Solidarity Over Surveillance

The surveillance state is everywhere. It’s growing and insatiable … and only getting worse.With the assistance of private tech companies and brokers that harvest our data, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security are deploying surveillance tools to target protest movements and identify and deport immigrants.Communities across the country are pushing back. Local groups are joining together to ban license-plate-reader companies like Flock from their towns. States are passing laws to prevent the federal government and law enforcement from buying our data from private parties. And activists are educating their communities on how to protect themselves from rampant surveillance.The time is now to rein in the surveillance state. That’s why we launched Solidarity Over Surveillance (#SOS) — a multistate effort to protect our basic privacy and civil liberties.Solidarity Over Surveillance is a hub for individuals, communities and organizations to learn about and join the fights against corporate and government-sponsored surveillance.‍We’re fighting to:
The government must take immediate action to protect our constitutional right to privacy and stop warrantless data collection.Government spying violates our most basic rights.Add your name to tell our leaders to preserve our right to privacy and stop the surveillance state.
We want to hear from you: How has surveillance impacted you and your community? Do you have any concerns you want to share?Public storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for change.
Local newsrooms are trusted messengers in our communities. Use this form to draft and submit your letters to your local paper(s). ‍These letters will inspire your neighbors to join you in solidarity over surveillance.
Lantern laws were first enacted in New York City before other cities around the country adopted them to police people of color. These laws required Black, mixed-race and Indigenous enslaved people to carry lanterns while out after sundown if they weren’t accompanied by a white person.
This is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing. While it’s intended to prevent foreign espionage or sabotage during wartime, it has been used against immigrants who have done nothing wrong. Trump’s second administration has used this law to target immigrants it seeks to deport.
Before the invention and widespread adoption of the telephone in the 20th century, mail was the most common form of communication. The U.S. Postal Service began monitoring mail for illegal or dissident materials in the mid-1800s. The Comstock Act of 1873 was used to restrict the distribution of materials that provided information about birth control or suggested that women had bodily autonomy.
Prior to his presidency, William Howard Taft served as governor-general of the Philippines. In this role, he controlled information through draconian sedition laws that severely punished anyone involved in “subversive” political activities. He also oversaw a surveillance apparatus to suppress Filipino resistance to U.S. occupation, one of the U.S. military’s early test projects to monitor minority groups.
It was during the search for Mexican exile Ricardo Flores Magón and his followers — known as magonistas — that the U.S. Department of Justice established the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the FBI. Research from UCLA historian Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernández found that stopping the magonista uprising against Mexican President Porfirio Díaz was one of the Bureau’s first objectives as U.S. investors benefited from the dictator’s emphasis on foreign investments over the public good. In 1908, as the Bureau was established, it tasked agents with tracking, investigating and arresting magonistas in an attempt to stop them from inciting a people’s revolution in México. In the years ahead, the FBI grew into a counterinsurgency superforce, suppressing a wide range of dissenting voices and movements, from leftists during the Red Scare to the Black Power movement.
The Russian Revolution and fast-growing labor and leftist political movements within the United States fueled hysteria about immigrants and Communism. During this time, German Americans and “radicals” associated with labor, pacifist, Communist and anarchist movements were put on a secret index (or list). More than 10,000 people were arrested in mass raids throughout the country; most raids involved U.S. citizens.
Before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the FBI to conduct wiretaps for the vague, open-ended purpose of national security. J. Edgar Hoover — who founded the FBI and became its first director — pursued an agenda in which the government targeted “subversive” individuals. This amounted to anyone who expressed sympathy toward a foreign power or opposed the war effort, including workers on strike or critics of White House policy.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the detention of Japanese Americans — a horrific act that the Supreme Court later overturned. The Secretary of War and military commanders were authorized to forcibly remove anyone deemed a threat from the West Coast to internment camps further inland. Prior surveillance of Japanese Americans was key to carrying out this executive order.
The FBI established a special counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissent as part of a Cold War strategy to suppress “communist ideology” in the United States. This program’s other purpose was to expose and disrupt the activities of Black nationalists. Through the use of illegal wiretaps, warrantless physical searches, and other illegal and invasive tactics, the FBI not only delegitimized and ostracized individuals but also shaped public perception of entire movements.
President Richard Nixon exploited the moral panic that arose from increasing recreati