The US Supreme Court issued a final ruling putting an end to the liability of tech companies for human rights abuses associated with providing assistance to international violations, by effectively eliminating the possibility of using the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) in civil lawsuits against commercial entities.
Background of the Cisco Case and the Golden Shield System
The case known as Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I dates back to 2011, when a group of Falun Gong practitioners filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems. The plaintiffs accused the company of playing a fundamental role in building and deploying the surveillance and censorship system known as the Golden Shield or the Great Firewall of China, which was tailored to enable the Chinese government to target minorities and dissidents.
The plaintiffs asserted that they were subjected to arrest and torture in forced labor camps, and that their private data from emails and text messages was intercepted by the Golden Shield system and used against them during torture and interrogation sessions.
Elimination of Judicial Liability Under the ATS
The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) was passed by the First Congress in 1789, granting US federal courts jurisdiction to hear civil lawsuits brought by aliens against violators of the law of nations or US treaties. In legal precedents such as Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain in 2004, the Supreme Court acknowledged that courts could recognize new claims based on specific and universal international standards.
However, a majority of the Supreme Court justices overturned this direction in the Cisco case, considering that trial courts do not have the authority to invent new causes of action to enforce international law, and that the issue of creating new judicial liability falls outside the jurisdiction of the judicial branch, which necessarily led to the dismissal of the civilians' lawsuits against Cisco and turned the page on prosecution under this statute.
What Changes Practically After the Ruling?
This landmark decision means the permanent closure of the door to any future lawsuits using the ATS to hold US tech companies accountable for aiding and abetting human rights violations abroad. This comes at a time when investigative reports, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by the Associated Press, have revealed the depth of involvement by major US tech companies in building digital infrastructures for government surveillance apparatuses outside the United States.
With the ATS hollowed out, digital rights organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), warn that US companies now enjoy implicit immunity allowing them to develop advanced surveillance systems and intelligence technologies that lead to severe violations of privacy and physical violence without fear of prosecution, putting mounting pressure on lawmakers in Congress to enact new federal legislation to fill this legal gap.