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Congress must prevent AI surveillance. The Anthropic feud proves it | Ashley Gorski and Patrick Toomey The company’s clash with the Pentagon is a fight over the future of American privacy

Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon shows just how easily AI surveillance can be turned against the people in this country, fueled by the government's purchases of our private data. U.S. privacy law is decades behind the technology. Congress must step in.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'It Was Very Creepy': These People Say They Lost Global Entry Just For Watching ICE Agents Two people claim they were punished for acts of protest, and an internal government memo suggests they may not be the last.

The First Amendment protects our rights to protest and record federal agents performing their duties in public view. Revoking someone’s Global Entry status in retaliation for that activity is unconstitutional.

www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-wa...

Opinion | Trump Is Helping Human Rights Abusers. I’m Suing to Stop Him.

Our client has devoted his life to defending human rights, but the Trump administration's sanctions against the ICC prevent him and other advocates from pursuing justice.

We're suing to defend defend their First Amendment right to advise and assist the ICC.

BREAKING: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act immediately after we filed our lawsuit.

President Trump is not above the law.

BREAKING: President Trump signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court.

This is an attack on accountability and free speech, exposing people in the U.S. to punishments for helping ICC investigations on atrocities committed anywhere, including genocide and war crimes.

NB: in 2018, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that the FBI's Section 702 procedures, as implemented, violated the 4th Amendment. But yesterday's decision was the first to hold that warrantless searches of a particular person's communications were unconstitutional.

Yesterday's decision was the first of its kind, in part because the government has made it extraordinarily difficult for people to challenge Section 702 surveillance and these warrantless queries in court.

More here: www.aclu.org/press-releas...

(5/5)

While the number of these warrantless queries has declined in recent years, they’re still happening far too frequently and without the judicial approval the Constitution requires.

(4/5)

The FBI has conducted millions of these warrantless queries for Americans' communications, including searches for private communications of protestors, members of Congress, donors to a political campaign, and journalists.

(3/5)

As a refresher: Under Section 702 of FISA, the government acquires Americans' international communications on a massive scale and without a warrant. FBI agents then search through these databases to find Americans' communications—again, without a warrant.

(2/5)

Last night, for the first time, a federal court held that the FBI's warrantless queries of Section 702 databases violated the Fourth Amendment. Enormous win for privacy rights.

The opinion is here: www.aclu.org/documents/se...

(1/5)

Terrible day for the First Amendment and the rights of 170 million Americans who use TikTok. The government should not be allowed to ban an entire platform based on speculative harms and vague invocations of "national security."

The First Amendment demands more here.

Supreme Court signals it will uphold ban on TikTok over national security concerns and other takeaways from oral arguments | CNN Politics A majority of the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a controversial ban on TikTok over concerns about its ties to China, with justices lobbing pointed questions at lawyers for the social media a...

Allowing the government to ban a social media platform based on nothing more than hypothetical harms would be a grave mistake.

We urge the court to uphold our First Amendment rights and and block this ban.

The brief is available here: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

The ACLU and several NGOs just filed an amicus brief in support of TikTok and its users, urging the Supreme Court to block the ban on First Amendment grounds.

ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban | American Civil Liberties Union WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia...

Read more about the case here: www.aclu.org/press-releas....

Thanks also to @eff.org and @knightcolumbia.org, who joined us on the brief.

Today, we filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the TikTok ban. If the law is allowed to go into effect, it would force 170 million American users off the platform starting January 19, 2025.

We hope the Court intervenes to protect our First Amendment rights.

ACLU Slams Appeals Court Decision Upholding TikTok Ban | American Civil Liberties Union WASHINGTON — Today, in a major blow to freedom of expression online, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to...

www.aclu.org/press-releas...

The D.C. Circuit's decision today to uphold the TikTok ban is enormously disappointing. If allowed to stand, it would give the government far too much power to restrict Americans' speech online.