Federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of [journalist Georgia] Fort and the journalist Don Lemon. A judge twice rejected the request. Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with ... 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. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret. In addition to efforts to obtain records on Minnesota journalists, the DHS has used 1509 summonses to pressure social media companies to unmask the identities of people who have criticized ICE officers and to obtain financial information on a host of unions and left-leaning non-profit organizations in Minneapolis. In a separate case in which 15 activists face criminal conspiracy charges, DHS successfully obtained the ... Venmo records for a non-profit organization called Voices for Racial Justice. None of the organizations is charged with crimes. “There’s a long history of DHS abusing this summons authority in particular, and using it to seek both records that are clearly outside of its scope in general, and more particularly to try to go after people whose speech DHS is somehow irked by – but whose speech is protected by