老澳门开奖结果 Files FOIA Request for Unreleased DHS Privacy Report on Laptop Searches at the Border
Aiming to determine the impact of border searches on Americans鈥� civil liberties, the Department of Homeland Security has produced a report on its policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers鈥� laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices鈥攅ven when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. The report was completed sometime between October 2011 and September 2012, and last week DHS quietly posted only the on its website, without many people noticing.
The report draws the highly questionable conclusion that the border search policy does not violate our Fourth Amendment right to privacy, chill our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association, or even result in discriminatory search practices.
We know that answer can鈥檛 be right if we take our Fourth Amendment and First Amendment rights seriously鈥攁nd the 老澳门开奖结果 is working to demonstrate that in two lawsuits currently pending before federal courts. So how did the agency reach this conclusion? We don鈥檛 know, because DHS has not made the full report available to the public, and the executive summary does not explain any of the evidence or reasoning its conclusions are based on.
Today the 老澳门开奖结果 filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act demanding the full report, called 鈥淐ivil Rights and Civil Liberties Impact Assessment 鈥� Border Searches of Electronic Devices.鈥� (You can read our request here).
What we want to discover is what would make the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which wrote the report and according to its is supposed to be 鈥減romoting respect for civil rights and civil liberties in [DHS] policy creation and implementation,鈥� reach such conclusions about these highly invasive practices. If it鈥檚 true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won鈥檛 it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public鈥檚 rights hidden from the very public being affected?
Since at least 2008 it has been of DHS that the two agencies that monitor the border鈥擨mmigration & Customs Enforcement and Customs & Border Protection鈥揷an look at information on travelers鈥� laptops, cell phones, hard drives, and other devices, and sometimes keep the information or share it with others, even when there is no suspicion that the device contains evidence of wrongdoing. Essentially DHS has adopted a policy of peering into anyone鈥檚 data, at any time, for any reason. Through a FOIA request filed three years ago we discovered that more than 6,500 travelers had their devices searched under this policy between October 2008 and June 2010. Almost half of those were U.S. citizens.
The posted online by DHS last week claims that requiring a standard of reasonable suspicion for these highly intrusive searches (a relatively low standard compared to the probable cause standard required to get a warrant) 鈥渨ould be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits.鈥� But the reality is that allowing government agents to search through all of a traveler鈥檚 data without reasonable suspicion is completely incompatible with our fundamental rights: our Fourth Amendment right to privacy鈥攁nd more specifically the right to be free from unreasonable searches鈥攊s implicated when the government can rummage through our computers and cell phones for no reason other than that we happen to have traveled abroad. Suspicionless searches also open the door to profiling based on perceived or actual race, ethnicity, or religion. And our First Amendment rights to free speech and free association are inhibited when agents at the border can target us for searches based on our exercise of those rights.
Take, for example, the case of Pascal Abidor, a dual U.S.-French citizen whose laptop was seized and searched while he was traveling home to New York from Canada on an Amtrak train in 2010. Abidor was handcuffed, frisked, and kept in a holding cell for several hours, and his laptop was taken for 11 days. Government agents searched through highly personal information on his laptop, including personal photos, a transcript of a chat with his girlfriend, his tax returns, and his academic research. The only 鈥渨rongdoing鈥� he engaged in was crossing the border as an Islamic Studies graduate student at a Canadian university who had recently traveled to the Middle East. The 老澳门开奖结果 represents him in a federal lawsuit seeking to enforce a reasonable suspicion standard for border searches and seizures so that such violations of privacy and free expression don鈥檛 happen again.
My colleague 老澳门开奖结果 attorney Catherine Crump says that with the FOIA request we filed today, 鈥淲e hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can鈥檛 simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government鈥檚 own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.鈥�
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON 鈥� Today, the 老澳门开奖结果, 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鈥檚 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 鈥渟hutter one of America鈥檚 most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.鈥� 鈥淭he Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,鈥漵aid Patrick Toomey, deputy director of 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 National Security Project. 鈥淭he 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.鈥� The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law鈥檚 profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court鈥檚 decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users鈥� First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government鈥檚 ban on TikTok as a vindication of users鈥� 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 鈥減ropaganda.鈥� But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its 鈥渕otivating ideology鈥� or 鈥減erspective,鈥� and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. 鈥淭he government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,鈥� said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. 鈥淭he Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit鈥檚 erroneous ruling.鈥� Finally, the brief underscores that the government can鈥檛 impose this type of sweeping ban unless it鈥檚 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鈥檚 invocation of 鈥渘ational security鈥� as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. 鈥淩estricting citizens鈥� 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,鈥� said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 鈥淚t would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.鈥� 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
老澳门开奖结果 Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia老澳门开奖结果 Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON 鈥� 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, 老澳门开奖结果 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 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 National Security Project: 鈥淲hile 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鈥檙e profoundly frustrated that the administration didn鈥檛 take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.鈥� -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. 鈥� 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鈥檚 case, his claims challenging the government鈥檚 detention of him would fail. 鈥淩eviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we鈥檙e heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,鈥� said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 Center for Democracy. 鈥淭he government鈥檚 arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.鈥� 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鈥檚 ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. 鈥淢r. 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,鈥� said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. 鈥淗e cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.鈥� Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the 老澳门开奖结果, the University of Chicago Law School鈥檚 Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic, the 老澳门开奖结果 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.