Privacy and protests

By Stacy Gittleman

Detroit and Michigan have a shadowy history of surveillance and spying on activists that traces back to the 1940s. That is when the Michigan State Police was in its infancy and the Detroit police and the state formed what are often referred to as the Red Squad. It was a unit that specialized in political surveillance and operated during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras. Undercover operatives attended meetings, surveilled offices and meetings of certain organizations, and gathered information on demonstrations and protests. The Red Squad investigated and documented most civil rights organizations, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to Black power organizations such as the Black Panthers, as well as leaders from labor, antiwar and other such groups.

The Red Squad was disbanded in 1974 after it was exposed by civil rights organizations. A court mandate revealed that by the time this law enforcement unit was disbanded, it had collected 1.5 million names and 38,000 detailed reports on individual citizens. The Detroit Police Department collected between 50,000 and 100,000 additional files on individuals.

Now, 21st century civil libertarians and privacy advocates harbor an even greater concern that the government and law enforcement are deploying ever-more sophisticated surveillance technology upon protesters as they exercise their First Amendment rights, especially directed at the Trump administration and the growing controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian war.

Peter Hammer, faculty director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School, remarked that the difference between how activists were monitored then and now shows how easily information flows in the digital age.

“Surveillance has been around for a long time,” he explained. “The FBI began spying on meetings of the Communist Party beginning in the 1940s. Informants would be sent into meetings and take notes. Those notes would end up in a back file cabinet in some FBI office. The notes were not exactly available at one’s fingertips or in real time.”

Now, Hammer said, there is an uncompromising stance towards the targeting of protests, and digital information can be easily aggregated.

“Surveillance is much more weaponized than it used to be, and there seems to be among government and law enforcement agencies a willingness to do it,” Hammer said.

Hammer continued: “There is a chilling effect on the rights of protesters. It is easy to engender upon the protesters that they are committing crimes, such as trespassing, which can be easily manufactured and built up by law enforcement, who can then justify their retaliation tactics.”

Hammer said people “underappreciate how much information they’re freely giving out to corporations and elsewhere that open them up to a wide range of legitimate privacy issues.”

“If people were only more aware of the privacy they are giving up digitally, they might think twice about it,” said Hammer. “Or, perhaps, we have gotten to a point that people do not care and they just want the convenience of their smartphones and all the things this technology can quickly deliver to them. But there is a difference between companies knowing your social media and spending habits and the government knowing your online activities. Very quickly, our constitutional protections are being systemically dismantled through technological surveillance.”

Jay Stanley is a senior policy analyst at the ACLU who keeps tabs on new and emerging technologies that impact our privacy. To him, the landscape is changing around the rights of protesters, and not for the better.

“Historically, our court system has placed the highest priority on making sure Americans feel free to express themselves, to disagree with those in power and to speak truth to that power,” Stanley said. “Yet, we are living in an era where new technologies are giving government agencies and corporations unprecedented new powers.”

These technologies, according to the ACLU, include enhanced facial recognition capabilities that can identify a person from even the distance between one’s eyes. The ACLU is also sounding the alarm on cameras that can pick a person out of a crowd based on their posture and gait. However, this technology often gets it wrong and falsely identifies Black and Brown people, several of whom have been falsely detained and accused of crimes.

“There are big questions about how those new technologies should or should not be deployed by the law enforcement agencies and other security agencies that serve us, the American public,” Stanley said. “There has been a rush to deploy powerful new surveillance technologies into our communities without considering the culture of these communities and how they may change the American way of life.”

Stanley said the ACLU suspects that government efforts to track and keep records on protesters are increasing, especially as the federal government is making the push for agencies to centralize and share data.

Stanley said his organization is also concerned about the disproportionate and often militarized presence of law enforcement at protests.

