Secure Liberties Newsletter

Hajar on May 2, 2022

TOP LINE

More than 5 dozen orgs welcome the ceasefire in Yemen, and call on Congress to pass a War Powers Resolution to end US support for the war on Yemen once and for all. A national coalition of diverse organizations penned a letter to Congress urging the immediate passage of a War Powers Resolution to end the US’s support for the Saudi-UAE-led coalition’s war on Yemen. The letter calls for Congress to take advantage of an important window for diplomacy the two-month UN-brokered ceasefire provides and incentivize Saudi Arabia to stay at the negotiating table by supporting a forthcoming War Powers Resolution promoted by Reps. Jayapal and DeFazio. Part of the current ceasefire’s terms include lifting the Saudi-imposed blockade. Already, some previously barred fuel ships have been able to enter Yemen’s Hodeidah port, though complications have arisen in lifting the air blockade on Sanaa airport as last week the first commercial flight out of the airport in six years was indefinitely postponed, with both sides exchanging blame. However later in the week, Saudi Arabia announced they were releasing 163 Houthi prisoners in order to further solidify the truce.

The FBI queried warrantlessly obtained Section 702 data as many as 3.4 million times last year, per the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Annual Statistical Transparency Report. These searches “included terms, also called identifiers, linked to a… U.S. person from Dec. 1, 2020, to Nov. 30, 2021, according to the report. The number of searches for the previous 12-month period was about 1.3 million.” Privacy advocates continue to be highly concerned by these practices; Section 702–which authorizes these activities–is slated to sunset next year.

ABROAD

New bicameral legislation seeks to overhaul transparency over civilian harm from the US military. Last week, Sen. Warren and Reps. Khanna, Crow, Jacobs, and Malinowski introduced the Department of Defense Civilian Harm Transparency Act & a new version of the Protection of Civilians in Military Operations Act (originally intro’d in 2020) following extensive civil society pressure. The former designates an official within DoD to serve as a civilian harm investigation coordinator and expands requirements for previously mandated DoD civilian harm reporting. Some highlights from the latter: it requires more independence and integrity in civilian harm investigation and mandates on-the-ground interviews and civil society consultation; establishes public databases of DoD civilian harm reports; assigns personnel to each combatant command to analyze and oversee reports on civilian harm; and requires reporting on how the DoD has distinguished between combatants and civilians in various US military operations since 2001. CIVIC’s Annie Shiel and Sarah Yager dive deeper on these bills in Just Security.

Biden asks Congress for more money for weapons and aid to Ukraine; Blinken confirms no steps taken by the US in finding negotiated peace. The $33 billion emergency supplemental funding would include $20bn for weapons, ammunition and other military assistance, $8.5bn in direct economic assistance to the Ukrainian government, and $3bn in humanitarian aid. Over the weekend, Speaker Pelosi and several senior members of Congress made a surprise visit to Ukraine, where they confirmed they will move on turning Biden’s request into legislation. Last week, Secretary of State Blinken held a Senate hearing on Ukraine in which he defined “American diplomacy” in the context of Ukraine as “rallying allies” to send more security and economic aid to Ukraine (like Biden is calling for) and “imposing massive costs on the Kremlin,” rather than more traditional definitions of diplomacy, such as opening or facilitating dialogue to negotiate for peace. Senator Rand Paul asked Blinken about this in an exchange during the hearing.

Dozens of groups pressure White House to release Afghanistan’s foreign reserves; UN experts agree. Forty-five humanitarian, human rights, peacebuilding, veterans’, faith-based, 9/11 victims’, working class, and diaspora community groups sent a letter to Biden urging the administration to release the $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets, which were stolen “seized” in February by the Biden Administration. The money was said to be going to pay court settlements for 9/11 victims’ families and to still-unknown humanitarian efforts, but the groups (which include 9/11 victims’ families) are demanding the reserves be returned to the country’s independent central bank in order to shore up a financial crisis that threatens to further exacerbate humanitarian disaster – something that standard humanitarian efforts cannot alone achieve. Two-dozen independent UN human rights experts also issued a statement last week calling on the US to release the reserves.

