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Greetings from the Samuelson Clinic! It has been another action-packed year with students working on a diverse array of law and technology matters. Intellectual property continues to be at the heart of the clinic’s docket. We are particularly excited that students won both a renewal and an expansion of a legal exemption that allows digital humanities researchers to bypass technological protection measures to conduct text and data mining. This allows researchers to derive new insights by applying emerging computational methods to more and newer works of literature and film—for example, tracking developments in the representation of gender in popular 20th-century novels. We have also branched out in new directions, including into the field of artificial intelligence. Students helped to draft a comment to Governor Newsom on how government agencies can utilize AI while safeguarding the rights of vulnerable communities. AI has great potential to improve the efficiency and reach of government services, but it is important that it be implemented in a way that benefits all communities.
There have been some faculty transitions within the clinic. After many years of valuable service, including spearheading our expansion into the criminal justice arena, Megan Graham has moved on. We are sad for us but thrilled for her, since she is now an associate clinical professor and director of the Technology Law Clinic at the Iowa College of Law. Congratulations, Megan! Fortunately for us, former Clinical Teaching Fellow Julie DeVries has rejoined the Clinic as a clinical staff attorney. Julie will expand the clinic’s capacity to engage in more complex, longer-term projects, such as detailed reports and complex litigation.
One feature of technology law is that it is ever changing. Projecting forward, we anticipate that the transition of presidential administrations will have a significant impact on our work. Talk of mass deportations will place added pressure on sanctuary states such as California to lock down their data so it is not used to facilitate such deportations. Concerns about the criminalization of interstate travel to access reproductive health care may well raise similar issues. Artificial intelligence will continue to disrupt how we teach and practice law and raise questions about the use of copyrighted works in the creation of the technology itself. A new administration with a different view on the powers and priorities of federal agencies will create new challenges and perhaps new opportunities. While we do not know what the new year will bring, the Samuelson Clinic will continue to advocate for the public interest wherever technology intersects with law and policy.
Please read on to learn more about our projects, as well as updates on the professional and personal adventures of your former classmates and faculty.
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Best wishes,
Catherine, Erik, and Jennifer
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Clinic wins renewal and expansion of DMCA exemption for digital humanities researchers | |
On behalf of Authors Alliance, the clinic petitioned the Library of Congress to renew and expand exemptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) restrictions supporting researchers’ ability to conduct text and data mining in the digital humanities. In addition to winning renewal, the petition succeeded in expanding the exemption, now allowing researchers to (1) provide access to their research corpora to scholars from outside their institutions, facilitating collaboration; and (2) view the contents of copyrighted works as needed to conduct research, rather than being restricted to viewing content only when necessary to verify computational outputs. While this win doesn’t solve all of the access issues related to DMCA, the expansion represents an important recognition of the societal and scholarly benefits of researchers’ work and an acknowledgment that artificial constraints shouldn’t be placed on digital humanities research. Clinic students gave extensive testimony and played a critical role in the petition’s success. Mathew Cha ’24, Kurt Fredrickson ‘24, Christian Howard-Sukhil ’24, and Zhudi Huang ’24 worked on the project. Read more on the project page. | |
Student white paper examines federal use of digital evidence at George Floyd protests | |
To understand how law enforcement agencies use digital evidence to investigate suspected criminal activity at mass events, clinic students examined more than 100 warrant applications from federal law enforcement in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the months following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Their analysis, published as a student white paper this summer, concludes that digital evidence is commonly used in investigations of suspected criminal activity at mass events. The paper also demonstrates that warrant materials play a valuable role in explaining law enforcement and court actions, underscoring the importance of docket transparency. Clinic students Margerite Blase ’22 and Gary Lee ’23 wrote the white paper. Read more on the project page. | |
Students help draft comment on generative AI safeguards in California | |
Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-12-23 on Generative Artificial Intelligence (“GenAI”) directs the creation of guidelines for state agencies and departments to analyze the impact of GenAI on vulnerable communities. On behalf of ACLU California Action, the Samuelson Clinic drafted a comment in response, recommending additional safeguards to ensure that state agencies consider AI’s risks in their efforts to use AI to address systemic challenges and improve the lives of Californians. These include expanding guidelines to apply to automated systems beyond GenAI; adopting a decision-making standard drawn from community input as well as from AI impact and risk assessments; prohibiting technologies that pose an unacceptable risk to vulnerable communities (e.g., facial recognition, biometric surveillance, predictive policing, emotion-detection, and criminal justice use); and providing assistance to local agencies that choose to follow the guidelines. Students Nicole Bloomfield ’24 and Bani Sapra ’25 worked on the project, along with ACLU of Northern California’s Technology & Civil Liberties Director Nicole Ozer ’03. Read more on the project page. | |
Clinic students work to defend library patrons’ right to privacy | |
Reader privacy, critical to democratic participation, has long been safeguarded by libraries but is under threat by commercial e-book vendors’ intensive tracking of readers’ habits. On behalf of three nonprofit organizations—Center for Democracy & Technology, Library Freedom Project, and Public Knowledge—the clinic drafted and filed an amicus brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive, highlighting the critical role of libraries’ controlled digital lending programs in preserving long-standing reader privacy protections in the digital age. Students Noor Alanizi ’25, Jessica Kwok ’25, and Katherine Wang ’24 worked on the project. In a Berkeley Law article about the project, Alanizi reflected, “It was really valuable to do something outside of the four walls of the classroom. We were able to take the lead and make it how we wanted it to be.” Read more on the project page. | |
Students defend rate caps for incarcerated people's communication services | |
Representing the United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry (UCC Media Justice), clinic students drafted and filed motions to intervene in four challenges to recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules capping the rates charged to incarcerated people and their families for making phone calls and using advanced communications services. They also helped to oppose efforts by providers of incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) to move the litigation to a venue that is more hostile to the powers of federal agencies and the rights of incarcerated people. The litigation over the FCC's IPCS Order raises many issues, including how to define and quantify "just and reasonable" rates for carceral communications services and who should bear the cost of features that benefit the carceral facility rather than users of the services. UCC Media Justice is part of a coalition of public interest organizations working to defend the FCC’s regulations, arguing that accessible and affordable IPCS services contribute to safer communities and stronger families by making it easier for incarcerated people to maintain ties with their families and loved ones, and to succeed when they rejoin their communities. Students Alexandra Pell ’26 and Léo Mandani ’26 worked on the project. Read more on the project page. | |
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Former Clinical Supervising Attorney Megan Graham is now associate clinical professor and the director of the Technology Law Clinic at Iowa College of law. She writes, “The move to Iowa has been an exciting opportunity! I’m enjoying building a clinic in a part of the country that is often overlooked in national debates on technology and surveillance. I’m so grateful for all of the lessons I learned while working at the Samuelson Clinic and from all of the alums I had the chance to meet while I was at Berkeley. (My Iowa students have asked me to say thanks on their behalf, too!)
