Tag: Surveillance

  • Smile for the surveillance state

    Smile for the surveillance state

    Nora Mitchell is a rising 2L at Drexel University and a FIRE Summer Intern.


    On July 7, Barnard College settled a lawsuit from students who claimed the institution had failed to address student accounts of anti-Semitism on campus. In the settlement, Barnard agreed to establish a Title VI Coordinator position, sever communication with the student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and prohibit the use of face masks during campus protests — a move that is becoming increasingly popular across college campuses. 

    Mask bans are quickly becoming a new frontline in the nationwide battle over campus expression. Barnard’s agreement follows a controversial decision earlier this year in which Columbia University agreed to ban masks at protests, among other measures, in exchange for the release of $400 million in frozen federal funding. Columbia’s move came just days after President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that he would end federal funding for any school that “allows illegal protests,” adding: “NO MASKS!”

    While some institutions like Columbia and Barnard impose strict rules prohibiting masks, policies at other colleges and universities allow face coverings to be worn unless students are violating law or school policy, or if officials ask for them to be removed. 

    For example, California State University’s time, place, and manner policy allows wearing masks on university property as long as students do not “attempt to hide or disguise their identity from the university official” when violating university policy. In Texas, the recently passed Senate Bill 2972 bans face coverings during protests at public colleges, undermining the state’s efforts to protect student speech rights back in 2019.  

    Placing a preemptive, blanket requirement on all protesters to identify themselves to college administrators — untethered to engaging in misconduct — risks discouraging students and faculty from speaking their minds. Instead of these speech-chilling bans, universities should limit their policies to seeking the identification of those who violate university policies or the law.

    From the Boston Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, protesters have historically used face coverings to protect their identities from public violence, doxxing, and retaliation from employers and government officials. More recently, using masks to avoid identification has become associated with protesters advocating for Palestinian rights. Given the threats coming from school administrations and the U.S. government, activists may feel it necessary to take precautions to avoid revealing their identities and becoming targets for their expression.

    Sometimes people just want to be able to express themselves without concern for what their family, friends, the general public, or the government may think.

    So why are schools and local authorities putting so much effort into banning masks? The answer is control. When people have fewer protections, they face a higher risk of being penalized for their speech. That’s a risk that many are afraid to take.

    Legal and ethical backlash is building against mask bans

    Politicians claim mask bans are about stopping crime. But the real effect is to make dissent more costly and dangerous — especially when tied to hot-button issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Officials in Nassau County, New York, for example, signed a mask ban into law in August 2024 aimed at discouraging crime and anti-Semitic acts. According to CBS News, violating the law is considered a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail or a $1,000 fine. Critics of the ban point out that, even with religious and health-related exemptions, the new policy gives authorities the power to question anyone wearing a mask — a power that can easily be abused. 

    So to Speak Podcast Transcript: ‘Shouting fire,’ deepfake laws, tenured professors, and mask bans

    The FIRE team discusses Tim Walz’s controversial comments on hate speech and “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” We also examine California’s AI deepfake laws, the punishment of tenured professors, and mask bans.


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    lawsuit challenged the mask ban in Nassau County by contending that the law could lead to discrimination against individuals with disabilities. A judge dismissed the case a month later, ruling that the law included sufficient exemptions. However, even with health-related exemptions, there remains a risk of the law being used to silence protesters. In fact, among the first arrests made under the ordinance was an individual who was peacefully protesting while wearing a keffiyeh.  

    It’s no wonder there has been backlash from students and the public over these sweeping policies. In February, a student government representative at Columbia sent out a poll to students asking their opinions on campus security and the potential mask ban. The findings, published by the Columbia Spectator, showed that nearly three-quarters of respondents do not support mask bans.  

    Critics have been challenging the legal basis of anti-mask policies on and off campus, highlighting the possibility for discrimination and infringement on First Amendment rights. After all, masks can be used for a variety of purposes, from protecting one’s health to protesting anonymously to dressing up on Halloween. It shouldn’t be assumed that all mask-wearers intend to commit a crime. Sometimes people just want to be able to express themselves without concern for what their family, friends, the general public, or the government may think. Many uses of masks are inherently expressive. That means banning them raises constitutional concerns.

    What’s the legal precedent for mask bans on campus?

    The history of mask bans in the United States is complicated. The Supreme Court has never directly commented on whether banning masks during expressive activities infringes on First Amendment rights, and jurisdictions are split on the matter.

    In many states, mask bans gained popularity between the 1920s and 1950s in response to actions of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, in Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kerik, KKK members challenged a New York anti-mask law when the group’s parade permit was denied because of planned mask-wearing. Despite the group’s argument that the masks were a form of expression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the masks worn by KKK members added “no expressive force to the message portrayed by the rest of the outfit.” Since the robes and hoods that were part of their uniforms could easily communicate to others that they were part of the Klan, the court concluded the “expressive force of the mask is, therefore, redundant.” 

