When you created your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account, did you think you were signing up to have the government spy on you? That your personal information — who you are, what you say, what you do, your friends, and your political views — could be tapped by surveillance companies and sold to police, deportation agencies, and other local, state, and federal forces?

In 2016, the ACLU of Northern California blew the whistle on how private surveillance vendors were using Facebook and Twitter to help police target Black Lives Matter activists. As a result of advocacy by the ACLU of Northern California, MediaJustice, and Color of Change, both Facebook and Twitter strengthened their anti-surveillance policies and cut off access to social media surveillance companies.

In the years that followed, both companies have repeatedly gone on record, as recently as 2021, to reassure the public that they do not give surveillance companies special access to users’ personal information.

But are Meta and X keeping their promises? Documents uncovered in further investigations show that there are still strong causes for concern.

That’s why the ACLU of Northern California, the Brennan Center, and the ACLU are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Meta and X have broken their anti-surveillance commitments. If they have, it could qualify as a deceptive business practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act. And it could also violate separate consent orders placed on them by the FTC.

The world of social media is very different than it was in 2016. Both Meta and X have been rocked by scandal and tumult (and they’ve also changed their names). On the technological side, the explosive growth of artificial intelligence has the potential to supercharge surveillance, posing serious dangers to the safety of immigrants, overpoliced Black and Brown communities, activists, LGBTQ people, and those in need of abortions and reproductive care.

It’s more important than ever that the FTC takes a hard look at whether Meta and X are actually following their policies and their promises to the public.

Here are three questions that should lead the agency’s investigation.

The strongest evidence that Meta and X aren’t following their own anti-surveillance policies comes from surveillance vendors themselves.

Companies like Dataminr (an official “partner” of X), Babel Street, Skopenow, Media Sonar, and ShadowDragon publicly claim that they have access to data from Meta and/or X. Those companies sell their services, data, and products — which appear to operate at extraordinary scale — to police and other government agencies through contracts that can be extremely lucrative.

Investigations and public records requests and lawsuits by the ACLU of Northern California, the Brennan Center and others have uncovered marketing materials, emails, training manuals, and contracts between surveillance companies and government agencies.

These materials suggest that law enforcement agencies are getting deep access to social media companies’ stores of data about people as they go about their daily lives.

Something’s not right. If these companies can really do what they advertise, the FTC needs to figure out how.

The scale and scope of social media surveillance products are frightening. They potentially give the government the power to compile and analyze many millions of social media posts and user activity, a mind-boggling amount of data.

It’s unlikely that these surveillance systems could operate at this scale without Meta and X allowing some kind of special access to user data.

The public deserves answers, and the FTC must investigate how surveillance vendors are still accessing user data.

Surveillance companies stand to make millions off government contracts. We know their clients include local and state police departments, the Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And as we describe in our letter to the FTC, we’ve seen the government use social media in ways that cause intolerable harm to communities already in harm’s way.

There have been layoffs in “trust and safety” and policy programs at the social media companies, raising concerns about whether Meta and X have the necessary staff to enforce their anti-surveillance policies.

It’s not enough to rely on a posted policy alone to deter surveillance vendors. There must be robust implementation, auditing structures, and enforcement mechanisms to comply with these public commitments.

We call on the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that what Meta and X tell people publicly lines up with their actual practices. With all the evidence raising serious questions about Meta and X’s anti-surveillance commitments, the agency should act swiftly to ensure people’s privacy is being properly protected.

This year, the ACLU continued our defense against challenges to our civil rights and liberties — but we also enjoyed some heartening victories. This advocacy is hard-fought and lasts months, if not years. But we persist in courts, legislatures, and communities, and this persistence pays off. Here are a few of the many wins we saw this year during our enduring fight for our rights.

This year’s Election Day saw some critical wins for reproductive freedom, with a majority of individuals in Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania voting to protect abortion rights in their state. The ACLU and affiliates helped play a key role in these victories by educating voters, equipping them with knowledge about the measures and candidates on their ballots.

In 2022, Louisiana’s governor made the abhorrent decision to move children in the juvenile justice system to the former death row of the infamous maximum security prison Angola. The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to stop the unconstitutional and dangerous transfer, and continued to advocate for the children’s removal. In September, a judge ruled that the children detained at Angola had been subject to conditions that constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” The state moved the children to comply with the court order, but continues to fight for the right to use the prison for children again in the future. Our work to prevent this from happening and ensure children in state custody receive the support they need is not over.

