While the ACLU of Northern California and Facebook both agree that location information is very sensitive, we that Places gives users adequate control of how and when to share this information. (Next time I visit my hometown, I’d like to be able to hang out with some of the Facebook crew at the Nut House without being asked again and again and again if I want that shared with everyone nearby!).
We understand and appreciate the various privacy protections and options that are currently available to Places users. But there were some straightforward steps that we highlighted to Facebook that they could have taken to improve the privacy features before launch. Not having these common sense privacy protections has unfortunately overshadowed some of the safeguards that the Places team worked so hard to build into the product.
The ACLU of Northern California’s original and our note several good privacy protections in Places:
- Limiting the default visibility of check-ins on your feed to “Friends Only.”
- Allowing you to customize your check-in privacy.
- Providing notice to you each time you are checked in by a friend.
We even said that we were “happy to see Facebook take steps to protect this information and keep it under your control.” However, we have a responsibility to thoroughly analyze the privacy implications of new products and these were our initial concerns:
- “No” is not an easy option when asked whether your friends can check you in.
If your friend tries to check-in for you, you have two choices: “Allow Check-Ins” and “Not Now.” Until you hit “Allow Check-Ins,” you cannot be checked into a Place by a friend. But you are not given an option, like “No” or “Don’t Allow,” that would opt you out of Places. Instead, all you can do immediately is hit “Not Now,” which just means “ask me again later.”
In addition, if you use Places yourself, you are simply told that you are allowing friends to check-in for you by using the service; you are not informed that you have the option of using Places yourself without allowing friends to check-in for you.
Yes, you can disallow check-ins permanently using your privacy settings — but Facebook doesn’t make that clear to new Places users.
We hope that Facebook will take the steps to easily remedy this by (a) providing a clear “Don’t Allow Check-Ins” option when your friend first checks-in for you and (b) providing this same notice even if you already use Places yourself.
- If you want to use “Here Now” you can’t limit your visibility to only friends (unless you are a minor) and “Here Now” is turned on by default if you have previously selected that “Everyone” can see some of your Facebook information.
Facebook says to protect your privacy, just turn off “Here Now” off and set your Check-In privacy setting so the right people can find you. However, this defeats the purpose of Here Now: to make it easy for your friends to know if you’re around just by looking at the Here Now list. You should be able to use Here Now and decide exactly who can easily find you. (Facebook does something like this for minors: they can turn on Here Now but only their friends can see them. So Facebook also seems to think that Here Now is valuable even if you’re not sharing it with everyone!)
Facebook already has a setting to turn Here Now on and off. It should go a step further and turn this into a fully-configurable option so users can choose who can see that they are Here Now, and by making sure that users who share very limited information with “Everyone” are not defaulted into sharing their real location more broadly than they would like.
- Apps that you or your friends run can view your Places information by default — you need to go into your privacy settings and opt out if you don't want to share location data with apps.
Facebook does offer a setting to disable Places data sharing with your friends’ apps. However, you are not clearly informed of the fact that your check-ins may be shared with your friends apps. In addition, as we understand it, this setting will be turned on by default if you have kept any of those settings checked to allow sharing on that page. So, if you changed your settings to allow your friends’ apps to see your birthday but absolutely no other voluntary data, you will now share your most recent Places check-in with these apps until you go in and change these settings again.
Users should be clearly informed that, by joining Places, they most likely are also giving their friends’ apps access to their Places information. Users should also be given direct access to the control that allows them to choose whether or not to do so when they first join.
Having “no” as an easy option for friend check-ins, having visibility options for Here Now and not setting these to “Everyone” by default, and not silently giving apps default access to Places location information would have made this product a lot more privacy-friendly and help live up to Facebook’s principle of putting users in control of their information. We hope Facebook will take the simple steps outlined above to make sure that Places protect privacy. (And Facebook crew, if you want to chat more about it at the Nut House, the first round is on me.)
NOTE: With all of the news about location-based services this week, we will be analyzing the privacy safeguards for multiple companies very soon. We will also publish a white paper on location-based services in the weeks ahead to help users understand how to best safeguard their privacy. Stay tuned!
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.