Clinic founding director Deirdre Mulligan recently completed a leave from Berkeley to serve at the White House, where she was Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In that capacity, she led the OSTP's tech team's work on topics ranging from AI to spectrum, web accessibility, broadband, equitable data, and privacy.
Former Clinical Teaching Fellow Julie DeVries has rejoined the clinic as a staff attorney. Julie will help expand the clinic’s capacity to do more in-depth report writing and litigation, particularly in the criminal justice and civil liberties arenas.
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Nicky Ozer continues her work as technology and civil liberties director at the ACLU of Northern California, a position she has held since 2004. She notes that this past year, there have been more than 100 bills related to technology and civil liberties to work on in the California legislature (on AI, digital speech, face surveillance, and more). She and her colleagues just published a new report, Seeing Through Surveillance: Why Policymakers Should Look Past the Hype, and she has enjoyed working with the Samuelson Clinic on several projects this semester. She is on a Technology and Human Rights Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center this academic year, which will provide structure to write about the public interest technology work that keeps her busy at the ACLU. | |
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Susheel Daswani had amazing travel experiences this past summer, including “living the golf dream” of playing all courses at Bandon Dunes in Oregon and taking his two boys on their first whitewater rafting experience during a family trip to Yellowstone. Professionally, this past September Susheel started a new job at Capital One, where he is senior manager, mobile engineering.
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Sarah (Simmons) Spires is living in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, 8-year-old daughter, and 11-month-old Boxer. She is a partner at Skiermont Derby LLP, a patent litigation boutique, where her practice focuses on inter partes reviews before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board as well as other post-grant proceedings, in addition to district court litigation and Federal Circuit appeals. Prior to joining Skiermont Derby, Sarah practiced patent litigation at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Dallas and at Morrison & Foerster in San Diego and Tokyo. In her free time, she is an avid reader and loves traveling with her family and trying new restaurants.
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Ana Enriquez is the head of the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright at the Penn State University Libraries. She just received tenure and is planning a sabbatical on copyright education and access to knowledge that will take her and her family (including kids ages 2 and 6) to Paris and Bengaluru next year. (She would love to hear from anyone living in Western Europe or South India or have recommendations for those places.) She has been reading for fun as much as she can—her recommendations from this year are Miami by Joan Didion, Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, and Strictly Legal by Fenton Bresler (“out of print but such a delight”). | |
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Ernan Kiselica clerked for two years after graduation and now litigates employment cases in private practice. He lives in Southern California with his wife and their two fiercely independent girls, who love nothing more than a good popsicle.
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Katelyn Feliciano completed a clerkship with Judge Shashi Kewalramani in the Central District of California and has returned to Davis Wright Tremaine in Los Angeles as litigation associate. Part of her practice serves many household-name technology companies in privacy class actions, copyright infringement, and enforcing platforms' terms. She is happy to announce she is getting married in 2025!
Alistair McIntyre continues to practice patent law at Knobbe Martens in San Diego. He and his spouse Julia are excitedly expecting their first child in early 2025.
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Gary Lee is one year into an Honors Privacy Fellowship with the California Privacy Protection Agency, where he began working through the Samuelson Clinic. He is pleased that the white paper he co-authored at the Samuelson Clinic was published earlier this year. | |
Izzy Simon has served as post-bar law clerk with the Los Angeles Public Defender’s office and, pending bar results, will begin working as a deputy public defender in the winter. | |
Clinical Program releases 2023-2024 annual report | |
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Last year, 225 students enrolled in our 14 clinics, collaborating with faculty, staff, and clients to advance justice in the East Bay, nationally, and globally. Please take a look at the Clinical Program’s annual report to learn more.
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We’d be remiss if we didn’t pitch you one more time for financial support. If you’d like to make a donation, click here to give online, or send a check payable to:
“UC Foundation/Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic”
Mail to:
Berkeley Law c/o University of California, Berkeley Gift Services
1995 University Avenue, Suite 400
Berkeley, CA 94704-1070
We genuinely appreciate all of the contributions you have made to the success of the Samuelson Clinic over the years and we look forward to many more exciting opportunities in the future.
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