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'An Unmistakably Chilling Message': Trump DOJ Subpoenaed Phone Records of Journalists' Relatives
"Every American who values a free and independent press should see this for what it is: an abuse of power designed to silence scrutiny."
Jul 20, 2026
Attorneys representing The New York Times have revealed that the Trump administration's subpoenas of the newspaper's journalists are far more aggressive than what had been previously reported.
In a letter sent to US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Saturday and unsealed by the court on Monday, attorneys David O'Neil, Douglas Zolkind, and Julie Edelstein said that the US Department of Justice was engaged in an "alarming pattern of conduct" beyond its recently revealed efforts to compel Times reporters to testify before a grand jury for a probe related to unspecified national security leaks.
The attorneys said the administration had gone so far as to subpoena phone companies for subscriber information and toll records for phone numbers used by one reporter's mother and by two reporters' spouses, among others.
They also revealed that two administration subpoenas seek records going back as far as January 1 this year, "long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the department's investigation," suggesting that "the department is using this investigation... to forage for information about the journalists' source relationships more broadly."
The subpoenas of the Times journalists, issued earlier this month, came days after the paper published a story that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.
The issued subpoenas did not specifically name the Times’ reporting on the Qatari jet as the reason for the grand jury probe, although they were given to all four journalists—Tyler Pager, Julian Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Eric Lipton—who reported the story.
It is highly uncommon for government investigators to subpoena journalists when they are probing national security leaks, as such actions are generally seen as having a chilling effect on reporters’ ability to gather information.
Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, described news of the department seeking phone records of reporters' spouses and a parent as "an extraordinary escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to intimidate the press."
"The Justice Department didn't stop at journalists—it went after their family members, too," Fallow noted. "That sends an unmistakably chilling message to anyone thinking about reporting on this administration. Every American who values a free and independent press should see this for what it is: an abuse of power designed to silence scrutiny."
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, was even more scathing in his denunciation of the administration's actions.
"Even the Mafia says families are off limits," said Stern. "It’s gross that the administration—in its never-ending effort to harass and intimidate reporters who reveal its incompetence—is going after the communications of journalists’ relatives."
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Screening of Student Visa Applicants' Social Media Denounced as Attack on Free Speech
One First Amendment expert warned the new Trump administration policy will "inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States."
Jun 19, 2025
International students will once again be able to apply for U.S. visas following a cable sent Wednesday from the U.S. State Department to embassies and consulates—but not without being subjected to what one political scientist denounced "ideological purity tests" imposed by the Trump administration.
Nearly a month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency was pausing all student visa interviews amid the Trump administration's sweeping push to rid American universities of foreign students who have publicly supported Palestinian rights—as well as Chinese students and those accused of having ties to the Chinese Communist Party—the State Department said applications will once again be accepted, but scholars' social media use will be rigorously reviewed for signs of "hostility" toward the United States.
Applicants for F academic visas, M visas for vocational students, and J visas for educational and cultural exchanges will be required at their visa interviews to make all of their social media accounts accessible to consular officers who conduct their interviews, so officers can search for "any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States."
Both new and returning student visas applicants will be subject to the new screenings, and consular officers were instructed in the cable to take "detailed case notes" about students' online presence.
"Take screenshots to preserve the record against possible later alteration or loss of the information," read the cable.
"This new State Department policy is a digital-age version of a policy that history has already discredited."
Students who are found to "demonstrate a history of political activism" will be flagged under the new social media guidelines, and consular officers are being directed to "consider the likelihood they would continue such activity in the United States."
Sarah Spreitzer, vice president of the American Council on Education, told The New York Times that the organization is "very worried that this is going to be some political litmus test that's going to be applied to students."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy will "inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States."
"This policy makes a censor of every consular officer," added Jaffer.
The new screening procedures followed the Trump administration's detention of and efforts to deport several foreign students who publicly expressed support for Palestinian rights, including Columbia University organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts University student and op-ed author Rümeysa Öztürk, and Georgetown University academic Badar Khan Suri. The latter three scholars have been released from detention in recent weeks after court rulings, but Khalil remains imprisoned in Louisiana. A judge in New Jersey determined last month that his detention is "likely" unconstitutional and ruled last week that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Khalil, who has not been charged with a crime, but he has yet to be released.
The State Department cable instructed embassies and consulates to flag any social media activity that displayed "advocacy for, aid, or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security" and "support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence."
The communication did not detail how officials should determine what online comments or activity would qualify. Trump administration officials have openly conflated students' involvement in protests against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Palestinians in Gaza with antisemitic, pro-terrorist activity.
The cable also contained a threat to student visa applicants if portions of their social media accounts remain "set to private" during their interviews.
