ACLU Urges Senate to Block AI Experimentation Provision in Crypto Bill

WASHINGTON – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of D.C., and the National Press Photographers Association filed an amicus brief in support of a Minnesota photojournalist’s lawsuit challenging the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR). Earlier this year, as ICE was carrying out brutal immigration raids across the country, the FAA dramatically expanded restrictions on drone flights, banning such flights over any Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facility or “mobile asset,” which included any DHS vehicle. As the amicus explains, the TFR made it functionally impossible for journalists to use drones to gather news in any area where immigration enforcement agents were deployed, violating the First Amendment right to record public officials performing their duties in public. “The FAA’s restriction forced journalists reporting on immigration enforcement activity to ground their drones or risk criminal charges. This choice is unacceptable, unconstitutional, and runs roughshod over the First Amendment right to gather news,” said Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. The brief explains that the FAA’s restriction was not about public safety or national security. Journalists were previously already advised and generally adhered to avoiding airspace around sensitive locations, such as active military bases, airports, and aircraft carriers. Moreover, press drones weren’t interfering with official activity or putting anyone at risk by capturing immigration enforcement activity unfolding in public. "Under Trump, even the Federal Aviation Administration has become a political censor,” said Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at ACLU-D.C. “The agency should be protecting the safety of the flying public, not protecting ICE from unfavorable news coverage.” The brief further explains that journalists were effectively being censored beyond their DHS coverage, since the unpredictability of where any DHS vehicle may be traveling made it functionally impossible for journalists to use drones for any newsgathering in areas where immigration enforcement agents were deployed without putting themselves at risk of severe legal and financial penalties. “Drones have become essential, safe, and economical tools for documenting government activity and other matters of public concern. By creating an unpredictable moving exclusion zone around DHS assets, the FAA forced visual journalists to choose between abandoning lawful newsgathering and risking severe penalties,” said Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. “Safety restrictions must be narrowly tailored and consistent with the First Amendment, especially when they limit the public’s ability to observe government officials performing their duties.”

On September 2, 2026, the ACLU, ACLU of New Hampshire and New Hampshire Legal Assistance brought a class action lawsuit against the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority for installing and operating surveillance devices in tenants’ apartments. The devices collected hundreds of millions of data points recording movement, sound levels, and other information from inside tenants’ homes.

CONCORD, N.H. — Today, residents of housing developments owned and maintained by the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority (CHRA) in New Hampshire sued to block CHRA from harvesting sweeping data about tenants’ activity patterns in their homes through surveillance devices purchased from a private company, Mînut Inc. In the fall of 2024, CHRA began installing Mînut Monitor devices inside people’s apartments across the properties it manages, providing government employees with real-time, remote access to granular data about activity within tenants’ homes. These devices are capable of collecting data such as the decibel level of detected noise, motion detector readings showing physical movement of residents and guests, smoke and humidity levels, and scans for iOS signals, which can estimate how many people are nearby. “People should feel secure in their homes—not watched, judged, or punished by technology they never asked for. These devices change how tenants interact with their own apartments, turning everyday living into a source of fear,” said Christopher Schott, director of New Hampshire Legal Assistance's Fair Housing Project. “No one should worry that an assistance animal, a television, or other routine household sound could trigger penalties simply for living their life.” Taken together, the information provided by Mînut Monitors can create a mosaic of detail about peoples’ lives, revealing when they wake up, when they come and go from their home, and more. Mînut Monitors near tenants’ beds can even potentially track sound and motion data that could reflect intimate acts. Much of the data is logged on a minute-by-minute basis. For example, each Mînut Monitor logs sound-level readings approximately every single minute, up to 1,440 times a day. For one tenant, the Mînut Monitor logged more than 140,000 motion events within a seven-month period for just a single unit - an average of more than 700 motion events per day. All told, CHRA has amassed hundreds of millions of data points from within tenants’ apartments. The data is stored indefinitely and available to CHRA employees on demand. The class action lawsuit was filed by New Hampshire Legal Assistance, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, and the American Civil Liberties Union. As the complaint explains, this invasion of privacy in individuals’ homes by a government agency is unacceptable and violates two provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution, Article 19 and Article 2-b. Article 19 prohibits unreasonable searches by the government. Article 2-b, which was added to the New Hampshire Constitution by referendum in 2018, provides that “an individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.” “We’re suing because everyone deserves privacy in their own home. The government shouldn't get to know if you are getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or when your morning alarm goes off just because you live in public housing,” said Maria Savarese, staff attorney at the ACLU of New Hampshire. “Our state constitution is clear: we have the right to live free from government surveillance and intrusion in our homes." Furthermore, CHRA’s implementation of Mînut Monitors over the past two years has been marked by severe lack of transparency and a dismissal of tenants’ objections. Throughout the installation process, significant information was left out of notices to tenants, painting the technology as much less invasive and far-reaching than the Mînut Monitors’ actual capabilities. For example, CHRA did not disclose the occupancy and motion sensor capabilities of the devices, only disclosing the use of sensors for smoke, noise, temperature, and humidity detection. When residents asked outright whether the monitors placed in their homes included motion sensors, CHRA failed to directly answer the question. CHRA also omitted from their tenant communications that Mînut’s terms of service includes a warning about potential inaccuracies in the AI and machine learning models used to analyze and detect the presence of cigarette smoke. This is especially alarming considering that CHRA's stated purpose of installing Mînut Monitors is to substantiate lease violations that can lead to eviction. When one resident asked to see the data produced from tracking her day-to-day activity, CHRA denied her request. In multiple instances, CHRA disregarded residents’ concerns about the surveillance they were subjected to. Tenants are not able to opt out of this invasive surveillance, and if they attempt to remove the devices from their units, they are subject to significant fines and have been threatened with eviction. CHRA failed to create any policy for secure data retention and destruction, despite a request to do so by its own Board of Directors, leaving Mînut free to handle residents’ data however it wants. Mînut’s data retention policy also gives the company complete authority to retain user information for any duration and purpose. CHRA did not share this policy with tenants at any point. The lawsuit also explains that far from improving tenants’ housing experience, CHRA's insistence on surveillance exposes them to serious safety risks. For example, access to the data could severely endanger victims of domestic violence or stalking whose abusive former romantic partners or stalkers could learn details about their patterns of life. “A government-installed sound meter and motion sensor hovering near your bed should be the stuff of dystopian science fiction, but it is reality in Concord. Public housing residents shouldn’t have to choose between becoming homeless and being subjected to constant electronic monitoring inside the privacy of their own homes,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “This case happens to rely on the robust protections of the New Hampshire Constitution, but landlords across the country are now on notice: subjecting your residents to this chillingly invasive surveillance will land you in court.”

Police Companies Could Train Their AI to Hide Use of Their Products or Make Them Look Good