People across the country filed their tax returns last week, glitches and all. If historical patterns hold up, this year’s taxpayers will include millions of undocumented immigrants.

Federal law protects the confidentiality of tax information, but recently concerns have been expressed that the tax-related information immigrants and their employers provide the government could be used by the Trump administration as yet another immigration enforcement tool, and some evidence indicates a significant dip in the number of individuals filing their taxes.

This is why the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request last week demanding information about whether the Social Security Administration is complying with federal law and not sharing confidential tax information with immigration enforcement authorities.

Tax laws allow the IRS to share certain information about individual workers’ earnings with the SSA, so that each worker’s entitlement to Social Security benefits can be calculated. Employers are required to report the name, Social Security number, and earnings information for each employee to the IRS on “W-2” forms. Under the tax laws, these forms may be shared with the SSA for the administration of the Social Security system.

But the tax laws restrict the SSA from sharing that information with others, including the Department of Homeland Security. If information from tax filings were shared with law enforcement agencies like DHS, that would create a huge disincentive for people to comply with the tax laws in the first place. Because there is a ton of sensitive information contained in tax filings, and to encourage public compliance with the tax system, federal law requires that tax information be kept strictly confidential.

Despite these laws, DHS has previously tried to use what’s called “no-match” information in SSA databases to carry out immigration enforcement goals. A no-match happens when an employer reports a particular worker’s name, Social Security number, and earnings information on a W-2, but the name or Social Security number does not match the information in the SSA’s records. There are many things that could cause a no-match, including administrative errors, name changes after marriage or divorce or for other reasons, and different naming conventions that are common in many parts of the world, particularly in some Latin American and Asian countries. As a result, many U.S. citizens and other legally authorized workers may have mismatches between the information reported on a W-2 and the information in SSA’s records.

SSA officials have made clear in the past that under the tax laws, SSA’s no-match records cannot be shared with DHS without authorization from Congress. In fact, an SSA official said in a 2006 congressional testimony that “IRS officials have also expressed concern that sharing this data [with DHS] could decrease tax collections and compliance.”

Federal courts have also ruled on whether the SSA could disclose information concerning the names of employers with the most no-match employees. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia answered that question with an emphatic “no.” The court held, and the Department of Justice ultimately agreed, that information about employers contained in W-2 forms was confidential under the tax laws, and therefore could not be disclosed by the SSA.

We shouldn’t have to worry that the SSA is disclosing information that is confidentially protected by law, but we do. The Trump administration has pledged to ramp up workplace immigration enforcement, and has delivered on that promise — most recently in Tennessee, where a raid at a meatpacking plant earlier this month devastated the community and led 550 children to stay home from school. We know DHS is eager for information from other agencies at the local and federal level to aid in its enforcement efforts. The administration has also stripped basic privacy protections for many immigrants. And lawmakers have proposed loosening the tax laws to require precisely the type of information sharing that we’re concerned about.

Given this administration’s all-out assault on our legal rights and our immigrant communities, we can’t afford to sit back and keep our fingers crossed that Trump’s SSA is following the law.

At this very instant, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is depriving an 18-month-old child of his mother, separating the two in immigration detention. Mirian, a 29-year-old mother from Honduras, is currently detained in T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, while her toddler is kept in a facility in San Antonio, some 120 miles away.

Their ordeal has already lasted two months.

They are just one of hundreds of families who are subjected to ICE’s brutal tactic of forcibly separating immigrant parents and children and on whose behalf the ACLU has brought a national class-action lawsuit. On Friday, The New York Times reported new data, estimating that more than 700 children have been taken from their parents since October, including more than 100 children under the age of 4.

Fleeing government violence in Honduras, Mirian came to the U.S. with her young son on Feb. 20, 2018, presenting herself to immigration authorities and asking for asylum. During her interview, Mirian gave the immigration officers her Honduran ID card and several identification documents for her child, including his birth certificate and his hospital birth record, both of which list her as his mother.

However, once the interview was over, the officers said that they were going to take her son away from her. She repeatedly asked why they couldn’t stay together, but she was not given a reason. The officers then made her carry her 18-month-old child outside where a government car was waiting. As she placed him in the car seat, he began to cry. Without giving her a moment to comfort him or say goodbye, the officers shut the door and drove away.

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Mirian’s story comes to light on the heels of another highly publicized separation at the hands of the Trump administration. For four months, ICE forcibly separated a Congolese mother, Ms. L, and her seven-year-old child in facilities 2,000 miles apart. They were only reunited following public outcry and the ACLU’s lawsuit on their behalf, which has since expanded into the national class action.

And in fact, since their reunion, the Trump administration has made a coordinated effort to characterize what happened as an isolated incident. In recent weeks, leadership from the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and ICE all appeared before Congress and characterized family separation as a rare occurrence.

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan called family separation a “very rare occurrence,” which is “based on admitted or clear fraud from CBP perspective.”

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen admitted that the reunion of the Congolese mother and her child “took too long,” but she maintained that the agencies’ standard was “in every case, keep that family together.” She further maintained that when immigration authorities separate parents and children, it’s done because “the law tells them to” and it’s in the “interest of the child.”

ICE Executive Associate Director Matthew T. Albence, who oversees enforcement and removal operations, assured Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard that ICE's "concern always is the health and well-being of that child."

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This defense falls apart very quickly when looking at the facts, the administration’s statements, and the Constitution.

Mirian provided identification documents but still was forced to watch a car drive away with her only child with no idea where he was going or how he would be treated. ICE made both Ms. L and her seven-year-old suffer needlessly for four months without making any effort to verify the mother-daughter relationship. Only after the ACLU filed its lawsuit did the agency administer a DNA test, which of course proved their relationship.