In those cases, the directive says, "you should treat the case as any other where an applicant fails to provide certain information on request."
A bolded sentence added, "You must consider whether such failure reflects evasiveness or otherwise calls into question the applicant's credibility."
Jaffer noted that "some of the 20th century's most significant artistic and intellectual figures, including Pablo Neruda, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Graham Greene," were barred from entering the U.S. due to their ties to the Communist Party, after "ideological vetting" by U.S. officials.
"This new State Department policy," said Jaffer, "is a digital-age version of a policy that history has already discredited."
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In 'Call to Duty' for 'Civic Courage,' Free Speech Champions Challenge Trump Assault on Key Rights
"In little more than 100 days, President Trump and the agencies under his control have threatened First Amendment rights through a breathtaking array of actions."
May 19, 2025
In an open letter on Monday, seven leading free speech organizations in the United States warned that the capitulation of universities and other institutions to President Donald Trump's demands for suppressed speech affect not just those organizations, their employees, and their students—but the state of U.S. democracy itself.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University spearheaded the letter that was signed by the ACLU, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, PEN America, and Reporters Without Borders USA.
"If First Amendment freedoms are compromised, our democracy will be compromised, too," wrote the groups. "Democracy and free speech are inextricably linked. If we are to govern ourselves, we must be able to inquire, speak, write, associate, and protest without fear of governmental retaliation."
It followed several recent victories for some international students who have been arrested for expressing opposition to the United States' support for Israel. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was marked for deportation and sent thousands of miles away from her home in Massachusetts to a detention facility in Louisiana for writing an op-ed calling on her school to divest from companies benefiting from Israel's assault on Gaza—and was released earlier this month, with a judge saying her detention was a clear assault on the First Amendment.
"If our democracy is to survive, the freedoms of speech and the press need a vigorous, determined defense. Leaders of this country's most powerful, well-resourced, and prestigious institutions must play a larger part in this effort."
Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri was released from immigration detention in Texas last week; he was apparently targeted by the Trump administration for his support for Palestinian rights and because his father-in-law, Ahmed Yousef, was a former adviser to a Hamas leader. Yousef has publicly condemned Hamas' October 2023 attacks.
Columbia graduate Mohsen Mahdawi wore a keffiyeh over his robe at commencement on Monday in solidarity with Palestinians—and received a standing ovation—less than a month after he was freed from detention. He had also been marked for deportation for organizing pro-Palestinian protests.
But another Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, remains in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana more than two months after being accosted at his campus apartment along with his pregnant wife and hustled into an unmarked car by immigration agents for his role in last year's pro-Palestinian protests.
The open letter on Monday did not mention Columbia University by name, but condemned universities and organizations that have capitulated to the White House.
Columbia trustees allegedly collaborated with ICE to detain Khalil, and when threatened with the revocation of $400 million in federal grants and contract, agreed to take a number of steps the Trump administration claimed were aimed at "fighting antisemitism." The school agreed to impose a ban on masks, appointed an administrator to oversee Middle Eastern and Palestinian studies, and hire "special officers" with the authority to swiftly remove people from campus.
"The logic that leads even powerful institutions to compromise or submit in these circumstances is of course easy to understand," reads the open letter. "But when one institution 'bends the knee,' its peers face increased pressure to do the same. Each surrender makes the assertion of First Amendment rights more costly and more perilous. We fear that if major institutions continue to submit rather than stand on their rights, the freedoms of speech and the press will be seriously and perhaps irrecoverably weakened."
Along with its attacks on higher education, the Trump administration has targeted major law firms—terminating their federal contracts and limiting their employees from entering federal buildings—in retaliation for their representation of his political opponents.
Some law firms have filed legal challenges against the president—and won—but others, including Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, have negotiated with the administration, offering pro bono legal services and promising to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
"These actions call for a forceful, uncompromising response. Some institutions have countered in exactly this way, to their credit," wrote the free speech groups on Monday. "It has been disheartening, however, to see so many others capitulating to the administration's unconstitutional demands rather than asserting their rights."
The letter also condemned the Trump administration's decision to bar legal scholars from providing information to the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; its rule banning The Associated Press from White House press briefings for its refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico by Trump's chosen name, the "Gulf of America"; and the Federal Communications Commission's threat to revoke the licenses of TV and radio networks if the president disagrees with their news coverage.
"In little more than 100 days, President Trump and the agencies under his control have threatened First Amendment rights through a breathtaking array of actions," reads the letter. "If our democracy is to survive, the freedoms of speech and the press need a vigorous, determined defense. Leaders of this country's most powerful, well-resourced, and prestigious institutions must play a larger part in this effort."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, warned that "First Amendment freedoms will wither if institutional leaders don't assert and defend them."