“In many instances, we see a deployment of a disproportionately large presence of law enforcement that is meant to intimidate protesters, especially when law enforcement doesn’t like the message of the protesters,” Stanley said. “The ACLU’s big concern is that, lurking behind all deployments of large police presences at protests and this technology, is that we end up in a world where it will become routine to track all of us in public spaces. It is not difficult to link cameras and facial recognition technology, so the government can keep track of us at all times.”

When protesting, the ACLU supports the use of wearing head coverings or masks to hide one’s identity.

The ACLU reports that several states are trying to revive “arcane” laws that prohibit the wearing of masks during demonstrations. They harken back to an era when the Ku Klux Klan wore hoods during marches and terrorized Black residents.

In May, the Ohio attorney general notified 14 universities that protesters wearing masks violate the state’s 1953 anti-mask law and run counter to the state’s campus norms. Violators could face penalties that include between six and 18 months in prison.

Citing a 1953 anti-masking law used against the KKK, administrators at the University of North Carolina warned anti-Israel protesters that wearing masks while protesting violates this law.

In May of 2024, Stanley wrote a post for the ACLU’s website about how these state anti-masking laws can have a chilling effect on anti-Israel protesters and hamper the willingness of protesters to show up for causes they believe in, especially controversial causes.

“There should be no systemic government tracking of protesters to monitor which individuals are showing up at certain kinds of protests,” Stanley said when speaking with Downtown. “Banning protesters from being masked but allowing law enforcement officers to mask is exactly the inverse of the way things should be in a democratic society.”

Yet sometimes, emboldened behind the shroud of a mask, a hood, or a checkered keffiyeh, anti-Israel protesters in the last 23 months since the beginning of the October 7th war that Hamas instigated with Israel have turned to intimidation, violence, harassment, vandalism, and in some extreme cases, murder. And their violence is aimed mainly at the Jewish community.

For example, in June of 2024, masked individuals in New York City, leaving a protest at an exhibit commemorating the October 7th massacre at the Nova Music festival in southern Israel, boarded a subway, demanding that all Zionists raise their hands and warned them it was their last chance to get off. On college campuses, anti-Israel protesters, concealing their identities, have trespassed and vandalized campus buildings. From Columbia to Yale to Harvard, activists have verbally threatened and harassed Jewish students and blocked their movement on campus.

Responding to the juxtaposition of the right to conceal one’s identity at a protest and the outburst of violent incidents, Stanley said there are firm, legal boundaries between free speech and violence.

“If you engage in violence, masked or not, you should know you can be punished for that,” Stanley said. “Violence is illegal with some narrow exceptions, like self-defense. But the wearing of a mask (or other head covering) does not change the law. When protesting, you do not have the right to directly threaten and intimidate people. You can make broad statements that some people may find offensive, but you may not make statements that are threatening.”

Civil rights attorney Deborah Gordon from Oakland County is also concerned about law enforcement’s increased surveillance activities at protests, but stressed the limitations of one’s privacy rights when protesting in public.

Gordon cautioned that the government and law enforcement can legally photograph and take surveillance of protesters expressing themselves in public places. Constitutionally speaking, Gordon said the Fourth Amendment does protect private citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. Things covered under the Fourth Amendment include seizure of one’s cell phone in the absence of a court-appointed search warrant, Gordon said. This would also fall into the concern of the legality of police tracking an individual through a phone’s GPS tracking.

She pointed to the landmark 1967 case of Katz vs. the United States, when a man was indicted eight times for transmitting gambling information over a public pay phone to clients in other states and was caught by federal agents by wiretapping that phone. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that Katz was entitled to Fourth Amendment protections for his conversations and that the wiretapping of a public phone booth, without a warrant, violated Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore constituted an illegal search.

“This case, however, established that surveillance (in public places) is not unconstitutional if you do not have an expectation of privacy,” Gordon explained. “This is an example of letter-to-the-law cases that come up in law school lectures. Yes, you have privacy rights from the government in places you should expect privacy, such as a private residence. But if you are walking and protesting in the streets of Detroit, you should not expect to have privacy.”