Afghanistan is just one example of economic coercion causing civilian harm; a group of civil society orgs asks Biden to change course on similar measures taken around the world. Two dozen orgs consisting of American communities impacted by sanctions, humanitarian, peace, and pro-diplomacy groups have also issued a letter to Biden urging him to grapple with the full impacts of sanctions, and to ensure that they don’t exacerbate civilian harm. The letter cites examples of various instances where US sanctions or other methods of economic coercion have not only harmed civilians but have been ineffective if not counterproductive to US interests. The letter notes the Biden admin’s sanctions review last year, which generally called for reducing humanitarian impacts, but criticized the lack of concrete steps taken to actually address the issue. Murtaza Hussain writes on this issue further in The Intercept.

AT HOME

Clearview AI CEO has confirmed facial recognition technology usage by the Ukrainian government, totaling over 14,000 searches as of Wednesday. Reports from earlier this year on the Ukrainian government’s access to Clearview AI technology were confirmed during a Washington Post Live event featuring Hoan Ton-That, Clearview AI CEO and Co-Founder. Ton-That said that there has been widespread usage, with over six Ukrainian agencies adopting the technology, “each one of these searches is a potential… checkpoint, identification of war [a] criminal.” This facial recognition technology raises serious privacy concerns and comes with many flaws such as “false positive matches and racial biases” The flaws and limitations of facial recognition technology are threatening to drastically impact innocent lives. “[W]hen the technology is used to identify suspects in criminal cases, those flaws in the system can have catastrophic, life-changing consequences. People can be wrongly identified, arrested, and convicted, often without ever being told they were ID’d by a computer,” WIRED reports.

“It was like being buried alive,” said the defense lawyer of her client’s Camp 7 cell. Camp 7, a Guantánamo Bay facility–which housed detainees from 2006-2021–was emptied last year and still remains classified. “Contending that the conditions in Camp 7 were substandard and exceedingly disturbing, lawyers for the men… are inspecting the site.” Camp 7 is so “chilling,” that the lawyers are aiming for reduced sentences or dismissal of death penalty if the prisoners held there are convicted.

In other Guantánamo Bay news – earlier this month Sufyian Barhoumi was repatriated to Algeria after a 5-year delay in release due to a Trump administration policy that paused transfers. Last week, the youngest detainee, Hassan bin Attash, was cleared for release, “but must wait for the Biden administration to find a country willing to offer him rehabilitation.”

European lawmakers want to investigate national governments that utilized Pegasus spyware; they’ve launched a committee that will be “looking into whether those government’s use of the spyware broke European laws or violated citizens’ rights.” The investigation will also include NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio who told The New Yorker that “[a]lmost all governments in Europe are using [their] tools.” This follows a reveal by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that “[a]t least 65 Catalan politicians and activists were targeted by Pegasus and Candiru spyware.” Pere Aragonès, president of Catalan, who was hacked before taking office, stated that this is “an extremely serious attack on fundamental rights and democracy.”

Republicans are challenging Biden admin attempts to address the backlog in reviewing asylum claims on the state and federal levels. Texas AG Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on Thursday claiming the rule violates the Administrative Procedures Act. “Paxton alleges the interim rule would transfer significant authority from immigration judges to asylum officers and limit judicial review to denials of applications,” per Bloomberg. Sen. Johnson and Rep. Biggs also “unveiled a Congressional Review Act resolution that would toss the Homeland Security and Justice departments’ asylum officers rule and bar the department from crafting anything similar in the future.”

New Materials:

The Immigrant Defense Project has updated their Know Your Rights with ICE website with materials to reflect the Biden administration’s priorities related to ICE policing and arrests.
Just Futures Law’s COVID-19 FOIA Surveillance Project’s newly released factsheet reveals how the federal government’s dragnet has expanded and used the pandemic to add new surveillance technology.
The Brennan Center for Justice released a new report on the Department of Homeland Security: A Course Correction for Homeland Security: Curbing Counterterrorism Abuses.