    Similarly, in State v. Miller, another case involving the KKK, the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a state mask ban because “the statute distinguishe[d] appropriately between mask-wearing that is intimidating, threatening or violent and mask-wearing for benign purposes.”

    In contrast, in American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. City of Goshen, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana struck down the city’s mask ban, holding the “United States Constitution protects a group’s speakers the right to anonymity when past harassment makes it likely that disclosing the members would impact the group’s ability to pursue its collective efforts at advocacy.”

    Likewise, in Ghafari v. Municipal Court for San Francisco, California’s First Appellate District struck down the state’s mask law when it was used to arrest members of the Iranian Students’ Association who were peacefully protesting outside the Iranian Consulate in San Francisco. The students were covering their faces while protesting out of concern that the Iranian government would retaliate against them or their family members.

    If people aren’t allowed to use tools to protect their identities when speaking out, many voices will be silenced.

    While some states have deemed mask restrictions unconstitutional, others still have them in place. For example, the state of Virginia still has a law passed in the 1950s that prohibits wearing face masks in public spaces with a few exceptions for health and religious reasons. 

    Despite the conflicting case precedent, it is safe to say that any full mask ban with no exceptions is likely unconstitutional. This is for a variety of reasons: health concerns, religious protections, and the right to anonymous speech. 

    The history of constitutional protections for anonymous expression

    The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right to engage in anonymous speech. In the 1960 case Talley v. California, civil rights activist Manuel Talley was arrested and fined after distributing handbills on a sidewalk in Los Angeles. The handbills called for the boycott of merchants who carried products from manufacturers who refused to extend equal employment opportunities to racial minorities. Though the handbills included the name of the organization Talley was representing, law enforcement officers found them to be in violation of a Los Angeles City ordinance banning the distribution of handbills without an author’s name. 

    The Supreme Court declared the ordinance was unconstitutional, holding that it was overbroad and not narrowly tailored to its suggested purpose of “identify[ing] those responsible for fraud, false advertising and libel.” In his opinion for the Court, Justice Hugo Black stated that “[a]nonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind,” highlighting the importance of these works in securing American independence.

    What to make of anti-mask laws and mask-required laws? — First Amendment News 429

    First Amendment News is a weekly blog and newsletter about free expression issues by Ronald K. L. Collins and is editorially independent from FIRE.


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    Thirty-five years later in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, the Supreme Court upheld protections for anonymous speech when a resident of Westerville, Ohio, was fined for distributing anonymous handbills in opposition to her local school district’s request for a tax levy. Overturning Ohio’s election law that prohibited the distribution of anonymous campaign literature, the Court held that First Amendment protection for anonymous speech extends to “core political speech.” In doing so, the Court acknowledged that anonymous speech serves “to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation — and their ideas from suppression — at the hand of an intolerant society.”

    Despite this precedent, higher courts haven’t really addressed the role that masks play in protecting speech in our modern world where phones and cameras are always watching. If courts want to preserve free expression, they should keep in mind the many threats that individuals face when speaking in public. If people aren’t allowed to use tools to protect their identities when speaking out, many voices will be silenced.

    What does this mean for college campuses?

    Since mask bans on college campuses are a newer issue, it’s unclear how courts may react. Still, we know a few things for sure. First, any public university policy must be viewpoint neutral and narrowly tailored toward achieving a specific and important government goal. Also,  anti-mask policies must include exceptions for individuals with disabilities or religious customs that involve wearing face coverings. 

    But narrow tailoring also means universities cannot ban mask-wearing in ways that unnecessarily burden protected activity, such as anonymous protest. It is not a crime to peacefully protest while wearing a mask to avoid retaliation, and a blanket prohibition that includes such activity would raise serious constitutional issues.

    That said, school can restrict masks in certain situations. For instance, schools can prohibit masks while committing crimes or violent acts, violating school rules, or engaging in unprotected speech. And if you’re breaking the law, law enforcement can absolutely ask for identification.

    Is dissent the real target?

    Protesting in today’s world is different than it was before. When we leave our homes, we enter a space that is always being watched — not just by individuals walking around with their phones, but also by security cameras and surveillance technology. These are serious things for modern protesters to consider, especially when having a video go viral can bring severe and disproportionate consequences, such as losing your scholarship, your job, or even your visa. In this way, mask bans empower both police and private actors to suppress dissent. 

    A lack of anonymity can also amplify the “chilling effect,” in which people self-censor out of concern that they will violate some type of law, regulation, or social norm. According to FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, the chilling effect can be a problem for students across the political spectrum, with 34% of very conservative students and 15% of very liberal students reporting that they self-censored “very” or “fairly” often. 