The administration continues to deny that family separation is an official “policy.” However, reports rose several months ago that the Trump administration was considering separating border-crossing parents from their children. This was confirmed in March by then-DHS Secretary John Kelly who said it would help deter Central Americans from coming to the United States. Whether or not it is a “policy” the fact remains that in practice it is happening to hundreds of families.

These families have the constitutional right to due process regardless of immigration status. They are being forcibly separated without hearings or for a compelling government interest. The consequences will be serious.

Experts know that the trauma that these children are experiencing is incalculable. The American Academy of Pediatrics denounced the administration’s plans saying that “the psychological distress, anxiety, and depression associated with separation from a parent would follow the children well after the immediate period of separation—even after the eventual reunification with a parent or other family.”

No matter how the Trump administration attempts to spin its actions, the suffering it is causing is intentional and illegal, and the administration must be held accountable.

A company called EarthNow has announced an ambitious effort to create a service that will provide a live satellite video feed of any spot on earth. As reported on Friday by Mic, the service amounts to a live, real-time version of Google Earth (though Google is not involved). It’s not clear how realistic this is, but the concept is a scary one for privacy.

In its press release, EarthNow says its intent is “to deploy a large constellation of advanced imaging satellites that will deliver real-time, continuous video of almost anywhere on Earth.” The company says it will achieve this by using “the World’s first low-cost, high-performance satellites for mass production.” It says that it has secured a first round of financing from several major investors.

The company is vague about two crucial questions about the service: What the resolution will be, and who will have access to the video? On the first, the company does seem to suggest at least a certain degree of resolution in the uses it cites for its service, such as “helping ‘smart cities’ become more efficient,” “observing conflict zones,” and “catching illegal fishing in the act.” We don’t know exactly what the company’s satellites would be able to see, but clearly it’s at least street-level detail.

On the question of who would have access to the company’s video, EarthNow’s press release says that initially the company “will offer commercial video and intelligent vision services” to “a range of government and enterprise customers.” Eventually, however, the company says that it plans to create “mass market applications that can be accessed instantly from a smartphone or tablet.” I’m not sure what’s worse: having such a powerful surveillance tool exclusively available to government agencies and big corporations or having it available to any friends, neighbors, or internet creeps who want to see what I’m doing. The latter would be worse in some ways, though at least the surveillance wouldn’t be secret, and everybody would quickly come to learn how exposed they are so they could adjust their behavior.

Either way, if this actually came to pass, it would be a privacy disaster. It’s not just that video of our homes and every other spot on earth would be susceptible to monitoring by unknown parties at any time, with no way to know whether and when such monitoring is underway. It's that the video could also be stored and subject to analytics of all kinds — what EarthNow refers to as “intelligent vision services.” In addition to video of our front yard, for example, computers could be programmed to sound an alarm whenever someone walks out of our house or enters it. And it could automatically track where we go from where and with whom. There would no longer be any place on earth where one could feel truly alone — no beach or yard in which to sunbathe or cavort with friends; no tall grass or secluded roof deck to make love on; no mountain or wilderness trail on which to seek solitude or time with a friend. There would be no place where one could feel secure that someone was not monitoring and recording from the sky.

There is good reason to think that the American people don’t want to live under such a system. Consider:

• In 2016, the public learned that the police in Baltimore had engaged a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems to implement an aircraft-based wide-area aerial surveillance system that was capable of recording a 30-square-mile area and tracking every pedestrian and vehicle in that area and where they traveled. That revelation led to an uproar in Baltimore and around the country, and the police put the trial on hold. No other American cities have implemented the system since. What EarthNow is proposing would essentially be a global version of the Baltimore experiment.
• When Americans realized a few years ago that the technology for surveillance drones had arrived and was no longer science fiction, we saw a rapid and amazing outpouring of concern in most state legislatures around the country. Since 2013, 44 states have enacted laws or resolutions on drones, a large proportion of which impose restrictions on the use of drones for surveillance.
• Perhaps the most direct comparison to the EarthNow proposal was a 2007 plan approved by the Department of Homeland Security to allow U.S. law enforcement agencies to use the nation’s powerful spy satellites domestically. The ACLU strongly objected to this program, which was run by a blandly named entity called the “National Applications Office.” Of all the significant post-9/11 privacy controversies that were raging at the time — illegal NSA spying, data mining, new airport searches, and many others — this proposal seemed to offend members of Congress especially deeply. The House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing, members reacted very strongly against the proposal, and DHS soon thereafter announced that it was shutting down the program.

We should expect that however the EarthNow effort may fare, it will become increasingly feasible in the coming years to create the capability that this company is contemplating. As a society, we should make a conscious choice not to go there. We should not let technological capability dictate what we actually deploy, just as we have made a conscious choice (through our wiretapping laws) to generally disallow surveillance cameras in public places from including microphones. It is true that blanket aerial surveillance could be implemented by other governments or by companies operating out of other countries, and that is a problem that we may have to confront. But we can start by deciding for ourselves a national goal to avoid such surveillance.

We actually already have at least one policy tool with which we can start to enforce such a decision: a 1992 law that regulates the filming of earth from space. When Space X launched into space and live-streamed video of Elon Musk’s Tesla being shot off into space, the company was taken to task by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is charged with enforcing that law.

The ACLU defends the right to photography under the First Amendment, but I don’t think such a right would extend to space. Going to space is, at least for the foreseeable future, the exclusive province of governments and corporations. The former has no free expression rights, and such rights are greatly reduced for the latter — especially given that space is already an extremely highly regulated arena. Photographer’s rights are something that exist when the photographer is in a place where he or she has a right to be, but space (for the foreseeable future) is not such a place. Besides that, the public interest in preventing this kind of blanket aerial photography of our lives is compelling.