Five civil rights, animal rights, and environmental justice groups have announced that they are suing the FBI in response to the FBI's refusal to turn over documents requested under a Freedom of Information Act filing. The documents pertain to the FBI's investigation of various groups planning protests at the Democratic National Convention and the overall function of Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Last summer, the FBI used "unconfirmed information" as a pretext for conducting numerous interviews with activists "associated" with "anarchist" groups. These investigations were handled by Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and uncovered no information about terrorism according to documents obtained by the ACLU. The ACLU is seeking more documents, specifically those identifying individuals and groups that have been interviewed, investigated, or subjected to searches by the JTTF investigations, as well as information about how the task forces are funded, to determine if they are rewarded with government money by labeling high numbers of cases as related to terrorism.

Activists singled out for questioning were involved with organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, Food Not Bombs, and the Service Employees International Union. Many of them had no plans to attend the Democratic or Republican National Conventions in 2004 but were still questioned regarding possible "terrorism" at the DNC and RNC protests.