In a lawsuit, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research argues that the government is using immigration policy to stifle free speech and regulate technology. Since its early days in office, the Trump administration has targeted researchers who study and address hate speech, harassment, propaganda, and misinformation online.
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Now, some of those researchers are fighting back. Last week, their lawsuit—which could have global implications for online safety and free speech—made its first appearance in court.
This controversy began a year ago when US Secretary of State Marco Rubioannounced a “visa restriction policy” against “foreign officials and other individuals” who were “complicit in the censorship of Americans.” Since then, several foreign officials and researchers have been banned from traveling to the US, and in theory, anyone working in fact-checking or online safety and trust could face similar restrictions.
The exact implications of Rubio’s announcement are vague—intentionally so, says Cary Diesel, an attorney representing the investigators. “This policy is broad and incredibly vague, and the deterrent effects are correspondingly enormous,” Diesel said outside court in Washington on May 13.
The case has been filed by the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR), an advocacy organization for technology researchers. It is suing Rubio, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking the court to strike down the policy as unconstitutional. In their complaint, the plaintiffs say the policy violates the speech and due process rights of foreign-born researchers and technology workers whose “work advocates for greater moderation of content on [tech] platforms.”
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CITR is represented by Columbia University’s Knight Institute for the First Amendment and the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy. Diesel, a senior attorney at the Knight Institute, tells MIT Technology Review that they are in court because the Trump administration is essentially “using immigration law to punish people for expressing views they disagree with.”
More immediately, the plaintiffs are asking the government to halt these visa restrictions while the case progresses. At the end of the week, the government filed a motion to dismiss the case.
The judge has yet to rule on any of the applications, and his questions so far appear to focus on clarifying who and what are actually affected by the State Department's announcements, as well as other procedural issues.
The outcome of the case could ultimately affect how much the public knows about the dangers of social media and artificial intelligence, says Nicole Schneidman , head of Protect Democracy ’s technology and data governance team . The workers bringing this lawsuit, she says, “ serve a very, very important function in educating the public, holding tech companies accountable, investigating the impacts that advanced technology has on our society .”
The CITR lawsuit is the latest shot in a years-long battle over how the internet should be moderated and by whom—a question that has become increasingly political and embroiled in accusations of censorship.
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For years, Trump and his allies have claimed they are victims of a vast conspiracy between government agencies, civil society groups, academia, and major tech platforms to specifically censor conservative voices online. According to this narrative, a so-called “censorship-industry complex” aided the Biden.
