State, DHS sued by union groups over AI-fueled surveillance programs
A trio of labor unions is suing the Departments of State and Homeland Security over what they say is an interagency technology surveillance program that targets citizens and noncitizens with viewpoints that differ from the Trump administration and effectively suppresses their speech online.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, United Automobile Workers, Communications Workers of America and American Federation of Teachers alleged that State and DHS implemented a “challenged surveillance program” focused on U.S.-based visa holders and lawful permanent residents with university affiliations.
The unions say this “vast surveillance apparatus” uses artificial intelligence and other automated technologies to conduct “viewpoint-based surveillance” of social media platforms. Paired with “explicit threats from high-ranking public officials to surveil and punish lawfully present noncitizens for speech documented online,” the lawsuit makes the case that the program has chilled protected speech of thousands of noncitizens lawfully present in the United States and their families, friends and colleagues.
“Every worker should be alarmed by the Trump administration’s online surveillance program,” CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. said in a statement. “The labor movement is built on our freedoms under the First Amendment to speak and assemble without fear [of] retaliation by the government. The unconstitutional Challenged Surveillance Program threatens those freedoms and explicitly targets those who are critical of the administration and its policies. This policy interferes with CWA members’ ability to express their points of view online and organize to improve their working conditions.”
According to the lawsuit, independent sources have confirmed that the program uses automated and “AI-assisted reviews” of online activity. The State Department, DHS and a handful of its subcomponents — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations — have contracts with tech firms for tools that collect, monitor and analyze social media posts.
The plaintiffs listed several AI-powered social media monitoring services currently in use by the agencies, citing federal spending records. They also noted a recent RFI from ICE for private vendors to staff two teams of analysts charged with sifting through social media platforms and law-enforcement data sources to find leads and build dossiers.
“Importantly, AI and otherwise automated viewpoint-based online surveillance exacerbate the chilling impact of that surveillance,” the lawsuit states. “The government’s utilization of AI and automated tools for viewpoint-driven online surveillance gives teeth to its threat to surveil ‘everyone’ online for disfavored expression.
“AI and automated tools also struggle to distinguish between protected and unprotected speech, in part because AI and automated tools have difficulty discerning the nuances of language, as well as the broader context in which expression occurred,” it continued. “On information and belief, these tools thus sweep in greater amounts of speech than manual review would, thereby amplifying the chilling effect.”
Lisa Femia, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the organizations representing the union groups, said in a statement that by using a variety of AI and automated tools, “the government can now conduct viewpoint-based surveillance and analysis on a scale that was never possible with human review alone. The scale of this spying is matched by an equally massive chilling effect on free speech.”
The UAW, CWA and AFT say the challenged surveillance program has crushed engagement among union members now fearful of organizing and speaking freely on labor issues. The program, the lawsuit alleges, violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. Attorneys for the unions are asking the federal court for an order to set it aside as an unlawful agency action and issue a permanent injunction against its operation and all “unlawful use of the disfavored online expression it has collected.”
“When they spy on, silence, and fire union members for speaking out, they’re not just targeting individuals — they’re targeting the very idea of freedom itself,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “The right to protest, to organize, to speak without fear — that’s the foundation of American democracy. If they can come for UAW members at our worksites, they can come for any one of us tomorrow. And we will not stand by and let that happen.”
