper, a challenge the NSA’s mass call-tracking program, Doe v. Mattis, a habeas challenge to the government’s military detention of a U.S. citizen in Iraq, and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, a challenge to Baltimore’s mass aerial surveillance program. He joined the ACLU as a legal fellow from 2012 to 2014, then spent one year as a teaching fellow in the Technology Law & Policy Clinic at New York University School of Law, where he continued to serve as an adjunct professor of law from 2015 to 2022. He returned to the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2015. He is also an adjunct lecturer in law at UCLA School of Law.
Brett is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas School of Law, where he was book review editor of the Texas Law Review and a human rights scholar at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. After law school, he spent a year in Israel, serving as a foreign law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Asher Dan Grunis and as a volunteer attorney at Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. He then clerked for the Hon. Robert D. Sack of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Judge Richard J. Holwell and (after Judge Holwell’s resignation) Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Featured work
Aug 15, 2017
A Sweeping Search Warrant Targets Anti-Trump Website in Clear Threat to the Constitution
Aug 4, 2017
A Federal Court Says Your Prescription Records Aren’t Really Private. The Supreme Court Might Have Something to Say About That.
Jun 13, 2017
The U.S. Intelligence Community Can Share Your Personal Information With Other Governments, and We’re Demanding Answers
Jan 19, 2017
In First of Many, ACLU FOIA Request Seeks Information About the New President’s Conflicts of Interests
Nov 23, 2016
Presidents Can’t Use National Security Concerns as an Excuse to Spy on Critics
Oct 4, 2016
New Documents Reveal Government Effort to Impose Secrecy on Encryption Company
Aug 8, 2016
Details Abound in Drone ‘Playbook’ — Except for the Ones That Really Matter Most
Jul 1, 2016
President Obama’s New, Long-Promised Drone 'Transparency' Is Not Nearly Enough