ACLU Sues NSA, Defense Department for AI Spy Program Records

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the National Security Agency Thursday, alleging it failed to disclose documents about its deployment of artificial intelligence under federal public records law.

Transparency about the agency’s ramped-up use of AI is critical to allowing the public to understand how their rights are being affected, and the agency hasn’t complied with the federal Freedom of Information Act, according to the ACLU’s lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit, shared first with Bloomberg Law, also names as defendants the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Defense Department.

The group is asking the court to force the agencies to release all “reports, assessments, studies, audits, analyses, or presentations concerning the risks or impacts posed by the NSA’s use or proposed use of AI or machine learning for privacy, civil liberties, or civil rights that were created on or after January 1, 2022.”

NSA officials have described the agency’s AI use to include “performing ‘speaker identification,’ ‘human language processing,’ and monitoring U.S. networks.” The NSA announced in early September it had finished a strategic study on using AI for its missions, followed by an announcement the same month it was creating a hub for AI security.

Despite publicly stating its commitment to transparency, the NSA has provided little public information about how these technologies are used for targeting and if its automating surveillance decisions, the complaint says. As a result, the ACLU wrote, the effects on the civil liberties of Americans caught up in the agency’s surveillance dragnet are unclear. Civil liberties groups have for years raised concerns about biases amplified by AI used in policing, a concern that also extends to intelligence agencies and their activities.

“AI tools have the potential to expand the NSA’s surveillance dragnet more than ever before,” Shaiba Rather, a fellow at the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in an interview. “These tools are dangerous and powerful, and the public need to know how they’re being used and what the ramifications are for their own rights and liberties.”

Records sought by the group also include the NSA Inspector General’s report on the Defense Department and National Security Agency’s October 2022 “Joint Evaluation of the National Security Agency’s Integration of Artificial Intelligence” and related records. The ACLU is also seeking “all roadmaps, strategic plans, implementation plans, studies, inventories, and reports concerning the NSA’s use of AI or machine learning that were created on or after January 1, 2023.” Creation of the NSA’s AI “roadmap” was mandated in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2023, according to the complaint.

The agencies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI directed the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies and a separate national security memorandum on AI, which is currently being drafted. Transparency essential to the public’s ability to provide input as the administration develops these guardrails, noted ACLU National Security Project Deputy Director Patrick Toomey.

The original FOIA request was filed March 7, according to the complaint. Federal public records law requires the agency to respond within 20 days.

The case is American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency, S.D.N.Y., No. 24-cv-3147, filed 4/25/24.