Drone Program May Shift From CIA to Military

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass the bipartisan Massie-Khanna War Powers Resolution, which would have required that all U.S. forces be withdrawn from Iran, until and unless Congress separately declares war. “This failed war powers vote is nothing short of cowardly, but Congress can’t dodge the Constitution forever,” said Christopher Anders, director of ACLU’s democracy and technology division. “By refusing to rein in President Trump’s unauthorized war with Iran, Congress has allowed President Trump to make a mockery of the Constitution and is trying to duck responsibility for putting servicemembers and civilians in great danger. But, this disgraceful vote does not change Congress’ legal duty, and it certainly does not silence the millions of Americans who oppose another illegal war. We will hold President Trump accountable for this abuse of power.” The ACLU is now urging Congress to use its funding authority to block all supplemental funding requests for war funding from the Department of Defense while President Trump is engaging in this unconstitutional war. Without Congress authorizing additional funds, the military will simply run out of money to spend on the war.

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law filed an amicus brief today in Chatrie v. U.S., the first geofence search case to reach the Supreme Court and the first major case addressing how the court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States applies to other kinds of location-tracking technologies. In the brief, the groups assert that police should not be able to conduct searches using geofence warrants, a novel and invasive surveillance technique that enables law enforcement to search for and locate unknown numbers of people in a large geographical area without reason to believe they were engaged in criminal conduct. Geofence warrants direct Google or other companies to hand over users’ location data from every cell phone or other device the company estimates was in a certain area during a certain time frame. These warrants are increasingly common, but they raise serious questions under the Fourth Amendment because they are dragnets, typically issued without police demonstrating reason to believe all the people who own those devices were involved in any crime. For example, a high-level analysis conducted by ACLU of Northern California of the types of places captured by law enforcement in geofence warrants across San Francisco revealed a troubling violation of our right to be secure in our homes and to be free from unreasonable search without probable cause. “A search that ensnares any number of innocent people just because they are nearby when a crime occurs is an unconstitutional fishing expedition that violates the Constitution. There are too many examples of these overbroad searches invading peoples’ privacy, including in homes, doctors’ offices, and churches. Courts should not allow them,” said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. This appeal comes after a federal judge in Virginia held that the geofence warrant in Mr. Chatrie’s case was overbroad and that investigators lacked probable cause for much of the data they obtained. The warrant tracked all Google location history users who were estimated to be within a 150-meter radius of a bank robbery in Virginia — an area as big as several football fields that encompassed residential buildings, businesses, and a church. The warrant also allowed police to obtain additional location information about individuals that were ensnared in the initial dragnet. The district court held that the government’s search warrant unconstitutionally left it to the officers and Google, and not to a judge, to decide what location and identifying information the company ultimately revealed, a clear departure from the neutral magistrate’s prescribed role under the Fourth Amendment. However, the court refused to suppress the illegally-obtained evidence on the grounds that the “good-faith exception” to the exclusionary rule — which allows evidence to be admitted when police reasonably rely on a facially valid warrant — applied. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was divided but ultimately allowed prosecutors to use the evidence it had gathered through the geofence search. Now, at the Supreme Court, the ACLU’s amicus brief argues that geofence warrants are never a permissible investigatory method under the Fourth Amendment. Geofence searches are unconstitutional general warrants that courts should categorically reject. “Allowing police to access your private search history just because you happen to be three football fields away from where they say a crime was committed is both absurd and dangerous. And most importantly, it’s unconstitutional: Virginians do not lose their right to privacy because they happen to be within an arbitrary radius set by police,” said Matthew Callahan, senior supervising attorney with the ACLU of Virginia. The amicus brief in Chatrie v. United States is part of the ACLU’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket.

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding Congress take immediate action to end President Trump’s unconstitutional use of military force against Iran, until and unless Congress declares war on Iran or specifically authorizes the use of force. This comes after President Trump announced in the middle of the night that the U.S. and Israel were bombing Iran and called for the overthrow of its government. President Trump, who ran on ending America’s wars, also noted in his speech, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.” While the ACLU does not take a position on whether military force should be used against Iran, for decades the organization has been steadfast in insisting, from Vietnam through the war in Afghanistan, both wars in Iraq, the military action against Libya, and the ongoing use of force in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, that the Constitution is clear that decisions on whether to use military force require Congress's specific, advance authorization. “Last night, President Trump violated the Constitution when he didn’t even bother to ask Congress before bombing a country of nearly 100 million people,” said Christopher Anders, director of the ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Division. “Our founding fathers and the Constitution give war authority power to Congress, and Congress alone. It is what makes us a democracy, and ensures that our leaders fully consider the many costs of war — including the harm to human lives and rights, and any effects on global peace and stability — before sending American troops into danger. If President Trump wants to send American armed forces into conflict, he must make his case to the American people and their representatives in Congress. The commander in chief must follow the chain of command and that begins with we the people.”

On October 14, 2025, the United States military carried out an illegal missile strike that killed Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian men who were traveling by boat from Venezuela to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad and Tobago. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School filed suit on behalf of Lenore Burnley, Mr. Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Mr. Samaroo’s sister, seeking redress and accountability for these extrajudicial killings pursuant to the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute.