From Newsgroup: alt.politics.media

The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to
try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and
unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without
judicial oversight.

In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records
for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the governmentAs effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.

In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search
warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal
charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January
that they were covering. A judge twice rejected the request, writing
that the government had failed to establish probable cause of a crime
and that he wanted Lemon and Fort to be informed of the request so they
could have a chance to challenge it. About a month after the judgeAs
ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the
request.

But officials hadnAt given up on getting the data.

Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request
for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method
that didnAt require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS
official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane
provision of federal law u 19 USC 1509 u dealing with customs imports.
The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on
imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep
it secret.

The DHS summons was issued under a statute that does give the agency
broad power to demand records, but only in the limited circumstance of
there being a need to investigate a customs issue, said Chris Duncan, a
former lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. oThese laws have absolutely nothing to do with a domestic situation at a church, a social
media post, even an immigration matter,o he said.

oItAs outrageous conduct on so many levels. ItAs hard to know where to
begin,o said John Roth, who served as the inspector general for the
Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017. oThis is an improper
use of the subpoena under any circumstances. This is not a customs case;
it is not a customs violation. They are not investigating a customs
violation.o

The episode in Minnesota was particularly alarming because it appeared
to be an end run around a judge who was skeptical of the governmentAs
need for the information.

oThere is no judge in the loop. You donAt have that independent
authority to scrutinize the demand and to say whether or not itAs
legitimate,o said Caitlin Vogus, a senior adviser at the Freedom of the
Press Foundation.

The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort
from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and
text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the
records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her
lawyers. FortAs lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were ostunnedo
to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records
about a journalist.

oThatAs very concerning because the information demanded can help the government uncover a journalistAs confidential sources,o Vogus said.

In a statement, T-Mobile did not address why it turned over the
information.

oWe take our responsibility to protect customersA privacy and personal information very seriously. Our team carefully reviews government
demands for customer information and responds in accordance with the
law. We donAt comment on specific law enforcement demands,o the company
said.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security both
declined to comment on the use of the summons.

In addition to Fort and Lemon, the DHS also sought information on the
YouTube accounts for the left-leaning outlet Democracy Now, conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and an independent journalist named Brendan Gutenschwager. Some of the videos they cited in
the summons were livestreams of the protest, but not all of them. The
video cited as part of the request for information on Democracy Now
involved a news report on the protest and an interview with Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the protest. The video cited on the request for
KellyAs show included an interview with Jonathan Parnell, the pastor at
the church.

ItAs unclear why exactly the DHS wanted the YouTube account information,
which includes things like a userAs IP address, and information about
when a user was logging in.

oItAs still concerning that the government sought subscriber information
for Lemon and Fort because thereAs no reason it would need this
information for the criminal charges that itAs brought against them,o
Vogus said. oItAs not a crime to post a YouTube video, and itAs not at
all clear why the government is demanding this information about Lemon
and FortAs YouTube accounts.o

The episode was the most recent example of an alarming pattern in recent
months in which the DHS avoided judicial scrutiny and deployed a summons related to customs enforcement to pressure companies into turning over information on Americans. The US constitutionAs fourth amendment
protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and law enforcement generally must show a judge or a grand jury they have probable cause to
believe the materials they want to search will produce evidence of a
crime.

But over the last few months, the Department of Homeland Security has undertaken a brazen effort to get around that fundamental safeguard. In addition to efforts to obtain records on Minnesota journalists, the DHS
has used 1509 summonses to pressure social media companies to unmask the identities of people who have criticized ICE officers and to obtain
financial information on a host of unions and left-leaning non-profit organizations in Minneapolis.

In a separate case in which 15 activists face criminal conspiracy
charges, DHS successfully obtained the financial records of the Sunrise Movement, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communications Workers of America, as well as Venmo records for a
non-profit organization called Voices for Racial Justice. None of the organizations is charged with crimes and the DHS did not offer an
explanation for why it needed the records. PayPal, VenmoAs parent
company, declined to comment.

oThereAs a long history of DHS abusing this summons authority in
particular, and using it to seek both records that are clearly outside
of its scope in general, and more particularly to try to go after people
whose speech DHS is somehow irked by u but whose speech is protected by
the first amendment,o said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer at the
American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in privacy issues.

It is difficult to determine the frequency with which the DHS is serving
the 1509 summonses and how often they are successful in obtaining
information. The summonses often remain hidden from public view unless
the company being served, or the user, challenges them. Companies are
not required to notify users that they have been served with a 1509
summons for information, though some do. The New York Times reported in February that the DHS had served hundreds of administrative subpoenas on
social media companies for information on users.

oWithout knowing how many of these subpoenas there are and what theyAre
being used for, thereAs no way for courts or lawmakers or the public to
put checks on executive branch abuses,o said Wessler, the ACLU attorney.

