Government Surveillance

From the stunning revelations of the FBI's COINTELPRO program just a few years after CCR was founded to the broad-ranging surveillance of the post-9/11 era, CCR has consistently sought to expose and oppose government surveillance. We have worked to protect individuals and communities from government surveillance, not only because the Constitution protects individual privacy, but also because unconstitutional government spying and infiltration have regularly been used to disrupt and entrap social movements, activists, and members of vulnerable communities. In the post-9/11 era, surveillance has undermined and fundamentally reoriented our democratic institutions: mass collection of data on ordinary citizens is no longer the exception, but the rule. We have challenged blanket surveillance of Muslim communities by local police departments as well as attempts by federal agencies to coerce Muslims to spy on their own communities. The Center has also sued to protect our own attorney-client privileged communications from unlawful government surveillance.