"This letter is meant to be a call to duty," he said, "and to civic courage.”
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Farmers Sue Trump USDA Over Deletion of 'Vital' Climate Information
"USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources," argued one attorney.
Feb 24, 2025
Climate defenders and farmers sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's unlawful purge of climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites."
The complaint was filed in the Southern District of New York by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY).
The case focuses on just one part of Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to purge the federal government and its resources of anyone or anything that doesn't align with his far-right agenda, including information about the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"USDA's irrational climate change purge doesn't just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over," Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. "USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources."
"The Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats."
Specifically, the groups accused the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act. As the complaint details, on January 30, "USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee sent an email ordering USDA staff to 'identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change' by 'no later than close of business' on Friday, January 31."
"Within hours, and without any public notice or explanation, USDA purged its websites of vital resources about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, and investment in clean energy projects in rural America, among many other subjects," the document states. "In doing so, it disabled access to numerous datasets, interactive tools, and essential information about USDA programs and policies."
EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger explained that "by wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods."
NOFA-NY board president Wes Gillingham emphasized that "farmers are on the frontlines of climate impacts, we have been reacting to extreme weather and making choices to protect our businesses and our food system for years. Climate change is not a hoax. Farmers, fishermen, and foresters know from experience, that we need every piece of science and intergenerational knowledge to adjust to this new reality."
Rebecca Riley, NRDC's managing director of food and agriculture, pointed out that "by removing climate information from the USDA's website, the Trump administration is not just making farming harder—it is undermining our ability to adapt and respond to the very challenges climate change presents."
The coalition asked the court to declare the purge unlawful and order the USDA to restore the webpages, to refrain from further implementing Rhee's directive, and to comply with its legal obligations regarding public notices.
“USDA's policies influence everything from the shape of our economy to the food we eat," said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. "USDA's sudden elimination of webpages that used to provide this information hurts all of us. Members of the public have a right to know how the department is implementing its priorities and administering its programs."
The New York Times reported Monday that "the Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment." The suit is just one of dozens filed against the Trump administration since the inauguration last month.
Schechinger stressed that "this lawsuit isn't just about transparency—it's about holding those in power accountable for undermining the very information that helps protect the livelihoods of food producers, the food system, and our future."
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'Flawed and Dangerous': US Appeals Panel Upholds Potential TikTok Ban
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad."
Dec 06, 2024
First Amendment advocates on Friday criticized a U.S. appellate court for upholding a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company does not swiftly sell the social media platform used by an estimated 170 million Americans.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law gives ByteDance until January 19 to divest from TikTok. Three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the parts of the law considered by the panel "do not contravene the First Amendment" nor other parts of the Constitution of the United States.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States," Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in an opinion the company is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Responding to the decision on social media Friday, Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said that "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."
Jameel Jaffer, who was on a friend-of-the-court brief as director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, issued a similar warning after the ruling was released.
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad," he said. "I hope the D.C. Circuit's ruling won't be the last word—and I doubt it will be."
Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, also looked ahead to the next court fight.
"The D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok ban will immeasurably harm the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in the U.S. and globally who use the app to create, to share information, to get their news, and promote their businesses," she said in a statement. "We hope the next phase of review of this misguided and overbroad law will be a chance to right this wrong and prevent it from going into effect."
In addition to arguing the law is unconstitutional, attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance "have claimed it's impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically,"
The Associated Press reported. "They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm—the platform's secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan—would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content."
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office one day after the law's divestment deadline, previously supported banning the platform, but during the latest campaign, he pledged to try to "save TikTok." According to The Washington Post:
Trump is expected to try to halt the TikTok ban, people familiar with his views on the matter told The Washington Post in early November, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department, said Trump could take any of three actions to help TikTok fend off the ban: persuading Congress to repeal the law, directing his new attorney general not to enforce it, and declaring that ByteDance has satisfied the statute by performing a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok.
Although the president-elect hasn't yet weighed in on the new court decision, on Thursday he shared on his Truth Social platform a post-election overview of how his campaign performed on TikTok.
While Trump may move to preserve TikTok in the United States, civil rights attorney and Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo noted that the court decision's "terrible precedent" is also a concern as he returns to office.
"This will be a test of the U.S.'s ability to shut down access to websites they dislike," Caraballo stressed. "Really bad to do with Trump in office! We could enter a new era of government censorship."
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Report Details Intensifying Police Crackdown on US Journalists Covering Protests
"The inadequacy of press freedom protections was starkly exposed during the Trump administration, when some of the largest street protests in American history took place," according to a new report.