Gordon said that around 2019, there was an outcry from civil rights organizations about the use and installation of cameras and facial recognition technology placed around downtown Detroit by the Detroit Police Department (DPD). Today, the DPD monitors about 600 such cameras placed around downtown, some paid for privately, from its central real-time crime center.

In 2020, the ACLU of Michigan fought a case where a Black Detroit man was arrested outside his home, wrongfully detained when he was mistakenly identified as a person who shoplifted a Shinola store due to images captured from one of these cameras.

Over time, the ACLU filed several lawsuits involving mistaken identity in Detroit and declared that facial recognition cameras make many mistakes when it comes to people of color, and that this technology leads to lazy law enforcement investigations.

While Detroit police may still use facial recognition, it must adhere to a strict set of policies.

Gordon said the courts maintained that in certain instances, the use of facial recognition technology is legal and constitutional.

Gordon said when the founding fathers penned the Constitution, they could not have imagined how we go about our 21st-century lives in the digital age, where everyone is connected through the internet and wireless technology.

“Everybody’s got their cell phones out (at protests), and police are wearing body cameras,” Gordon remarked. “You are being recorded. The founders of the Constitution could not imagine the digital age we are living in, but this is how it works.”

Gordon said no one should expect that any data flowing wirelessly through the air to be private.

“Beyond that, if the police try to get a physical hold of your phone, that will require a warrant.”

Gordon said no cases have come across her desk involving those who feel that their civil rights or privacy have been violated due to participating in protests.

On the flip side of the masking debate is The Lawfare Project, a civil rights organization that describes itself as the legal arm for American Jews.

The Lawfare Project is in favor of passing “Unmasking the Hate” legislation at the state level. Such legislation would allow law enforcement to pursue people who wear masks and threaten others rather than establish a widespread ban on face coverings. There has been some success in passing such legislation on Long Island, N.Y., which has banned the wearing of masks in public except for health or religious reasons, though it is facing an uphill battle in the courts.

Gerald Filitti, senior counsel for the Lawfare Project, said when it comes to protests, there are two separate issues: preserving the First Amendment to protest and peacefully gather and assemble, and covering and masking one’s identity with the intention to harass, intimidate, and act violently towards minority groups.

Historically, New York City had anti-masking laws on the books that date back to the late 1800s to protect people from the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.

“We have seen people using coverings to conceal their identity while engaging in hateful and harmful conduct targeting minority communities, including the Jewish community,” explained Filitti. “The first mask bans in the United States were passed 150 years ago in New York City in response to the Ku Klux Klan marching and using intimidation tactics toward African Americans to prevent them from exercising their civil rights.”

According to Filitti, the key is to protect legitimate protests while preventing intimidation. He said free speech is important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of making minority communities feel threatened. Protesters need to remain peaceful and accountable for their actions, and having their faces visible to prevent anonymous acts of intimidation is a part of accountability, he said.

“We respect and do not want to shut down any legitimate protests because that is one’s fundamental First Amendment right,” said Filitti, an alumnus of the University of Michigan Law. “But we do want to assure that when protests take place, the people protesting are not effectively curtailing the civil rights of others. One’s right to speech does not mean that others, especially targeted minorities, have no right to be in a public space, or that Jews should feel intimidated, harassed or threatened. Your right to speech does not mean I have no right to be in a public space or that I may feel threatened.”

Filitti said the Lawfare Project is disappointed in the ACLU’s masking stance and feels it has not strongly enough urged protesters to practice restraint in intimidating others.

“Yes, it is free speech to yell ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ but when they are wearing masks or head coverings connected to a terrorist organization, the effect is truly intimidating,” Filitti said.

Locally, since October 7th, 2023, this has played out on and off campus at the University of Michigan. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the University of Michigan was categorized as one of the top 10 campuses in the nation with the highest number of reported incidents, with 40 incidents of Jew hatred during this time. This has ensnared Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a series of prosecutions against students and faculty who participated in demonstrations and who have been accused of trespassing, vandalism, resisting arrest, assaulting law enforcement, and other charges.

