Is the Government Tracking Your Social Media Activity?
The Biden administration has been quietly deploying and expanding programs that surveil what people say on social media, using tools that allow agents and analysts to invisibly monitor the vast amount of protected speech that occurs online. For years, these kinds of tools have been increasingly used for a range of controversial law enforcement and intelligence purposes. But some of the most troubling programs continuously monitor the social media posts of non-citizens to decide who gets to live, study, or stay in the United States.
If you’re an immigrant or visa-holder in the United States and believe you’ve been affected by this social media monitoring, the ACLU wants to hear .
Social media accounts are extensions of ourselves. A single social media account can reveal a map of our family and friends; a catalogue of our personal preferences and political views; and, of course, a comprehensive diary of our thoughts and speech. Given the trove of information available online, social media surveillance threatens our rights to speak freely and live without fear of constant government scrutiny.
Through our ongoing FOIA lawsuit, the ACLU has obtained documents showing that a wide range of government agencies are monitoring and retaining the speech of U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike — whether or not those individuals are suspected of any criminal wrongdoing. Agencies continue to pour into technology that enables this sustained tracking of social media activity.
ACLU v. DOJ: FOIA Lawsuit Seeking Information on Federal Agencies’ Surveillance of Social Media
Federal agencies are investing in technology and systems that enable the tracking of social media information on U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike.
Source: American Civil Liberties Union
In recent years, the government has its efforts to monitor the social media activities of non-citizens. At least two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programs involve the monitoring of non-citizens who have come to the U.S. for school, work, or other reasons. Under the , DHS monitors the online activities of individuals in the U.S. on student or business visas — from the moment they apply for a visa throughout their stay in the United States. Under another program known as , DHS may monitor social media and a number of other sources for “derogatory information” about non-citizens, starting when a person applies for an immigration benefit until they become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Who Social Media Surveillance Hurts
The government’s social media surveillance can have immense consequences. For example, in August 2019, CBP officers to Ismail Ajjawi, a 17-year-old Palestinian student from Lebanon traveling to start his freshman year at Harvard. Ismail, like other non-citizens hoping to enter the United States, was likely subject to the State Department’s requiring nearly all visa applicants to disclose their social media handles. After an hours-long interrogation about Ismail’s political views, religious affiliations, and friends’ social media posts, Ismail’s visa was canceled and he was promptly deported.
While Ismail was eventually allowed to pursue his studies in the U.S., the government continues to engage in the suspicionless social media monitoring of non-citizens, including many Black and Brown immigrants and visitors who want to become citizens or pursue degrees here. Once DHS collects this information, it may use it to guide immigration decisions, including those involving deportation, visa revocations, and naturalization.
Suspicionless monitoring of social media infringes the rights of people who are living in the U.S. and are protected by the First Amendment. Individuals who suspect they are being surveilled may fear expressing themselves freely out of concerns over government scrutiny or retaliation. This is a loss for the people whose speech is chilled and for all those who benefit from vibrant online conversations and exchanges of ideas.
Government surveillance also often disproportionally targets racial and religious minority communities and those who against government policies. The ACLU has both DHS and the Justice Department to reform their policies that allow biased profiling and investigations. And of course, surveillance undermines our basic notions of privacy. Even individuals who post publicly online do not expect the government to digitally archive their online activity without any suspicion, or to scrutinize their friends, contacts, and associations on social media platforms.
Social Media Surveillance is Ineffective and Inefficient
Social media surveillance is also ineffective and lacks empirical support. Analyzing social media is notoriously difficult, given the sheer volume of information and the many ways in which individuals’ online messages can be misinterpreted — especially when those posts span many different languages and cultures. One office within DHS recently to expand the agency’s collection of social media information after concluding that the monitoring had little utility. The Biden administration has also considered halting social media vetting for some categories of refugees given concerns about “the efficiency of the process.”
Given the harms of this surveillance, and its demonstrated lack of effectiveness, DHS should end its existing social media programs. Until then, we need to know more about how the government monitors our social media and the impact of this surveillance on communities and individuals.
If you think you are or have been affected by this surveillance, we want to hear from you. Please fill out or email us directly at sms_intake@aclu.org. The ACLU will keep strictly confidential any information you provide and will not share it outside the ACLU without your permission.
Learn More About the Issues on This Page
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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.