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When Andreas Gal, CEO of Silk Labs and a US citizen, returned to the US from a business trip in Europe last year, he was detained by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) for secondary screening. He claims he was threatened with unwarranted charges, denied access to an attorney, and told he had to unlock his electronic devices before he would be allowed to leave.
[...] Despite being told he had no right to an attorney, he says he refused to answer questions and was eventually allowed to go without unlocking his devices, though his Global Entry card – a subscription-based biometric border entry program to facilitate travel – was taken from him.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued CBP claiming that the agency maintains secretive units to "detain, search, question, and/or deny entry to people with valid travel documents who present no security risk."
The ACLU complaint, filed in the Eastern District of New York, seeks CBP documents under the Freedom of Information Act that the agency has refused to produce.
It contends that these Tactical Terrorism Response Teams (TTRTs) have operated for the past few years and target individuals, including US citizens, "who do not present a security risk but may hold information or have a connection to individuals of interest to the US government."
"The public has a right to know how these teams operate, how their officers are trained, and whether the guidelines that govern their activities contain civil liberties and privacy safeguards," the ACLU said in a statement announcing its lawsuit.
The complaint says TTRTs target people without valid cause, based on hunches and instinct, raising the likelihood that travelers are subject to profiling based on race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or proxies for those attributes. As such, TTRTs may be violating protections guaranteed by the US Constitution.
(Score: 5, Informative) by helel on Saturday December 21 2019, @10:52PM
The ACLU and EFF tend to operate in the courts. Has someone been arrested or harassed by the government or other large institution for distributing "It's ok to be White" flyers? Has anyone been charged with a hate crime for using the OK hand sign? If somebody has been and the ACLU has failed to act then you might have a point but as long as those activities are merely socially taboo and not criminal it seems the ACLU is doing its job in protecting free speech.
But this isn't theoretical. When the city fo Charlottesville tried to revoke the protest permit of white nationalists defending the Robert E. Lee statue the ACLU stepped in [vox.com] defending their right to free speech in court. This is hardly an isolated incident. The ACLU routinely defends conservatives who's rights are being threatened. The fact that you see them as partisan says far more about your world view then it does theirs.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]