While some charges have been dropped, other cases remain under investigation. Notably, there was a series of vandalism and trespassing incidents where suspects left threatening marks, including slogans and symbols used by Hamas, on the private properties of the University of Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley, several regents, and former University of Michigan president Santa Ono. Pro-Palestinian activists also defaced the Southfield law office of regent Jordan Acker and damaged the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit building on Telegraph Avenue in Bloomfield Hills on the first anniversary of October 7th. These crimes remain unsolved.

Following the rise in protest activity and these crimes, the university stated that it expanded its use of contracted plainclothes security personnel in 2024 “to provide discreet awareness of potential illegal activities without escalating tensions” and said this was an industry-standard approach used widely across college campuses, sporting venues, and medical facilities.”

However, due to allegations from anti-Israel protesters that some individual contractors were allegedly spying on them, the University of Michigan changed course and severed ties with the investigation firm.

On June 8, the University of Michigan released a statement that “the university does not surveil individuals or student groups, nor has it requested or authorized the surveillance of any students on or off campus. Unfortunately, recent media reports have mischaracterized the role of contract security personnel who were engaged solely to support campus safety efforts.”

The statement continued: “The responsibilities of the contracted personnel were limited to the observation and reporting of criminal or suspicious activity on university property to the Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS)—not surveillance. The DPSS has never followed a student off campus, nor targeted individuals or groups because of their beliefs or affiliations.”

The University added that upon learning that an employee of one of the contracted security vendors violated the parameters of behavior, that employee was fired from working with the company.

The anti-Israel protests have personally affected University of Michigan Board of Regents President Sarah Hubbard. Hubbard said protesters for months have pursued her. In the shadow of the night, some drove an hour off campus to protest on her property. Masked, they chanted their pro-Palestinian slogans, left bloodied dolls wrapped in red-stained cloth, and pinned their demands on her front porch.

Hubbard now needs security around her home and, at times, a police escort to meetings where protesters shout at her for being complicit in “genocide in Gaza.”

Hubbard said the university supports free speech, but protesters must obey the parameters set by the University’s Code of Conduct. This includes applying for protest permits and staging protests at allowable spaces and times. Protesters cannot disrupt the flow of movement for the rest of the campus community and cannot disrupt events, lectures, or classes.

“The regents wish to create a campus environment that welcomes free speech and the exchange of ideas,” Hubbard said. “We expect the campus community to follow our Code of Conduct. Free speech does not include harassment, vandalism, and protests on my lawn or the lawns of other members of the board of regents.”

Hubbard added that there is a dangerous line crossed when words of protesters turn into violent actions. This summer, the familiar chants and demands of the anti-Israel movement of “Free Palestine” were echoed by extremists who set ablaze the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion in April after Gov. Josh Shapiro as his family celebrated Passover, executed two Israeli ambassadors in Washington D.C, and torched Jews peacefully marching in support of the freedom of Israeli hostages held in Gaza at a walk in Boulder, Colorado in May.

Hubbard also remarked that when the chants of protesters encourage violent actions such as the mentioned hate crimes, those involved should expect consequences when state and federal laws are broken.

At the campus level, Hubbard said the university acted to suspend certain groups only when their words turned to vandalism and harassment and other actions of agitation towards the campus community.

“Words that lead to hate acts have become normalized,” Hubbard said. “Perpetrators think they will just be forgiven, and that’s when there is a danger of people taking those words to the next step, which could include bodily harm. We have already seen vandalism aimed at several leaders of the university, and that is a step beyond words. That’s breaking the law. Then you are dealing with not campus rules, but state and federal law.”

State Representative Noah Arbit (D-20) said he has seen no concrete evidence of the establishment of a mass surveillance system and record keeping on protesters. However, he said he would not be surprised, judging how the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the department of justice to wield it to its agenda of cracking down on dissent and rounding up undocumented immigrants.

