Center on Privacy & Technology

A Georgetown Law Digital Inclusion Week Event Join us for a special Digital Inclusion Week event featuring Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, Director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution and author of Digitally Invisible: How ...

Hosted by @gtwontechlaw.bsky.social and co-hosted by Georgetown's Tech and Society, the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, Public Knowledge, and us at the Privacy Center!

Details:
📅Friday, October 10
🕥10:30 - 11:30 AM
📍6th Floor Lounge, 500 First Street NW
🖊️RSVP:

Dr. Lee, author of “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass,”will offer insights on the impact on all of us from the barriers to digital inclusion.

Digital Inclusion Week is here and we have an event for you! Dr. Nicol Turner Lee of @brookings.edu will join us to discuss what digital equity can look like as the importance of internet access in the US for economic participation continues to increase.

Aunque esta actualización se centra en ciudadanos estadounidenses, el programa de recolección de ADN del DHS afecta a todas las personas en los Estados Unidos, independientemente de su ciudadanía. Para evitar un futuro de vigilancia genética universal, debemos impedir que el DHS asalte el genoma.

Supreme Court blesses racial profiling by ICE The conservative justices don't explain a decision that green lights detaining people for how they look.

La falta de salvaguardias internas plantea preocupaciones constitucionales serias. Esto es alarmante dado un fallo de la Corte Suprema que eliminó la prohibición contra el perfilamiento racial por parte de agentes migratorios, ignorando años de jurisprudencia por la 4.ª Enmienda de la Constitución.

Los agentes de CBP no siempre explicaron por qué tomaban ADN de ciudadanos. Cuando dieron una razón, a veces se basaron en infracciones no criminales. Aun así, no existen mecanismos estructurales para identificar casos en los que CBP recolecta ADN sin razón o motivos suficientes.

En cientos de casos, estas investigaciones nunca resultaron en cargos federales formales. Muchas veces la CBP no tenía base para sospechar una violación legal, decidió no remitir el caso a fiscales federales, o los fiscales optaron por no presentar cargos.

Entre 2020 y 2024, Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP) a sabiendas tomó el ADN de aproximadamente 2,000 ciudadanos estadounidenses. Sus muestras fueron enviadas al FBI para ingresarlas en CODIS, una base de datos de vigilancia federal.

Cuando publicamos nuestro informe de 2024 “Asalto al Genoma,” sospechábamos que agentes del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) podían estar coleccionando ADN de ciudadanos estadounidenses. Ahora podemos confirmar que esas sospechas eran correctas.

Read Stevie’s piece in Lawfare: The Department of Homeland Security is Unlawfully Collecting DNA

DHS DNA collection “is illegal, unconstitutional, and deeply corrosive to civil rights and liberties. No amount of coerced ‘consent’ can make it otherwise,” says Privacy Center Dir. of Research & Advocacy Stevie Glaberson.

While today’s update focuses on US citizens, DHS’s DNA collection program affects everyone in the US – regardless of citizenship. To avoid a future of universal genetic surveillance, we must stop DHS from raiding the genome. www.raidingthegenome.org

Supreme Court blesses racial profiling by ICE The conservative justices don't explain a decision that green lights detaining people for how they look.

The lack of internal checks raises serious constitutional concerns. This is especially concerning given a recent SCOTUS decision lifting a ban on immigration agents’ racial profiling, which wrote off decades of Fourth Amendment law.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

CBP agents didn’t always say why they took DNA from citizens. When they did, they sometimes pointed to non-criminal violations of law, like “failure to declare” in customs. Still, there are no structural checks to weed out cases in which CBP has insufficient or no reason to collect DNA.

Hundreds of these cases never resulted in formal federal charges. CBP often had no basis to suspect a legal violation, declined to refer the case to federal prosecutors, or the federal prosecutors declined to pursue the case.

Between 2020 and 2024, CBP knowingly took the DNA of approximately 2,000 US citizens. Their DNA was sent to the FBI for submission to CODIS, a federal policing database.

image of family with title box overlay

When we published our 2024 report “Raiding the Genome,” we suspected that DHS agents might be taking DNA from US citizens. We can now confirm that those suspicions were correct. www.raidingthegenome.org

They promised cheap rent

They gave us culture war

blockclubchicago.org/2025/09/17/i...

Registration — Ryan Calo Book Talk Join Us for a Book Talk with Professor Ryan Calo The Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, together with the Georgetown Law Cyberlaw Society, the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Techno...

📅 Tuesday, September 16
🕛 12:10 – 1:10 PM
📍 6th Floor Lounge, 500 First Street NW
🖊️ RSVP: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Happening tomorrow! Interested in scholarship surrounding emerging technology and social responsibility? Join us as Professor Ryan Calo dives into his new book, “Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach”!

Expanding Surveillance of Immigrants — At What Cost? From DMV databases to cellphone tracking, U.S. surveillance has grown from immigration enforcement into a digital dragnet. Our panel explores risks, policies, and the safeguards essential to democracy...

Missed the event? What the full recording here: americancommunitymedia.org/media-briefi...

In addition to the consolidation of govt data and social media vetting of visa holders, the event also covered our report “Raiding the Genome,” which details the drastic expansion of a DHS program to take DNA from thousands of people every day. raidingthegenome.org

Moderated by @pilarinspain.bsky.social, the news briefing featured our Associate @ehtse.bsky.social, @americanprogress.bsky.social’s @nicole-alvarez.bsky.social, and @eff.org's Sophia Cope.

Expanding Surveillance of Immigrants — At What Cost? From DMV databases to cellphone tracking, U.S. surveillance has grown from immigration enforcement into a digital dragnet. Our panel explores risks, policies, and the safeguards essential to democracy...

Last week @amcommmedia.bsky.social hosted “Expanding Surveillance of Immigrants – At What Cost?” to explore how the US govt’s growing surveillance arsenal is used beyond immigration enforcement. americancommunitymedia.org/media-briefi...

El gobierno tiene la obligación de informar cómo gasta el dinero de nuestros contribuyentes, especialmente cuando sus actividades afectan la privacidad de nuestro material genético que es extremadamente sensible. El Congreso puede y debe obligar al ejecutivo a divulgar información sobre el programa.

Aún hay mucho que no se sabe. DHS, ICE y CBP no nos han proporcionado todos los archivos que solicitamos. Por eso nos unimos con Amica Center y Americans for Immigrant Justice para presentar una demanda legal contra el DHS por retener archivos públicos.

The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future.

En respuesta a una de nuestras solicitudes de FOIA, CBP publicó documentos que muestran que recopiló ADN de aproximadamente 133,000 niños y adolescentes, que incluye al menos uno de 4 años, y añadió sus perfiles a CODIS. @dmehro.bsky.social cubrió esto para @wired.com

Trump Is Rapidly Expanding the Surveillance State as Protests Grow Immigrants are only the first target of a rapidly expanding digital dragnet that can track our individual movements.

La expansión de la capacidad de vigilancia genética del DHS es especialmente preocupante dada la forma en que esta administración está intensificando el uso de datos para vigilar a las comunidades inmigrantes y para ir contra *cualquiera* persona que se oponga a la agenda del presidente.

Ya sabíamos que las comunidades que están sobrevigiladas por la policía sufrirían las mayores consecuencias del programa de recolección de ADN del DHS. Ahora se puede confirmar que la gran mayoría de las personas cuyo ADN ha tomado la CBP provienen de México, Venezuela, Cuba y Haití.