S.D.N.Y. Index No. 09 CV 5329 (direct) This lawsuit challenges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to disclose public records about the massive surveillance system it is helping the NYPD develop in downtown Manhattan.

State Supreme Court, New York County, Index No. 112145-08 (direct) This case challenges the NYPD’s refusal to disclose information about its plan to create a massive surveillance network in downtown Manhattan. The plan, called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, would establish a network of 3,000 public and private surveillance cameras to monitor and track vehicles and pedestrians south of Canal Street. The system would allow the Department to maintain a database on the movement and whereabouts of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers.

S.D.N.Y., Index No. 08 Civ. 6259 (direct) This case challenges the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – a law that gives the government virtually unchecked authority to intercept Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls. The NYCLU and ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work – which relies on confidential communications – are compromised by the new law. Most of the clients are in New York.

New York Supreme Court, Index No. 07/115154 (Direct) At issue in this case is whether the NYCLU is entitled, under the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), to obtain from the New York City Police Department an electronic copy of an NYPD computer database containing information about hundreds of thousands of stops and frisk encounters between NYPD officers and members of the public.

S.D.N.Y., Index Nos. 04 Civ. 07921, 07922 (direct). These cases challenge fingerprint and detention practices used by the NYPD during the 2004 Republican National Convention as violations of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution and as violations of state law.