“I haven’t seen any evidence of such a centralized data collection and surveillance of protests, but it would not be surprising to me,” Arbit said. “Look how the department of justice has been politicized. There are clear political motives for certain investigations. Apart from the Nixon administration, we’ve never really had an administration that was just so heavy-handed in terms of targeting political opponents. It does not instill confidence that people who are going out to protest are not being targeted because of their views. I think there is a reasonable concern that the federal government is looking into this.”

Arbit believes that a great swath of the American population no longer believes the federal government is going to protect its constitutional civil liberties as it ignores court orders and works harder to protect Trump’s agenda and political interests.

“The governance at the federal level in place right now violates the spirit of American democracy and leaves Americans concerned about their privacy, including when they go out on the street to protest,” Arbit added.

Jeramie Scott is a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a Washington, D.C., based organization that focuses on government surveillance and consumer privacy issues. EPIC contributes to amicus briefs that focus on the issue of surveillance or Fourth and First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court and appellate court levels.

Scott said at times, it is not only the government but vigilante individuals and other organizations that are trying to reveal the identities of some protesters to get them fired or even deported.

Scott said that is why protesters are encouraged to wear masks and keffiyehs. He said he could not point to specific incidences when those wearing facial coverings cross the line from free speech into violence. Rather, he is more concerned about what happens when law enforcement and ICE are masked.

“The only ones I have seen consistently that are emboldened when they wear face coverings are ICE and ICE contractors,” Scott said. “I don’t think there is any evidence that backs up protesters wearing masks or other coverings becoming violent or threatening. When protecting First Amendment rights, we must realize the role that our Constitution plays in protecting individuals from government. When you undermine those freedoms, we are in danger of falling from a democratic government to an authoritarian government.”

Outside of surveillance of protesters, it is feared that the federal government is casting a wider surveillance net over all of us, which is causing great concern from privacy and civil libertarian advocates like Scott. In the name of efficiency, the Trump administration is looking to break the siloed information the government keeps on us – from tax returns to health insurance claims to who is receiving food stamps and other federal or state assistance – and pool it into one central file on each individual residing in the country.

For example, attorney generals in 20 blue states, including Michigan, are going after the Trump administration’s demand that states turn over information on families receiving assistance from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In a statement released on X on July 28 by attorney general Nessel, she said she joined a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s demands that states hand over five years’ worth of their residents’ sensitive personal data, including data from more than 1.4 million SNAP recipients in Michigan.

“It is the government’s responsibility to be good stewards over the private, personal identifying information we request from our residents in order to effectuate these programs,” Nessel said. “These families apply for SNAP benefits to help put food on the table, not for their data to be stockpiled and weaponized against them by the Trump administration. That information goes way beyond what you file in your tax forms. It includes your housing information, landlord contact information, how much you pay for your utilities, even how much you pay in medical debt.”

At the center of this controversy is the software giant Palantir. While Palantir claims that it is merely a software developer whose software platforms solve real-world problems in government, organizational, and corporate settings, it has many critics, including EIPC’s Scott.

“Palantir knows good and well at this point (how the government is using its technology),” Scott said. “You’d have to be blind not to know that the Palantir software is being used in ways that undermine people’s civil rights and privacy. Of course, they are not directly collecting the data.

Yet, as a software company, it must take responsibility if it knows its software is being used to target people for detainment or deportation. As a company, you cannot ignore how the tools and technology you are producing are being used.”

Local civil rights attorneys and law professors pointed to many in-place laws and policies that the executive and legislative branches of the government should be enforcing, but seem to be ignoring.

They include amendments to the Privacy Act of 1974. It established a code of fair information practices governing the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of information about individuals that is maintained in systems of records by federal agencies. The law states that government agencies must give the public notice of how records of individuals are used and makes it illegal to disclose records of individuals to other government departments without the written consent. The Privacy Act also provides individuals a way to access their records and sets strict parameters for agencies as to how they collect and keep records on individuals.

