Melissa Goodman is a Staff Attorney in the ACLU's National Security Program. She works on the ACLU’s national security docket and litigates cases concerning surveillance, excessive government secrecy, torture and detention, and the freedoms of speech and association. Most recently, she has been counsel in the ACLU's lawsuits challenging warrantless NSA surveillance, the Patriot Act, the government's practice of ideological exclusion, and the CIA's abduction and detention of Khaled El-Masri, a victim of the CIA's practice of "extraordinary rendition." Goodman is a graduate of New York University College of Arts and Science, and New York University Law School.