ACLU Releases Roadmap to Rein in Government Surveillance Under a Harris Administration
The roadmap continues the ACLU’s 2024 election policy memo series exploring likely policies from a potential Trump or Harris administration.
August 28, 2024 2:00 pm
WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union released Harris on Surveillance: Protecting Individual Liberties and Rights by Constraining Executive Power today, a memo outlining steps Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris can take to rein in expansive government surveillance and protect individual rights and liberties if she is elected. The memo also details how the ACLU will work to ensure a Harris administration confronts dangers to our privacy rights head on.
The executive branch has immense power and discretion to surveil and investigate, with severe consequences for individual rights. Over the past two decades, the executive branch’s surveillance powers have become even more expansive, as successive presidents from both parties have sought to maintain and enlarge these powers without meaningful judicial or congressional constraints and oversight. Our Harris on Surveillance memo urges Harris, if elected, to protect against Big Brother digital surveillance, end unjustified and discriminatory domestic surveillance, and implement safeguards for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data privacy.
“Despite perennial campaign trail promises to rein in surveillance powers that violate our privacy and civil liberties, once in office, presidents from both parties have all-too-often doubled down on the same powers that consistently lead to abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “Regardless of who is president, the ACLU will continue to shed light on the government’s warrantless spying on Americans and challenge wrongful and discriminatory surveillance in court to vindicate the rights of people who are harmed.”
“As a senator, Kamala Harris had a strong record of opposing legislative efforts to expand mass surveillance powers. As vice president, she recognized the ‘moral, ethical, and societal duty’ to protect Americans from potential harms of AI. If elected president, we hope she brings that same fire to the White House in order to restore checks and balances to mass surveillance,” said Kia Hamadanchy, ACLU senior policy counsel.
The ACLU’s roadmap released today outlines our plan to rein in government surveillance by:
- Protecting against Big Brother digital surveillance, like spying under Section 702 and Executive Order 12333, and massive government purchases of our information from commercial data brokers. These activities allow the government to obtain sensitive, private information about Americans without a warrant or privacy safeguards. The ACLU will continue to shed light on surveillance abuses, work with allies in Congress to narrow surveillance authorities, and work to restrict the flow of our private data from the states and cities to federal agencies.
- Ending unjustified and discriminatory domestic surveillance and investigation, including through loopholes in federal national security policies that permit bias, watchlisting, social media monitoring, and other wrongful and discriminatory targeting of people exercising their rights to free speech and association. People who are racial and religious minorities or who dissent from government policy are often unfairly targeted for surveillance and investigation by federal agencies. The ACLU will use the courts to vindicate people’s rights and expose the arbitrary nature of watchlisting and surveillance, and urge a potential Harris administration to explicitly prohibit discrimination and rein in domestic surveillance powers.
- Implementing strong safeguards for artificial intelligence and data privacy. National security agencies are increasingly developing and deploying powerful AI systems, which present immense risks to the rights and safety of people in the U.S. and abroad. Yet these agencies have largely been exempted from important measures to increase transparency, trust, and fairness. The ACLU will urge a Harris administration to establish robust safeguards around federal uses of AI, will use the courts to ensure greater public transparency around AI, and will work with allies in Congress to pass a federal comprehensive data privacy law that will reduce how much data is collected from us in the first place.
The Harris on Surveillance memo marks the fifth of six memos the ACLU is releasing on the Democratic nominee. In addition to surveillance and privacy, the memos have focused on abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights, with an additional memo on the criminal legal system yet to be released. This series follows seven memos the ACLU released on policies of a potential second Trump administration, including one on surveillance that can be found here.
The Harris on Surveillance memo is available here: /publications/harris-on-surveillance
Learn More About the Issues in This Press Release
-
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.