Up until now, there was an expectation that government agencies stored personal data on individuals and kept it private and separate from other agencies, with a few exceptions. Only if authorities suspect that an individual is involved with criminal activity could one agency access information from another. This was conducted on a case-to-case basis, under the approval of a court-appointed authorization, and only to obtain records for a criminal investigation or to provide evidence in a trial.

Executive orders (EO) issued by the Trump administration to create the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could usurp all these norms. In one EO issued in March, the Trump administration required the heads of every federal department to have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software and information technology.

Foundry, Palantir’s data integration program, is under the microscope.It is designed to unify and streamline data across government agencies and can also be deployed to create solutions for non-governmental organizations and streamline corporate operations. An advertisement for Foundry can be spotted in the terminals at trhe Detroit Metropolitan Airport, boasting its help in facilitating automation, supply chain and manufacturing capabilities in the automotive industry.

But critics say the software platform is designed to create narratives and histories of individuals based on a profile built on their digital trails and footprints to eventually create a surveillance state.

On May 30th, The New York Times published an analysis, “Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans.” It reported that Palantir received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Trump took office. This is in addition to existing government contracts the company has with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. It has also begun contracting with the Department of Health and Human Services. The article said that Palantir officials are also in communication with the Social Security administration and the Internal Revenue Service, with interest in purchasing its software platforms. The article also reported that Palantir received contracts from the Biden administration to roll out the national vaccination program during the COVID pandemic.

Also in May, a group of former Palantir employees vented their dire concerns in a letter they distributed to the media. Entitled “The Scouring of the Shire,” the letter stated that after working there for some time, the former employees saw an erosion in the company’s preserving its initial values of “transparency, upholding democracy, preserving the spirit of free scientific inquiry, and ensuring responsible AI development.”

They wrote: “We no longer believe Palantir’s executives are upholding these values. By supporting Trump’s administration, Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and violate Palantir’s Code of Conduct.”

One of the signatories of the open letter is Juan Sebastian Pinto.

Pinto graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in English and philosophy and wrote about architecture before accepting a position as a content strategist and communications specialist in 2021.

An Ecuadorian immigrant who is aware of Palantir’s contracts with ICE, Pinto said he ruminated for a long time before accepting the position. Pinto ultimately signed on because he was curious about what was going on in the tech world.

“I hoped that Palantir could be a great opportunity to learn how the world works to make it better,” he said. “I was also attracted to the work Palantir did in various humanitarian fields. It seemed like a great opportunity to work in a fascinating environment and meet fascinating people.”

Pinto expanded his job responsibilities from communications into sales and technical teams, explaining to potential clients how Palantir’s software platforms could be deployed in real-world applications. These included global humanitarian food distribution, government systems and public healthcare management.

Then he began working with teams charged with defense-team applications and learned how artificial intelligence was being used to wage warfare through sensors, surveillance, computers and automated decisions.

“What ultimately forced my hand in deciding to resign was Israel’s actions in Gaza following Oct. 7th, 2023,” he said. “It was Israel using Palantir’s technologies, coupled with the second Trump administration’s use of Palantir technology to help in the targeting and deportation of immigrants, that forced me to speak out.”

Pinto, in his post-Palantir life, said he is writing about AI ethics, speaks at protests against Palantir, and participates in protests against immigrant deportations.

In a harsh rebuke to the allegations from former employees and the The New York Times, a Palantir spokesperson writing to Downtown maintained that Palantir is merely a software company that organizations use to improve data management and operations. Palantir pointed to software applications created for the World Food Programme and distribution, manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and defense systems.

“We are not a surveillance company,” stated the spokesperson. “We do not sell personal data of any kind. We don’t provide data mining as a service. Unlike many technology companies, our business model is not based on monetizing personal data. Instead, we develop and license software platforms that enable our customers to integrate and analyze their data assets to make better decisions. Privacy and data security are fundamental to Palantir and have been built into the software’s architecture from the start.”

