ACLU Releases Roadmap to Rein in Government Surveillance Under a Harris Administration

The American Civil Liberties Union released Harris on Surveillance: Protecting Individual Liberties and Rights by Constraining Executive Power today, a memo outlining steps Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris can take to rein in expansive government surveillance and protect individual rights and liberties if she is elected. The memo also details how the ACLU will work to ensure a Harris administration confronts dangers to our privacy rights head on.

The executive branch has immense power and discretion to surveil and investigate, with severe consequences for individual rights. Over the past two decades, the executive branch’s surveillance powers have become even more expansive, as successive presidents from both parties have sought to maintain and enlarge these powers without meaningful judicial or congressional constraints and oversight. Our Harris on Surveillance memo urges Harris, if elected, to protect against Big Brother digital surveillance, end unjustified and discriminatory domestic surveillance, and implement safeguards for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data privacy.

“Despite perennial campaign trail promises to rein in surveillance powers that violate our privacy and civil liberties, once in office, presidents from both parties have all-too-often doubled down on the same powers that consistently lead to abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “Regardless of who is president, the ACLU will continue to shed light on the government’s warrantless spying on Americans and challenge wrongful and discriminatory surveillance in court to vindicate the rights of people who are harmed.”

“As a senator, Kamala Harris had a strong record of opposing legislative efforts to expand mass surveillance powers. As vice president, she recognized the ‘moral, ethical, and societal duty’ to protect Americans from potential harms of AI. If elected president, we hope she brings that same fire to the White House in order to restore checks and balances to mass surveillance,” said Kia Hamadanchy, ACLU senior policy counsel.

The ACLU’s roadmap released today outlines our plan to rein in government surveillance by:

• Protecting against Big Brother digital surveillance, like spying under Section 702 and Executive Order 12333, and massive government purchases of our information from commercial data brokers. These activities allow the government to obtain sensitive, private information about Americans without a warrant or privacy safeguards. The ACLU will continue to shed light on surveillance abuses, work with allies in Congress to narrow surveillance authorities, and work to restrict the flow of our private data from the states and cities to federal agencies.
• Ending unjustified and discriminatory domestic surveillance and investigation, including through loopholes in federal national security policies that permit bias, watchlisting, social media monitoring, and other wrongful and discriminatory targeting of people exercising their rights to free speech and association. People who are racial and religious minorities or who dissent from government policy are often unfairly targeted for surveillance and investigation by federal agencies. The ACLU will use the courts to vindicate people’s rights and expose the arbitrary nature of watchlisting and surveillance, and urge a potential Harris administration to explicitly prohibit discrimination and rein in domestic surveillance powers.
• Implementing strong safeguards for artificial intelligence and data privacy. National security agencies are increasingly developing and deploying powerful AI systems, which present immense risks to the rights and safety of people in the U.S. and abroad. Yet these agencies have largely been exempted from important measures to increase transparency, trust, and fairness. The ACLU will urge a Harris administration to establish robust safeguards around federal uses of AI, will use the courts to ensure greater public transparency around AI, and will work with allies in Congress to pass a federal comprehensive data privacy law that will reduce how much data is collected from us in the first place.

The Harris on Surveillance memo marks the fifth of six memos the ACLU is releasing on the Democratic nominee. In addition to surveillance and privacy, the memos have focused on abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights, with an additional memo on the criminal legal system yet to be released. This series follows seven memos the ACLU released on policies of a potential second Trump administration, including one on surveillance that can be found here.

The Harris on Surveillance memo is available here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/harris-on-surveillance