As we near Election Day, the ACLU is in conversation with state and local activists about how to prepare for, and respond to, the election outcome. Many people we spoke with are grappling with how they can best protect their communities and fight back against unprecedented attempts to restrict our rights. Right now, there’s real concern about how to combat the dystopian, authoritarian vision for America that Project 2025 and other extremist figures have promised.

Many ACLU supporters also tell us that it already feels like Project 2025 is in operation in their community. They are living with state-level bans on abortion, ideological purges in their schools, and intimidation and harassment from anti-civil rights law enforcement officials and threats by vigilante groups. No matter who wins the White House, they will continue to live with attempts to impose an extreme, anti-civil liberties agenda on their communities.

The gravity of this moment is clear to all of us. We need to come together now to prepare a sustained and coordinated advocacy campaign for civil liberties and civil rights protections where we live. We need a firewall for freedom: a barrier that stops the fiery spread of constant attacks on our civil liberties and civil rights.

Without the assistance of state and local government agencies, a presidential administration will find it much harder to act on its worst threats, such as mass deportations. That is why we are calling on state governments to ensure a firewall between state and local personnel, resources or data and federal or out-of-state law enforcement agencies that attempt to violate our constitutional freedoms. When federal or out-of-state law enforcement agencies request information or assistance they could use to undermine the civil rights of residents, state agencies can and should decline to provide it. We urge state legislatures to pass measures that affirm and enforce this firewall for freedom.

We also urge state and local leaders to pass laws, issue directives and reaffirm state constitutional protections for the right to protest, data privacy, and student non-discrimination. This support is vital to educators, health care providers and families who may face attacks or harassment from either a turbocharged federal law enforcement or another state’s prosecutors.

At the local level, we urge mayors and city councils to come together to protect and support families who could be targeted by mass deportation efforts, attempts to criminalize gender non-conformity and other anti-trans discrimination, and other attacks. We will also urge state and local leaders to move forward on racial and criminal justice in a climate that will remain challenging no matter who wins the presidency.

Even in legislatures and city councils where they are in the minority, individual elected leaders have powerful voices. We urge them to stand alongside impacted community members, bear witness to abuses, and speak out. This will be vital to pushing back on the xenophobia, racism, and bigotry that we have unfortunately seen in far too many of our communities.

Trump has threatened to use the military and federal law enforcement agencies to go after his political opponents. Sadly, we have already seen similar action from state and local law enforcement. For example, state police in Florida accosted voters and the Texas attorney general attacked faith-based communities, voting rights protections organizations, immigrant communities, and reproductive health nonprofits. It is vital for state and local elected leaders to present a counternarrative to such attacks, and an alternative vision of governance built on freedom and rights.

The ACLU has challenged unlawful attacks on our rights and freedoms for more than 100 years. We know that states are the frontlines in this fight for justice. They have the power to build the firewall we described that will protect our communities. We are prepared to use every tool at our disposal to continue this fight — no matter who wins the presidential election — and we have a plan.

For months, the ACLU’s legal and advocacy experts have been developing a roadmap to work with Congress and in statehouses to protect and expand abortion access, pass nondiscrimination laws, and more in the event of Kamala Harris or Donald Trump presidency. This plan is outlined in 13 memos addressing the key policy concerns of either candidate. In the coming months, our affiliates throughout the country will lead the charge to enact state firewalls to protect residents and push back on any unconstitutional tactics, whether pursued by a president or other states.

This important work starts now, and it starts with you. Join us in the fight for our freedoms. Let’s get to work.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is investing resources in what it calls protecting “soft targets,” which include crowded places that aren’t subject to “hardened” security measures. Examples include shopping areas, transit facilities, and open-air tourist attractions. We are all used to going through security checks at airports and some other venues, but the vast majority of events and spaces in the United States don’t have that kind of security. The question is: Do we want DHS having a role in all of those spaces?

DHS counts protecting soft targets as one of four goals in its mission to counter terrorism and homeland security threats. The agency says that it’s working to “assess soft targets and address security gaps, and investing in research and development for technological solutions.” Many measures to increase the security of soft targets are uncontroversial and probably beneficial. There’s nothing wrong with assessing risk, for example, and we all want our government to be well-prepared to respond to emergencies of all kinds. But other parts of the agency’s efforts in this area raise serious questions about mass surveillance and the maintenance of an open society, including those that use AI or other technological solutions to generate or share domestic intelligence, attempt to measure “suspiciousness,” or monitor and track people in public places.

