By The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/p>\n
PHILADELPHIA \u2014 The Pennsylvania arm of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit to obtain information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the agency\u2019s efforts to unmask anonymous social media critics.<\/p>\n
ICE has issued administrative subpoenas to tech companies to obtain information about accounts that track the agency\u2019s operations, identify agents, or express criticism of mass deportation.<\/p>\n
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with ICE in February for copies of unmasking subpoenas and related documents. The agency did not respond to the request, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The civil rights organization is interested in the subpoenas because the effort to unmask anonymous social media users raises First Amendment concerns, the complaint says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe processes by which ICE issues, enforces, and litigates Unmasking Subpoenas remains obscure,\u201d the suit says.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare that ICE unlawfully ignored the record request and order the agency to share the records immediately.<\/p>\n
It is unknown how many subpoenas ICE issued tech companies, but there have been a number of cases \u2014 including two in the Philadelphia area \u2014 in which individuals learned the agency sought information about it, and went to court to fight the request.<\/p>\n
Part of the problem with the subpoenas is that it is up to the social media companies to inform people that the government asked for their information, said Ari Shapell, an attorney with ACLU of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy fear is that ICE has been using this as a tool in many cases and getting personal identifying information about people,\u201d Shapell said. \u201cThe fact that we only know only about a handful of these that are litigated doesn\u2019t mean that there aren\u2019t many others under the radar.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania\u2019s ACLU chapter has battled with ICE over unmasking subpoenas in court before. In September, the Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed Meta \u2014 the parent company of Facebook and Instagram \u2014 for information about the people behind MontCo Community Watch, a grassroots group of Montgomery County activists who track and document ICE enforcement. A federal judge in October ordered Meta not to comply with the request. (DHS has since withdrawn the subpoena.)<\/p>\n
And in February, the ACLU sued to prevent Google from sharing with ICE information about a Philadelphia man. The man read a Washington Post article in October about efforts to deport an immigrant who was evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021 because of fears about retribution from the Taliban for his support of the United States. The Philadelphia man sent an e-mail to the lead DHS attorney handling the case, who was referenced in the article, to express his disagreement with the deportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cApply principles of common sense and decency,\u201d the man wrote to the attorney, whose email address was publicly available online.<\/p>\n
Within hours, according to the suit, ICE sent Google a subpoena in an effort to obtain the man\u2019s private information. And a couple of weeks later federal agents showed up at the man\u2019s home to question him about his email and views, the court filing says.<\/p>\n
ICE withdrew its subpoena before a judge ruled.<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat from Montgomery County, questioned former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about ICE\u2019s use of subpoenas last month during a congressional hearing. The agency has been using administrative subpoenas to \u201cspy\u201d on U.S. citizens who engaged in \u201ccore protected First Amendment speech,\u201d Scanlon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese efforts to unmask the administration\u2019s opponents are clearly designed to intimidate and silence those who oppose the administration, and particularly DHS\u2019s lawless policies,\u201d the representative said.<\/p>\n
Noem said she did not know how many subpoenas DHS sent to tech companies for information about critics, and pushed back on the notion that the department was using tools illegally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe individuals that work at the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically in investigations, follow all federal laws,\u201d Noem said.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump fired Noem following her appearance in Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA \u2014 The Pennsylvania arm of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-172739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}