    Masks are one way of combating this problem. For example, a student who wishes to participate in a pro-life rally may be more comfortable doing so if they can wear a mask and avoid being judged or harassed by their peers. Similarly, students and faculty may feel more free to voice their concerns about their school administration if they are able to wear masks. In an interview for CNN, an anonymous Columbia student going by the name “Maria” told reporters that she would no longer be participating in protests on campus due to the new policies adopted by the university. She stated she is “staunchly aware of how militarized and surveilled [the] campus is now,” and is fearful of retaliation. With mask bans becoming increasingly popular, this will likely be a growing sentiment among students. 

    Masks are an important tool for dissent and expression, both on and off campus. Even if sometimes ineffective in the face of advanced technology, masks provide a last line of defense for individuals who want to peacefully engage in public expression, giving them a small but important sense of security and anonymity. With recent reports of students being arrested for merely engaging in protected speech on their campuses, it is more important than ever to defend the right to anonymous speech.

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  • University of Michigan has ended private surveillance contracts but the chill on free speech remains

    University of Michigan has ended private surveillance contracts but the chill on free speech remains

    Clare Rigney is a rising second-year student at American University Washington College of Law and a FIRE summer intern.


    After a news story last week that the University of Michigan was paying private investigators to spy on pro-Palestinian student protesters, the school quickly ended its contracts with the surveillance firm.

    In case anyone is unaware, the year is 2025. Not 1984.

    Now the university says this Orwellian practice has ended, but the chill on student speech will likely remain for some time.

    On June 6, The Guardian reported on the story, citing multiple videos and student accounts of investigators cursing at students and threatening them. Between June 2023 and September 2024, U-M reportedly paid about $800,000 to the Detroit-based security company City Shield to carry out this surveillance instead of using the funds to increase the size of the campus police force. 

    Several of the targeted students were members of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the local chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, causing critics to accuse the school of targeting pro-Palestinian speech.

    One student, Josiah Walker, said he counted 30 people following him at different times on and off-campus. (As a precaution, he started parking his car off-campus.) On one occasion, Walker believed a man at a campus protest was following him. The man seemed to have a speech impairment, so Walker felt bad about that assumption. However, he later saw the same man speaking in a completely normal manner. When Walker confronted him, the man pretended Walker was trying to rob him.

    The whole incident was caught on camera.

    On the recording, Walker said, “The degree to which all these entities are willing to go to target me is amazing. Guys, this doesn’t make sense. What are you doing? Leave me alone.”

    To serve their proper function, universities must facilitate an open and collaborative learning environment as a marketplace of ideas. U-M ostensibly knows this, saying it values “an environment where all can participate, are invited to contribute, and have a sense of belonging.” 

    Surveillance and intimidation do not cultivate such an environment. U-M’s surveillance will make students want to look over their shoulders before seeking to use their right to free speech.

    The Supreme Court’s ruling in Healy v. James requires universities to uphold their students’ First Amendment rights. This extends even to students whose speech the university deems offensive or “antithetical” to the school’s goals. 

    In Healy, the Court emphasized the danger of an institution targeting a group of students as particularly dangerous based on their viewpoint, noting, “the precedents of this Court leave no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large.”

    Indeed, an important function of college is to allow students to broaden their horizons and meet different kinds of  people. And freedom of association allows them to seek out individuals whose beliefs align with theirs so that they can work toward a common goal. 

    Unfortunately, universities have used these chilling tactics against student political protestors for years. 

    Amid protests demanding sick pay for frontline workers, the University of Miami in 2020 used facial recognition technology to identify protestors. The university then hauled these students into meetings where they were forced to review Miami’s events policies.

    “The take-home message that we got was basically, We’re watching you,” Esteban Wood, one of the student protesters, later said. 

    When colleges and universities surveil students, they chill speech and promote distrust between student activists and the police meant to protect them.

    In 2018, Campus Safety Magazine revealed that the University of Virginia had contracted with a private service called Social Sentinel. This service used an algorithm to monitor students’ social media posts and, if it deemed it necessary, report them to the police.

    That same year, FIRE reported on a similar situation at the University of North Carolina. During protests over a confederate statue, a UNC campus police officer masqueraded as an approachable civilian named “Victor” in order to gain information from protesters and track their movements. Later, when students confronted “Victor” in a police uniform, he revealed himself as Officer Hector Bridges, explaining he had pretended to be sympathetic to their cause as a part of his “work.” 

    “I”m representing the university right now,” Bridges admitted on video.

    The UNC Police Department later released a statement saying the university had a practice of sending “plain clothes” officers to patrol the statue to purportedly “maintain student and public safety.”

