Castellanos & Associates, APLC

09/23/2026

A child’s photograph was once largely understood as a family keepsake. Today, photographs, videos, voice recordings, communications, location information, and other personal data exist within a technological environment in which information can be copied, distributed, analyzed, altered, combined, and potentially used to create increasingly detailed representations and profiles of individuals.

The law is confronting these capabilities while the technology itself continues to change.

California Civil Code § 3344, child custody, digital identity, AI, privacy, sensitive data, and the emerging challenges facing children and families.

09/14/2026

Drawing on HBO’s tradition of human curation, this article examines how algorithms are reshaping streaming services, audience choice and the treatment of creators. It considers the risks that autom…

09/10/2026

“ICE’s use of powerful spyware tools raises serious civil liberties concerns. Spyware enables covert and often unlimited access to smartphone data, posing significant risks to free speech and privacy. Experience shows these tools are highly susceptible to misuse; they’ve already been used to target journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents around the world. Democracies should not be in the business of deploying spyware against their populations. We appreciate Representative Lee’s focus on this issue and again urge Congress to step in to limit the circumstances in which spyware technology can be used.”

Press Statement Knight Institute Urges Congress to Limit ICE’s Use of Spyware Technologies as Agency Confirms Expanded Deployment     April 2, 2026 WASHINGTON—In an April 1 letter to Congress, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that it has approved the procurement and use...

09/10/2026

Spyware tools like Pegasus, developed by NSO Group, enable covert access to journalists’ phones, communications, and personal data, often through “zero-click” attacks that require no user interaction. Farid Johnson emphasized that these technologies endanger journalists and their sources while disrupting newsroom operations, chilling investigative reporting, and limiting the public’s access to information.

Quick Take Knight Institute Warns Spyware Threatens Press Freedom        April 23, 2026 In a statement submitted to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for the record of its April 16 hearing on “The State of Exception in El Salvador: Year Five,” the Institute’s Policy Director Nadine Fa...

09/10/2026

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—Today, New York drivers are challenging the legality of a mass vehicle surveillance system operated by the Westchester County Police Department (WCPD) that indiscriminately tracks their personal vehicle data and driving patterns. The class-action lawsuit, filed by the Policing Project at New York University School of Law, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Freshfields LLP, concerns one of the largest and most technologically advanced vehicle surveillance systems in the country, with WCPD capturing and analyzing hundreds of millions of vehicle records and sharing them with outside agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Press Statement Westchester Drivers Challenge County Police Department’s Warrantless Mass Vehicle Surveillance System Class-action lawsuit seeks to end a sweeping surveillance program that stores driver location data for years June 9, 2026 Umemoto v. Westchester County Police Department A class-ac...

09/10/2026

Press Statement Supreme Court Recognizes Fourth Amendment Protection for Digital Location Data Decision reinforces constitutional limits on digital surveillance, Knight Institute says June 29, 2026 Chatrie v. United States A Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of geofence searches W...

09/09/2026

09/09/2026

A Perspectives opinion on Meta, child safety, algorithmic profiling, government power, platform manipulation, privacy, and the promise of innovation.

09/09/2026

Drawing on HBO’s tradition of human curation, this article examines how algorithms are reshaping streaming services, audience choice and the treatment of creators. It considers the risks that autom…