As part of a continued effort to protect students’ rights to wear tribal regalia, the ACLU, our Mississippi affiliate, and the Native American Rights Fund sent a letter to a school board in Mississippi explaining that state law requires public schools to allow Native American students to wear tribal regalia and objects of cultural significance, such as eagle feathers, at graduation. The school board reversed course, and the student was able to attend the ceremony with an eagle feather on her graduation cap.

Following a lengthy trial in 2022, and many more months of advocacy alongside our brave plaintiffs, the ACLU saw a favorable ruling in Brandt v. Rutledge, a case challenging an Arkansas law that would prohibit access to medically necessary health care. In June, a federal judge overturned the law banning gender-affirming care in the state, saying it violated the rights of transgender youth, as well as their parents and medical providers.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which strengthens pregnant workers’ access to time off or job modifications, was passed by President Biden in 2022 and went into effect this summer. This followed over a decade of advocacy by the ACLU and our partners, which included representing pregnant workers whose employers refused to accommodate them.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act in Brackeen v. Haaland. The federal law helps ensure that Native families stay together by creating a placement preference to promote the stability and security of Native American tribes and families.. The ACLU filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to protect the act.

Following an ACLU complaint filed against the company in 2022 on behalf of a nonbinary flight attendant, Alaska Airlines agreed in May to adopt a gender inclusive uniform policy. The legal agreement also requires additional training and education for Alaska Airlines’ more than 20,000 employees, setting an important precedent for other employers in the industry.

Alongside our partners, we challenged Alabama’s racially discriminatory congressional map, which was redrawn strategically to dilute the voting power of Black communities. This past June, the Supreme Court ruled in our favor, while also affirming that race can be used in the redistricting process to ensure voters of color are not being silenced. This is just one example of our ongoing work to ensure that legislatures accurately reflect their constituencies and to obtain fair representation for Black voters.

Louisiana has more people in immigration detention than any other state in the country except Texas. Across the state, thousands of people are held in just nine Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, often in isolated regions where legal services are almost nonexistent. To put this into context, there are only about 10-12 pro-bono attorneys for the entire state, despite the immense need for legal support. This means that people detained in Louisiana essentially have no basic legal orientation or assistance in navigating the labyrinth that is the immigration legal system.

That’s why the ACLU of Louisiana has developed a unique series of visits to remote Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, combining direct legal assistance with on-the-ground advocacy and litigation. About every five to seven weeks, we, along with coalition partners like Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center, pile into cars stuffed with Know Your Rights (KYR) materials in up to 10 languages to drive to visit two to three detention centers over the course of a week. We’ve been visiting people in detention and distributing these materials for the past two years.

During these visits, we conduct group KYR presentations and one-on-one interviews with detained individuals to provide vital information that people in removal proceedings desperately need. These presentations, while general, also delve into crucial details about the asylum process, other available protections in the U.S., and how to seek release from detention.

Over the course of these visits, we also gather valuable information about issues that people are facing in detention and in their removal proceedings. While the facilities may skate by their annual inspections, these visits provide a direct line to people who can report what is happening on the ground. People we meet often tell us that we are the only lawyers providing any help in the region, and we have been greeted with tears of relief for providing the first friendly face who can explain why they are even detained while trying to seek asylum. This is especially true for individuals with limited English proficiency, or individuals who speak Indigenous or less common languages, and thus have not been able to communicate with nearly anyone while detained.

Asylum Seeker's Wrongful 6-Year Detention is Emblematic of a Broken System

Our client sought refuge from violence and persecution. Instead, ICE detained her for over six years.

We intervene in individual cases when we can, advocating for individuals with ICE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the immigration courts. Occasionally, we and our partners are able to represent individuals in particularly egregious situations — like the case of Jessica Barahona-Martinez, an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker who was detained for over six years despite winning asylum twice, until we and the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project filed a habeas petition seeking her release. These trips are an invaluable opportunity to document the cruelty and impact of ICE detention and support coalition efforts to shut down facilities in the region.

In future blogs, we will delve into recent KYR trips taken by the ACLU of Louisiana in addition to trips made by affiliates in other states, sharing insights about the broader challenges people face in immigration detention today — including lack of medical care and language access services, abuse and intimidation by facility staff, appalling conditions, and due process concerns. The experiences of people in immigration detention in Louisiana are by no means limited to the state, and instead, exemplify the systemic issues people in immigration detention face nationwide.