Rebecca Wexler works on data, technology, and criminal justice. Her current scholarship focuses on trade secrets in new data-driven criminal justice technologies. While at Data & Society, she worked for The Legal Aid Society defending criminal cases that involved computer-derived evidence, including Stingray surveillance, cell site location tracking, probabilistic DNA analysis software programs, and the Shotspotter audio surveillance system. She also initiated partnerships between Legal Aid, GovLab, and the Vera Institute of Justice to analyze Legal Aid’s internal data, representing 230,000 criminal cases per year. Before law school, Rebecca worked as a documentary filmmaker. She holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and a BA from Harvard College. She is a member of the New York bar and a law clerk to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rebecca Wexler

All Work
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Title
Date
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event
podcast
video
Data & SocietyJasmine McNealy discusses “community as technology” and how social infrastructure steps in where government and civil society fail. Read moreJune 2019 -
event
podcast
video
Data & SocietyCynthia Conti-Cook explores police misconduct data and the “data gap” that has proliferated for years on this topic. Read moreJune 2019 -
event
video
Data & SocietyVeronica Avila explores the roots of restaurant work in slavery and servitude, and how some employers are using the “threat of automation” in order to promote fear within their industry. Read moreJune 2019 -
podcast
WNYC The TakeawayD&S lawyer-in-residence Rebecca Wexler describes the intersection of automated technologies, trade secrets, and the criminal justice system. For-profit companies dominate the criminal justice technologies industry and prod... Read on WNYC The TakeawayJune 2017 -
Longform
Washington MonthlyD&S lawyer-in-residence Rebecca Wexler unpacks how private companies hide flaws in software that the government uses to convict and exonerate people in the criminal justice system. What’s alarming about protecting trade se... Read on Washington MonthlyJune 2017 -
Longform
The New York TimesD&S resident Rebecca Wexler describes the flaws of an increasingly automated criminal justice system The root of the problem is that automated criminal justice technologies are largely privately owned and sold for profit... Read on The New York TimesJune 2017 -
podcast
video
DatabitesRebecca Wexler discusses the automation of the criminal justice system in America and the ownership of new technologies used by law enforcement. Automation is currently driving privatization. Wexler explains that “new criminal ... Read moreJune 2017 -
op-ed
SlateD&S lawyer-in-residence Rebecca Wexler analyzes the unreliability of video authenticating in Slate. When forensic scientists refuse to reveal details about how their experimental methods work, they erode trust in the ideal... Read on SlateFebruary 2017 -
Academic Article
SSRND&S lawyer-in-residence Rebecca Wexler provides an analysis on trade secrecy in the criminal justice system. Abstract is below: From policing to evidence to parole, data-driven algorithmic systems and other automated softw... Read moreFebruary 2017