    Chilling student speech in the name of undisclosed and unspecified safety is nothing new. But if it is serious about change, it couldn’t hurt for U-M to start with reviewing its own policies. According to its Division of Public Safety and Security, its role is to foster “a safe and secure environment” where students learn to “challenge the present.” Furthermore, U-M’s Standard Practice Guide section on freedom of speech states that when any non-university security forces are needed, they should know and follow these policies. 

    While it’s possible to imagine a circumstance where student surveillance might be necessary, colleges should keep in mind that courts have generally disfavored such efforts. For example, in White v. Davis, the Supreme Court of California rebuked the Los Angeles Police Department’s unconstitutional surveillance of UCLA students:

    The censorship of totalitarian regimes that so often condemns developments in art, science and politics is but a step removed from the inchoate surveillance of free discussion in the university; such intrusion stifles creativity and to a large degree shackles democracy.

    When colleges and universities surveil students, they chill speech and promote distrust between student activists and the police meant to protect them. That can be dangerous for both the students and the officers. Police investigations will be more difficult if the student body does not trust them enough to cooperate when needed. Students may be less likely to contact the police for legitimate violations. 

    Colleges and universities should empower their students to boldly state their beliefs. That’s simply not possible if they are also hiring outside agencies to spy on them. While we are glad the University of Michigan ended the practice, this case should serve as a reminder that such heavy-handed surveillance tactics have no place at American universities. 

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  • Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms – The 74

    Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark KeierleberSubscribe here.

    It all began when school officials mistook a blurry image of a Mike and Ike candy for pills. 

    Pennsylvania teenager Blake Robbins found himself at the center of a digital surveillance controversy that gave rise to student privacy debates amid schools’ growing reliance on ed tech. 

    Spy High, a four-part documentary series streaming now on Amazon Prime, puts the focus on a lawsuit filed in 2010 after Robbins’ affluent Pennsylvania school district accused him of dealing drugs — a conclusion officials reached after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in hand. 

    Blake Robbins, then a high school student in Pennsylvania’s affluent Lower Merion School District, speaks to the press about his 2010 lawsuit alleging covert digital surveillance by educators. (Unrealistic Ideas)

    The moment had been captured on the webcam of his school-issued laptop — one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed. 

    I caught up with Spy High Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz to discuss why the 15-year-old case offers cautionary lessons about student surveillance gone awry and how it informs contemporary student privacy debates. 

    How student surveillance plays out today: Meet the gatekeepers of students’ private lives. | The 74


    In the news

    Courts block DEI directive: Three federal courts ordered temporary halts on Thursday to Trump’s efforts to cancel student diversity initiatives — and demands for states to pledge allegiance to the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws. | The 74

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that called for school discipline models “rooted in American values and traditional virtues,” taking aim at Obama- and Biden-era efforts to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. | Politico

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    ‘The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed’: Disability-rights advocates have decried plans at the National Institutes of Health to compile Amerians’ private medical records in a “disease registry” to track children and other people with autism. | The 74

    • Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism for recent comments that many kids “were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old.” | ABC News

    A new lawsuit filed by students at military-run schools accuses the Defense Department of harming their learning opportunities by banning books related to “gender ideology” or “divisive equity ideology,” including texts that refer to slavery and sexual harassment prevention. | Military Times

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    California lawmakers are demanding answers after Department of Homeland Security agents visited two Los Angeles elementary schools and asked to speak with five students who the federal agency said “arrived unaccompanied at the border.” | LAist

    ‘We all deserve reparations’: White House aide Stephen Miller said in an interview last week the country “used to have a functioning public school system” until it was destroyed by “open borders.” | The New Republic

    The Justice Department seized thousands of photos and videos in an investigation of a former University of Michigan assistant football coach who was indicted on allegations he hacked into student athletes’ private accounts to steal intimate images. | CBS Sports

    A 48-year-old mother was arrested and accused of bringing a gun to her daughter’s Indiana elementary school and threatening the girl’s teacher over a classroom assignment about flags. While discussing flags, the teacher reportedly referred to a rainbow flag in the classroom with the words “be kind.” | NBC News

    Banning ‘frontal nudity’: A Texas school district has removed lessons on Virginia history from an online learning platform for elementary school students because the commonwealth’s flag depicts the Roman goddess Virtus with an exposed breast. | Axios

    The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month to weigh Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship, bringing into question a 127-year-old court precedent. | NPR

    A class-action lawsuit accuses tech giant Google of amassing “thousands of data points that span a child’s life” without the consent of students or their parents. | Bloomberg Law

    A Florida teacher is out of a job after she called a student by their preferred name, allegedly violating a 2023 Florida law that requires schools to receive parental permission to refer to students by anything other than their legal names. | Click Orlando

    The vice president of the Buffalo, New York, chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse was arrested and accused of sex crimes against children. | WIVB


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