Cybersecurity Policy Report, Homeland Security Democrats Demand Details About DHS’s ‘Abhorrent’ Surveillance Activities, (Feb 27, 2026)
The Department of Homeland Security is engaged in “blatantly unconstitutional” surveillance of the U.S. public, including people protesting its aggressive campaign to find undocumented immigrants, according to all 15 Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee.
“At your direction, DHS has established new programs and watchlists to collect, store, share, and utilize data on U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike, without notice to Congress or the public,” the lawmakers said in a letter sent today to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
“We are deeply concerned DHS is using these surveillance programs to monitor and investigate Americans and stifle dissent among those who oppose the Trump administration’s agenda. You and your underlings appear to be labeling untold numbers of people as ‘domestic terrorists’ or individuals of concern at will without evidence, operating wildly invasive spy tools to identify targets—and then using such labels as an excuse for yet more surveillance,” they alleged.
“This self-reinforcing spiral of civil liberties violations ratchets in only one direction: toward an authoritarian surveillance state that punishes dissent and inflicts state violence,” the lawmakers added.
They cited numerous reported examples of DHS surveillance, including the use of “mobile license plate readers, cellphone location tracking devices, and access to private databases of license plate scans” and “contracts with spyware and forensic technology companies to allow the agency to hack into phones remotely, access locked phones, recover deleted data, and read information in encrypted chats.”
They also cited the use of subpoenas to obtain data about DHS critics from social media platforms, which prompted letters this week from committee Democrats to 10 companies (CPR, Feb. 26).
“Your actions are abhorrent, blatantly unconstitutional, and corrosive to the functioning of a peaceful society. They cannot stand,” the lawmakers told Ms. Noem. “Your weaponization of DHS undercuts decades of effort to develop a Department that responsibly balances security with privacy and civil liberties protections and transparency.”
They set a March 13 deadline for Ms. Noem to provide, among other things, a “description and documentation of each DHS program involving surveillance or data collection, storage, retention, sharing, use, deletion, or destruction” and a description “of each watchlist or database of biographic and biometric information of individuals—regardless of the nomenclature DHS uses to refer to it internally (system, list, record, file, etc.)—maintained, accessed, or used by DHS and its components.”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MainStory: TopStory FederalLegislation DataPrivacy