Emily

So in this release, you say the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is suing

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on behalf of Kay Rosato and Mark Hodges, who respectively created a Facebook group and an app that hosted video footage of ICE operations to inform the public and hold our government accountable.

Talk to us about what happened here and what you are alleging the government did to pressure these tech companies to censor these accounts.

There was also some reporting I wanted to get your reaction to in The New York Times.

We can put F2 up on the screen about how often the government is pressuring social media companies not only to take down content, but to reveal the identities of some of the people who are trying to remain anonymous for understandable reasons, frankly, behind accounts.

that are posting anti-ICE content.

Part of this reads, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose ICE by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

One of the things that we have really appreciated here about FIRE is that you have stood

for free speech regardless of partisanship.

So under the Biden administration where there were abuses, you all were right there.

And now under the Trump administration with extraordinary abuses, you continue to be on the side of the First Amendment.

Can you put this in context in terms of what is happening here, how extensive it is, and what sort of a threat to free speech this ultimately represents?

Well, I think the administration themselves are not very confident in their legal standing here because according to this New York Times piece, they say in September they sent META, these administrative subpoenas, which are just basically like pieces of paper that they're like, yeah, we think we should be able to do this, to identify the people behind Instagram accounts that posted about ICE raids in California.

According to the ACLU, the subpoenas were challenged in court.

DHS withdrew the request for information before a judge could rule.

And I think there's another instance where they document the same tactic, where when there's pushback and they say, you can't do this, we're going to court, they're like, oh, never mind, we're good.

Right.

Because they don't feel that they are on solid legal ground here and they don't want an actual judge's ruling because now they can live in this sort of amorphous, like, well, we think we have this power.

But if you get an actual legal decision, then you can no longer live in that state of ambiguity.

And, you know, you have to decide whether you're going to listen to the courts or whether you're going to flagrantly violate their orders, which, of course, they've done thousands of times as well.