Alex Abdo

Alex Abdo is the inaugural litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. He has been involved in the conception and litigation of most of the Institute’s legal challenges.
His work has focused most recently on analyzing the constitutionality of laws regulating the social media platforms, as well as the Institute’s challenges to: the use of spyware to intimidate journalists, the secrecy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal opinions, the digitization of mail in jails and prisons, and the legal threats issued by social media platforms to researchers hoping to illuminate the influence that the platforms are having on society. Prior to joining the Institute, Abdo worked for eight years at the ACLU, where he was at the forefront of litigation relating to NSA surveillance, encryption, anonymous speech online, government transparency, and the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.