【文章标题】：DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
【标题译文】：国土安全部正利用晦涩法律条款监视记者、非营利组织与工会
【文章正文】：
The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight.
特朗普政府一直在运用一项晦涩的法律手段，试图获取记者、非营利组织和工会的私人信息。这种未经司法监督的政府权力引发了强烈担忧。
In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.
例如，政府获取了明尼阿波利斯记者乔治亚·福特六个月的电话记录。其律师在法庭文件中表示，福特既未被告知政府调取其信息的请求，也未被给予质疑政府行为的机会。
In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering. A judge twice rejected the request, writing that the government had failed to establish probable cause of a crime and that he wanted Lemon and Fort to be informed of the request so they could have a chance to challenge it. About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request.
今年二月，联邦检察官两次申请搜查令，要求获取福特与记者唐·莱蒙的YouTube频道账户信息。二人均对一月份报道明尼阿波利斯教堂抗议活动所涉刑事指控表示不认罪。法官两次驳回请求，指出政府未能证明存在犯罪可能，并要求通知莱蒙和福特以便其提出异议。二月底法官裁决约一个月后，政府宣布撤回请求。
But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.
但官员们并未放弃获取数据。
Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.
不到一个月后，国土安全部向谷歌发出另一份YouTube信息调取要求。此次该部门采用无需法官批准、仅需内部官员签字的方法，援引联邦法律中关于海关进口的晦涩条款（《美国法典》第19卷第1509条）向谷歌发出行政传票。该条款赋予国土安全部广泛权力以检查记录，确保进口物品关税与税收征收正确，同时要求传票接收方保密。
The DHS summons was issued under a statute that does give the agency broad power to demand records, but only in the limited circumstance of there being a need to investigate a customs issue, said Chris Duncan, a former lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. “These laws have absolutely nothing to do with a domestic situation at a church, a social media post, even an immigration matter,” he said.
前国土安全部律师克里斯·邓肯表示，该传票依据的法规确实赋予该部门广泛调取记录权力，但仅限于调查海关问题的特定场景。“这些法律与教堂国内事件、社交媒体帖子甚至移民事务毫无关联，“他说道。
“It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,” said John Roth, who served as the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017. “This is an improper use of the subpoena under any circumstances. This is not a customs case; it is not a customs violation. They are not investigating a customs violation.”
2014至2017年担任国土安全部监察长的约翰·罗斯指出：“这种行为在多层面都令人愤慨。简直不知从何批起。这是任何情况下对传票的不当使用。这不是海关案件，也不涉及海关违规。他们调查的根本不是海关问题。”
The episode in Minnesota was particularly alarming because it appeared to be an end run around a judge who was skeptical of the government’s need for the information.
明尼苏达州事件尤其令人警觉，因为这似乎是在绕开对政府信息需求持怀疑态度的法官。
“There is no judge in the loop. You don’t have that independent authority to scrutinize the demand and to say whether or not it’s legitimate,” said Caitlin Vogus, a senior adviser at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
新闻自由基金会高级顾问凯特琳·沃格斯表示：“整个流程没有法官参与。缺乏独立权威来审查要求是否合法。”
The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist.
国土安全部还从T-Mobile获取了福特六个月的电话记录，含超1万条通话与短信记录。福特直至七月中旬政府律师向其律师提交材料时才知悉此事。其律师本周在文件中写道，法官已警告过获取记者记录的后果，看到政府仍能单方面获取其通讯日志令他们”震惊”。
“That’s very concerning because the information demanded can help the government uncover a journalist’s confidential sources,” Vogus said.
沃格斯指出：“这非常令人担忧，因为所需信息可能帮助政府揭露记者的机密消息源。”
In a statement, T-Mobile did not address why it turned over the information.
T-Mobile在声明中未解释为何提交信息。
“We take our responsibility to protect customers’ privacy and personal information very seriously. Our team carefully reviews government demands for customer information and responds in accordance with the law. We don’t comment on specific law enforcement demands,” the company said.
该公司表示：“我们极其重视保护客户隐私与个人信息。团队会仔细审查政府信息请求并依法回应。不对具体执法要求置评。”
The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security both declined to comment on the use of the summons.
司法部与国土安全部均拒绝对传票使用置评。
In addition to Fort and Lemon, the DHS also sought information on the YouTube accounts for the left-leaning outlet Democracy Now, conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and an independent journalist named Brendan Gutenschwager. Some of the videos they cited in the summons were livestreams of the protest, but not all of them. The video cited as part of the request for information on Democracy Now involved a news report on the protest and an interview with Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the protest. The video cited on the request for Kelly’s show included an interview with Jonathan Parnell, the pastor at the church.
除福特与莱蒙外，国土安全部还要求获取左倾媒体《Democracy Now》、保守派播主梅根·凯利、《密尔沃基哨兵报》及独立记者布伦丹·古滕施瓦格的YouTube账户信息。传票中引用的部分视频是抗议直播，但非全部。针对《Democracy Now》的请求涉及抗议新闻报道及对活动领导者内基马·利维·阿姆斯特朗的采访；针对凯利节目的请求则包含对教堂牧师乔纳森·帕内尔的访谈。
It’s unclear why exactly the DHS wanted the YouTube account information, which includes things like a user’s IP address, and information about when a user was logging in.
尚不清楚国土安全部为何需要含用户IP地址及登录时间等信息的YouTube账户数据。
“It’s still concerning that t…
”这仍然令人担忧…”