Jun 20, 2023
In recent years, particularly since former Republican President Donald Trump took office in 2017, U.S. police have failed to uphold basic constitutional rights for journalists covering rallies and other protests, a new report from the Knight First Amendment Institute said Tuesday, with the study documenting a number of physical attacks, unjust arrests, and suppression tactics used by police at protests both large and small.
Senior visiting fellow Joel Simon interviewed dozens of journalists and legal experts about the resurgence of police violence against journalists in recent years—a trend that recalls numerous "notorious incidents" that took place during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, including the harassment of reporters attempting to cover school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas and the seizure of camera film from journalists in Greenwood, Mississippi as police dogs attacked protesters.
In the 1980s and 90s, Simon wrote in the report, "violent police attacks on journalists receded along with police-protester clashes, perhaps in part because many police departments adopted a more conciliatory, negotiation-based approach to demonstrators."
"The steady growth of police militarization post-9/11," however, "helped fuel further conflict with the press," Simon wrote.
In recent decades the Department of Defense has supplied police departments across the U.S. with "military-grade equipment like armored vehicles, rifles, and grenades," noted the author, and a PEN America report on the protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown illustrated how that change in law enforcement agencies' arsenals has intensified police officers' treatment of journalists as well as protesters:
The actions against journalists, as well as those against protesters, were "fueled by the aggressive militarized response by police to largely peaceful public protests... This apparently created a mentality among some police officers that they were patrolling a war zone, rather than a predominantly peaceful protest attended by citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, and members of the press who also possess those rights." The number of reported abuses "strongly suggests that some police officers were deliberately trying to prevent the media from documenting the protests and the police response."
In Ferguson, Simon wrote, researchers documented 52 alleged violations of reporters' constitutional right to cover protests, including physical attacks and aggression, obstruction of access, and 21 arrests.
"Protests have always been dangerous to cover, but we had never seen anything on this scale."
The protests in Ferguson marked a milestone in law enforcement's changing relationship with the press, the report shows, followed six years later by a number of rights violations during the nationwide racial justice uprising of 2020 in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"The inadequacy of press freedom protections was starkly exposed during the Trump administration, when some of the largest street protests in American history took place, including those against the Floyd murder," wrote Simon. "During that period, police frequently assaulted, arrested, or detained journalists at protests, particularly when enforcing dispersal orders, imposing curfews, or deploying crowd control measures. In 2020, at least 129 journalists were arrested covering social justice protests. More than 400 journalists suffered physical attacks, 80% of them at the hands of law enforcement."
Photojournalist Mike Shum described to Simon how "law enforcement turned on the media" in Minneapolis four days after Floyd's murder, after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) imposed an 8:00 pm curfew that ostensibly exempted the press:
That night police fired on a group of journalists with rubber bullets, hitting Shum in the foot. "It was confusing because we just kept screaming 'we’re press, we're press,’ but the bullets just kept flying," Shum recalled. In a separate incident that day, police in Minnesota fired on photojournalist Linda Tirado with what is believed to be a rubber bullet, permanently blinding her in one eye.
Other journalists were "pelted with pepper spray, tear gas, and other projectiles as they ran to take cover" after police "formed a skirmish line" to enforce the curfew. A photographer working with NBC, Ed Ou, was "hit in the head with what he believes was a flash-bang grenade" and then "blasted" with pepper spray by police who ignored his pleas for medical assistance.
Outside the Twin Cities, other journalists covering the uprising were hit with batons, beaten, and shot with rubber bullets, as well as arrested for trying to report on the protests.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker—whose data Simon used to compile the report—found that "hundreds of separate incidents" of police violence against journalists took place in 80 cities across 36 states in the year following Floyd's murder. Journalists in 309 cases said they were targeted by police officers between May 26, 2020—the day after the killing—and May 26, 2021, and 44 of those cases took place in Minneapolis.
"Protests have always been dangerous to cover, but we had never seen anything on this scale," Kirstin McCudden, managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, told Simon.
The report also details the use of "kettling"—in which police contain protesters, and in some cases, journalists, by surrounding them in one area—which was prevalent during the demonstrations that erupted in Washington, D.C. during Trump's inauguration in 2017.
One journalist, Aaron Cantú, was reporting on the "DisruptJ20" rally when he was trapped by the police officers' kettling tactic.
"He assumed he could approach the police line and explain he was reporting on the rally," Simon wrote. "But when he initially tried to engage with police, he was hit with pepper spray in his eyes and temporarily blinded."