In the Minneapolis church case involving Lemon and Fort, the Trump administration has argued it had the power to use the customs-related
summons to obtain information even though the crimes the defendants were charged with have nothing to do with customs. The protesters entered the
church because a local ICE official was a pastor there, and could have potentially assaulted him or interfered with his duties, justice
department lawyers wrote in a filing earlier this year. Even though the
man does not appear to have been there, and there were no DHS officials
at the church or involved in the protest, lawyers said the DHS was
entitled to issue the summons because it was investigating a potential
assault on a law enforcement officer.

In court filings, the Trump administration has argued the Department of Homeland Security has the power to demand such records without judicial oversight.

oAlthough o 1509 references aduties, fees, and taxes,A the plain
language of the statute does not limit DHSAs investigative authority to
those subjects; instead, DHS is authorized to investigate potential
crimes to ensure acompliance with the laws of the United States
administered by the United States Customs Service,Ao which has been
folded into the Department of Homeland Security, a lawyer wrote in a
December court filing last year.

That is an overbroad misreading of the statute, one expert said.

oI donAt buy that,o said Duncan, the former DHS lawyer. oItAs not a free-for-all that was thrown in there. Congress does not operate that
way. Given these provisions were specifically incorporated into title
19, the customs statute, Congress obviously intended to authorize only
records, demands and interviews in furtherance of investigations into
customs violations, not wild goose chases into possible violations of
any federal law without any judicial oversight.o

In FortAs case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the
accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation.

A Google spokesperson said the company reviews each request for data it
gets to ensure it is legal and pushes back when it is too broad or
doesnAt follow the correct process.

Many social media companies say they notify users when law enforcement
makes a request for their information and give them a chance to contest
the summons. ItAs not always clear what the companies will do if the
user doesnAt respond or wonAt contest the request themselves. But
privacy experts question whether that notice is adequate, saying many
users are confused when they are contacted and do not have the resources
to get a lawyer to contest the demand in court.

oThey want people to think that they are going to stand up for peopleAs privacy, but they really shifted the burden completely onto the user,o
said Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense
Center, which represented a Reddit user who challenged the governmentAs
efforts to get Reddit to reveal their identity through a 1509 summons.

Companies are not required to respond to a 1509 summons and can ignore
the request if they think it is unlawful, forcing the government to go
to court to try to enforce the summons. The Guardian was unable to
identify any cases where the government attempted to get a court order
to enforce a 1509 summons outside of the traditional customs context.
Companies can also file their own motions to try to quash the summonses.

oIf a user actually hired a lawyer, it would cost tens of thousands of
dollars to fight one of these,o said F Mario Trujillo, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog. oThey are not
shouldering that burden; theyAre pushing that cost onto users and onto non-profit groups when they could easily get their high-powered lawyers
who are being paid $500 to $1,000 an hour to fight these.o

In 2017, Twitter filed a lawsuit challenging a Department of Homeland
Security 1509 summons seeking to unmask an account, @alt_uscis, that was critical of the DHS. The department ultimately withdrew the summons.

In several cases, the DHS has withdrawn a 1509 summons after it was
challenged in court and before a judge could rule on its legality. That
may be a deliberate strategy to avoid having a judge rule on the
legality of the summons.

In one instance last year, the DHS served a 1509 summons on Meta to
unmask the user behind an Instagram and Facebook account that monitored
ICE agent activities in the Philadelphia suburbs. The user challenged
the summons in court, saying it was clearly not authorized under the
law. Lawyers for the DHS defended the summons, saying it fell within the
scope of laws the DHS enforced. Both sides presented arguments before a
judge on 15 January and DHS withdrew the summons the next day.

oThey donAt want a judge to take away this scary tool because they are
getting stuff out of it,o Regan said. oOnce a court ruling says athou
shalt not use this statuteA, it does not apply.o

In 2017, the DHS inspector general issued a report finding oinconsistent
u and, in some cases, impropero u use of the 1509 summonses after the @alt_uscis case.

The office of the inspector general review found that officials in
Customs and Border ProtectionAs office of professional responsibility
were regularly misusing the subpoena and recommended a series of reforms
to ensure more oversight over those that were used. The office agreed to
the reforms.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/29/trump-dhs-1509-summons- records-journalists-nonprofits
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