The Civil Rights Movement showed us what unchecked surveillance looks like

For many, the notion of government surveillance feels distant, the start of a policy debate about wiretaps or monitoring phones. To us at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, it means something different. It reflects lived experience. It reminds us why we must remain vigilant about the reach of government power, and why, even when surveillance is argued as necessary, it must be balanced against the right to privacy that every American should enjoy. 

That understanding is shaped by both history and the present. In November, we won in federal court, blocking the government’s attempt to prematurely unseal sensitive information it had collected through its surveillance of our movement. It is a reminder that the legacy of government surveillance directed at the civil rights movement is not confined to the past. It continues to shape our present and should inform how we approach the future.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a group of Black pastors founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, they did so with a commitment to confront injustice through disciplined nonviolence. Within a few years, that work drew the attention of federal authorities. 

By 1963, wiretaps had been placed on Dr. King’s home and on the conference’s offices. Under its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI labeled the organization a threat, inserted informants into its ranks and sought to disrupt and discredit its leadership. A Senate investigation later described the impact of that surveillance as “unquestionable,” a conclusion that reflects the scale and intensity of what occurred.

There is an important distinction between then and now. Then, surveillance was constrained by practical limits. It required people, time and resources. Even........

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