ACLU

DOJ Expands Voter Data Seizure Campaign to 18 States, Demanding Social Security Numbers and Driver's Licenses

| Importance: 10/10

The Department of Justice announced on December 12, 2025 that it had sued four additional states—Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada—demanding complete, unredacted voter registration lists including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, bringing the total number …

Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon Jena Griswold Bill Galvin Andrea Joy Campbell +4 more voter-suppression doj-weaponization surveillance-state electoral-manipulation civil-liberties +2 more
Read more →

Supreme Court Expands Louisiana Redistricting Case to Challenge Section 2 of Voting Rights Act

| Importance: 10/10

The Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of expanding the legal questions in Louisiana v. Callais (Nos. 24-109, 24-110), ordering supplemental briefs on whether creating majority-minority districts to remedy Voting Rights Act violations violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. The …

Supreme Court Department of Justice Louisiana NAACP Legal Defense Fund Brennan Center for Justice +2 more voting-rights-act supreme-court racial-justice louisiana redistricting +4 more
Read more →

Flock Safety Network Expands to 5,000+ Police Departments Performing 20 Billion Monthly Vehicle Scans

| Importance: 9/10

Flock Safety’s automated license plate recognition network reaches unprecedented scale, with more than 5,000 law enforcement departments across the United States using interconnected cameras that perform over 20 billion scans of vehicles every month. The company now operates in more than 5,000 …

Flock Safety Garrett Langley ACLU Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) surveillance alpr mass-surveillance license-plate-readers warrantless-surveillance +1 more
Read more →

Edward Snowden Publishes Memoir "Permanent Record"; DOJ Immediately Sues for Proceeds

| Importance: 8/10

Edward Snowden published his memoir “Permanent Record” on September 17, 2019 (Constitution Day), through Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company. The book provided Snowden’s first-person account of his life, his work in the intelligence community, his decision to …

Edward Snowden Department of Justice ACLU edward-snowden whistleblowing memoir doj-lawsuit nsa-surveillance +1 more
Read more →

ACLU test reveals Amazon Rekognition misidentified 28 Congress members as criminals, showing racial bias

| Importance: 8/10

On July 26, 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released results of an independently verified test demonstrating that Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress with mugshots from a database of arrest photos. The test, which cost …

ACLU Amazon AWS John Lewis Jimmy Gomez surveillance facial-recognition amazon rekognition racial-bias +4 more
Read more →

ACLU Exposes Geofeedia's Surveillance of Black Lives Matter Protests Through Social Media Platforms

| Importance: 9/10

The ACLU of Northern California released a report revealing that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram had provided special data access to Geofeedia, a surveillance technology company that marketed its location-based monitoring tools to law enforcement agencies for tracking Black Lives Matter protesters …

ACLU Geofeedia Twitter Facebook Instagram surveillance social-media black-lives-matter protests civil-rights +3 more
Read more →

Second Circuit Rules NSA Bulk Phone Metadata Collection Illegal Under Patriot Act

| Importance: 9/10

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled in ACLU v. Clapper that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone metadata was not authorized by Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, effectively declaring the surveillance program …

Second Circuit Court of Appeals Gerard Lynch NSA ACLU nsa-surveillance judicial-oversight patriot-act section-215 privacy-rights +1 more
Read more →

Crawford v. Marion County: Supreme Court Upholds Strict Voter ID Laws Despite No Evidence of In-Person Fraud

| Importance: 8/10

The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s strict photo voter ID law in Crawford v. Marion County, ruling 6-3 that the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud and maintaining public confidence in elections justified the burden imposed on voters without qualifying identification. The decision …

Supreme Court John Paul Stevens Indiana Legislature ACLU Republican National Committee voting-rights supreme-court voter-id voter-suppression indiana
Read more →

California Proposition 187 Passes 59-41, Galvanizes Latino Voter Mobilization

| Importance: 8/10

California voters approve Proposition 187 by 59% to 41%, a ballot initiative that prohibits undocumented immigrants from accessing public services including non-emergency healthcare and primary and secondary education, while requiring public servants such as medical professionals and teachers to …

Pete Wilson California voters Latino civil rights organizations ACLU immigration-policy racial-politics voter-mobilization unconstitutional political-backlash
Read more →