The Palantir spokesperson harshly criticized The New York Times for “flawed, and at times malicious reporting.”

“Since our founding, we have always placed the preservation of privacy and civil liberties at the center of our mission,” stated the spokesperson. “That is why the Times’ allegations falsely claim that Palantir is actively collecting data or otherwise providing infrastructure for some ‘master list of personal information’ to surveil the American public — is so reckless and irresponsible in its falsehood.”

The statement continued: “Palantir is not a vendor on any master database project to unify databases across federal agencies. Palantir has not proposed that the U.S. government build a ‘master list’ for the surveillance of citizens, nor have we been asked to consider building such a system for any customer. Such a hypothetical project is fundamentally at odds with Palantir’s values and our commitment to work in support of liberal democracies.”

The spokesperson stated that the letter from former employees did not represent the views of most current staff at the company.

“The letter purports to paint a picture of broad dissent,” stated the spokesperson. “Palantir is not an ideological monolith, nor do we aspire to build a culture around a narrow set of beliefs or political affiliations. To the contrary, Palantir prides itself on a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement on difficult issues related to our work.”

Civil rights attorney Deborah Gordon described Trump’s executive orders and the creation of DOGE as harsh deviations from how this country’s government has run under the Constitution.

“Now, there will be the sharing and consolidation of records and data across all government agencies,” Gordon said. “This has never happened before, unless there was a specific reason for it. There was a time after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when law enforcement and intelligence agencies were permitted to share information. But what the EO does surpasses all of these for a broad-spectrum sharing of all data. This to me, is in clear violation of the Privacy Act. I believe that there is no precedent when an executive order can supersede an existing law.”

Gordon said it remains to be seen how all this will play out in the courts. Already, Gordon said, there have been some pushback cases against the centralization of data kept by the federal government.

Asked if we are headed into Orwellian, Big Brother times, Gordon answered with an unequivocal: “Yes.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to put the genie back in the bottle,” lamented Gordon. “Congress right now seems incapable of getting it arms around this and is putting up no pushback. You have an administration that does not care about privacy. We are in uncharted territory.”

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Guidelines for protesters

Participating in peaceful protest is a First Amendment right protected by the Constitution and a part of any thriving democracy. But protests are increasingly being watched by law enforcement and government surveillance.

Here are some tips compiled by the ACLU and Wired magazine on how to best protect yourself at a protest:

Before attending the protest, notify a trusted friend or family member before heading out to tell them where you will be. Your rights are strongest in public forums like streets, sidewalks, and in front of government buildings. Do not block access to buildings or interfere with operations.

Cell towers can log your presence through your mobile phone. Stingrays (cell-site simulators) may capture phone data in bulk. Law enforcement can monitor social media posts, photos and live streams at protests.

If you choose to bring your phone, communicate with others via Signal, which is a secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging app that offers the option to delete messages after they're sent. You should also change the phone settings to airplane mode, turn off GPS location, disable biometric unlocking, like FaceID or fingerprint features, and use a six-digit passcode instead.

Closed-circuit television and facial recognition can identify individuals in crowds. Wired advises protesters to dress in neutral clothing, wear a hat, sunglasses, or a mask or other head covering to hide one’s identity.

You do not have to show identification if police demand it unless you are under arrest, being ticketed or driving. You also must identify yourself to police if the officers have reasonable suspicion to believe you violated the law and there is a local law requiring that you show ID when the police have reasonable suspicion (as exists in Ann Arbor and East Lansing).

If arrested or detained, authorities may access your devices, identification cards, or social media accounts. According to ACLU Michigan, stay calm and keep your hands visible. Don’t argue, resist or obstruct police, even if you think they are violating your rights. If you're detained, not having your ID on you might keep you stuck for longer.

Ask law enforcement if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, calmly walk away.

Do not participate in acts of vandalism.