One way that DHS has begun work in this area is through the funding of an industry or academic research and development center called the Soft Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality, or SENTRY, which aims to create “resources and tools for anticipating and mitigating threats to soft targets and crowded places.” Among the center’s research areas is “advanced sensing technologies” that aims to develop “new sensing capabilities to detect threats,” in particular, “to establish new stand-off sensor concepts for detecting concealed threats in crowds.”

Part of SENTRY’s research includes developing AI tools “for data mining of social media, geospatial data platforms, and other sources of information to extract insights on potential threats.” Another part is looking at the application of AI “to risk assessment, quantitative threat deterrence, development of layered security architectures; and providing methods for fusing data and other information.”

DHS’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program, which funds private companies to research and develop products that DHS would like to see, also has a Securing Soft Targets program. It funds companies that are aiming to “build AI algorithms that link objects (e.g., unattended baggage) to people and track them,” to “identify motion of interest from security video feeds,” and to create an “anomaly detection system that leverages activity recognition and tracking to capture multiple data points per subject.”

DHS has also been testing various sensors and detectors intended to be used on people in non-secure public spaces. For several years the agency has been carrying out public tests of thermal cameras designed to spot weapons underneath people’s clothing and identify medicines or other substances that people may have on their person. Various at-a-distance AI scanner technologies are also being researched by participants in the SENTRY program.

Most of these efforts are targeted at people going about their business in public places, mostly unaware of the AI technologies that are being trained upon them, raising significant privacy and constitutional issues. At their worst, efforts to secure soft targets may lead to the “airportization” of American life by encouraging local authorities to increase the use of security perimeters, searches, and surveillance at an ever-widening group of public gatherings and events. Such efforts could lead to the emergence of a checkpoint society, an enclosed world where people are scanned, vetted, and access-controlled at every turn.

Of course, security technology does not operate itself; people will be subject to the petty authority of martinet guards who are constantly stopping them based on some AI-generated flag of suspicion. And, inevitably, doing so in discriminatory ways. AI-facilitated surveillance of public venues may lead to the harassment, investigation, and arrest of people who are already disproportionately singled out for scrutiny, such as protestors, communities of color, and immigrants. The use of AI machine vision to monitor people, even when done in an ostensibly anonymous manner, has the potential to significantly change the experience of being in public in the United States.

Such efforts may lock down American life in ways that impose not only direct costs — the price of equipment and personnel – but also introduce inefficiencies – wait times and efforts by members of the public to avoid false alarms. These efforts also perpetuate the intangible social and psychological costs that come from surveillance, submission to authority, and the lack of an open society.

We recently filed comments with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an agency created by Congress to serve as a check and balance on our security agencies, urging the agency to keep a close eye on these activities, among others. Given the sensitivity around surveilling people in public places, those activities bear close watching — something we will be doing as well.

The board and staff of the ACLU of Maine mourn the passing of Justice Louis Scolnik, co-founder and first president of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, now the ACLU of Maine.

For over 70 years, Justice Scolnik’s unwavering commitment to protecting civil liberties and civil rights helped transform Maine’s legal landscape and made Maine a place where those of all backgrounds and perspectives are welcomed and supported.

Born in Lewiston in 1923, Justice Scolnik attended Bates College and Georgetown Law. After serving for 16 years as the only cooperating attorney in Maine for the national ACLU, Justice Scolnik joined 20 others in forming the Maine affiliate of the ACLU in 1968. Among the organization's earliest victories were cases involving prisoners’ rights, sex discrimination, religion in public schools, and a high school teacher in Belfast who was fired for discussing issues of gender and sexuality as part of a lesson on “Romeo and Juliet."

Before his appointment to the Maine Superior Court in 1974 and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1983, Scolnik was active in the local branch of the NAACP, and also served, in the mid-1960s, as chairman of the Maine Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. On the commission he fought to end housing discrimination, including against Black service members stationed at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor who were being blocked from renting or buying adequate housing. He retired from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1988 and lived most recently in Andover, Massachusetts.

In 1989, the ACLU of Maine established the Justice Louis Scolnik Award, honoring members of the legal community who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the protection of civil liberties. For years, Justice Scolnik regularly attended the event, where many fondly remember him playing saxophone. In addition to his professional achievements, Justice Scolnik was an accomplished and enthusiastic jazz performer and a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, and community member.

We are deeply grateful for the tremendous gifts Justice Scolnik gave to our state, our community, and our organization; it is a privilege to continue our work in his honor and memory.