As the government continues to surveil Americans through smartphone data, the American Civil Liberties Union wants three agencies to provide their database records. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the ACLU urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide records about their access to Venntel, a global mobile location database. According to the lawsuit, the agencies have been compiling data on millions of immigrants in efforts to locate and detain them.
“If law enforcement agencies can buy their way around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the landmark protection announced by the Supreme Court in Carpenter will be in peril,” the ACLU said in a statement. “Despite federal agencies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on access to cell phone location databases, those agencies have not publicly explained their legal justifications or internal limitations on access to this invasive information.”
Democratic senators uncovered the issue earlier this year and attempted to force the agencies to provide information to no avail. According to The Hill, the ACLU waited more than nine months for the agencies to provide records through the Freedom of Information Act. While not all three agencies commented on the issue citing pending litigation, CBP officials confirmed to Senate staff that it was tracking phones using Venntel but the information was privileged.
After demands to investigate DHS tracking, the department’s internal watchdog said it would investigate the issue of tracking without a warrant on Wednesday. Carpenter vs. United States, a 2018 Supreme Court decision, found that collecting significant amounts of location data from cellphones requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.
“If federal agencies are tracking American citizens without warrants, the public deserves answers and accountability,” Sen. Ron Wyden said in a statement, The Washington Post reported. “I won’t accept anything less than a thorough and swift inspector general investigation that sheds light on CBP’s phone location data surveillance program.”
By obtaining the agencies’ records of purchase including copies of contracts, policies, and procedures for data use, the ACLU believes there will be better understanding of how the government uses “invasive surveillance technology both at the border and within American communities, and whether they are complying with constitutional and legal limitations on unreasonable searches,” the lawsuit said.
While it is known that a number of applications sell location data to third parties, many third parties like Venntel do not fully disclose their client list. The ACLU filed the lawsuit in efforts to uncover whether or not the Trump administration’s purchase of location data is legal. “It’s critical we uncover how federal agencies are accessing bulk databases of location data and why. There can’t be accountability without transparency. If the government can buy its way around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, our privacy rights will be in danger,” the ACLU said in a statement posted to Twitter.
A number of senators have backed the nonprofit, noting that the administration and government cannot claim that certain laws do not apply to them. “CBP is not above the law and it should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment,” said the senators in a letter addressed to the agencies.
The news comes as just another attack the Trump administration has consistently made on immigrants. In the last four years, immigrants across the U.S. have been detained in record numbers and continue to be so despite an ongoing pandemic. The Trump administration must be transparent and take accountability for its inhumane practices and efforts to detain immigrants at any cost