Police also applied zip ties to Cantú's wrists "so tightly that his hands went numb" and refused him access to food or a bathroom "during the more than eight hours he was held in the kettle." Law enforcement also demanded access to his phone and electronic communications.
"The nature of journalism has changed, and the law does not appear to have kept up," Cantú told Simon. "In these dangerous situations, law enforcement is deciding who is or who is not a journalist."
Cantú was one of more than 200 protesters and journalists who were arrested at the protest, none of whom were ultimately convicted of a crime.
"These events could have played out differently. Police could have opted not to use kettling, an indiscriminate tactic that detains everyone in a geographical area, instead attempting to single out for arrest those who were violating the law," wrote Simon. "Police might have made a greater effort to ascertain if journalists were accidentally caught up in the kettle and to release them if their role could be confirmed. Prosecutors could have made a decision not to charge them, based on the fact that they were acting as journalists and engaged in newsgathering activities."
In the report, Simon called on police to refrain from interfering with or using force against anyone engaged in newsgathering activity and exempt reporters from curfew and dispersal orders.
"When the general public is no longer permitted to remain at the site of a protest, police can use indicators like a press credential, distinctive clothing marked 'press,' or professional recording equipment, to guide their determinations about who is exempt from the order," he wrote. "When in doubt, police should assume that someone who appears to be engaged in journalism is in fact a journalist."
Other recommendations include:
- State legislatures codifying such exemptions into law and requiring police to actively work to ensure journalists can operate at protests;
- News organizations offering police training on upholding press freedom and meeting directly with law enforcement agencies to establish a dialogue between press and police; and
- The U.S. Department of Justice opening investigations into credible allegations of the mistreatment of journalists at protests to establish whether there is a pattern of such conduct at police agencies.
Three years after the George Floyd protests, and ahead of the 2024 election, Simon wrote, "America remains polarized and broader policing issues are a source of deep controversy."
"This is the moment to tackle the historic challenge," he added. "The next wave of mass protests could be just around the corner. So could America's next press freedom crisis."
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Letting 'Secrecy Prevail,' SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to NSA Mass Surveillance
"If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia's challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans' privacy," said the Knight First Amendment Institute's litigation director.
Feb 21, 2023
Privacy advocates on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Wikimedia Foundation's case against a federal program for spying on Americans' online communications with people abroad.
The nonprofit foundation, which operates Wikipedia, took aim at the National Security Agency (NSA) program "Upstream" that—under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—searches emails, internet messages, and other web communications leaving and entering the United States.
"In the course of this surveillance, both U.S. residents and individuals located outside the U.S. are impacted," the foundation explained in a statement. "The NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of internet traffic, including private data showing what millions of people around the world are browsing online, from communications with friends and family to reading and editing knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects."
"This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA's mass surveillance in 2013," the group added.
Last August, Wikimedia—represented by the ACLU, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP—petitioned the high court to take up the case after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed it based on the "state secrets privilege."
"The Supreme Court's refusal to grant our petition strikes a blow against an individual's right to privacy and freedom of expression—two cornerstones of our society and the building blocks of Wikipedia," said Wikimedia legal director James Buatti. "We will continue to champion everyone's right to free knowledge, and urge Congress to take on the issue of mass surveillance as it evaluates whether to reauthorize Section 702 later this year."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, in a separate case, the ACLU sued the NSA along with the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence for failing to respond to public records requests for information about Section 702, which will expire if it is not reauthorized.
"Before Congress votes on reauthorizing this law, Americans should know how the government wants to use these sweeping spying powers," Patrick Toomey, deputy project director for the ACLU's National Security Project, said at the time.
Responding to the development in the Wikimedia case on Tuesday, Toomey declared that "the Supreme Court let secrecy prevail today, at immense cost to Americans' privacy."
"We depend on the courts to hold the government to account, especially when it wields powerful new technologies to peer into our lives like never before. But the Supreme Court has again allowed the executive branch to hide abuses behind unjustifiable claims of secrecy," he continued. "It is now up to Congress to insist on landmark reforms that will safeguard Americans in the face of the NSA's mass spying programs."
In a series of tweets about the case, the ACLU asserted that "we all deserve to use the internet without fear of being monitored by the government" and by declining to hear the case, "the court has slammed shut one of the only doors left to hold the NSA accountable for surveillance abuses revealed in 2013" by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
That thread concluded with a call for Congress to kill Section 702—which Snowden himself echoed on the platform:
Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, joined them in urging action from U.S. lawmakers.
"This decision is a blow to the rule of law," Abdo said of the high court. "The government has now succeeded in insulating from public judicial review one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever enacted. If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia's challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans' privacy by reining in the NSA's mass surveillance of the internet."
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