Governmental entities should not be able to circumvent privacy protections by purchasing data from data brokers instead of using legal process to compel its disclosure.
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The U.S. Congress has adopted statutory protections for certain types of information, including communications data, health data and financial data. When law enforcement officials conducting a criminal investigation seek disclosure of data held by a provider of communication service, they usually must obtain a judicial warrant based on a determination that there is probable cause of crime and that the data sought will be evidence of such crime. This protects the privacy of innocent individuals.
Increasingly, law enforcement officials are buying their way around this Fourth Amendment protection. They do this by purchasing the data from a data broker instead of by proving probable cause to a judge to compel its disclosure from a communication service provider. Governmental data purchases that evade constitutional and statutory protections also fuel intelligence surveillance and immigration enforcement.
The Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act would restore the balance by subjecting data that is purchased to the same privacy protections and legal process requirements that would pertain to compelled disclosures.
CDT Joins Letter and Calls on Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committee to Close the Data Broker Loophole
CDT called on Senate leaders to highlight a new multi-year agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and Thomson Reuters for access to Americans’ sensitive data, calling on Congress to close the data broker loophole.
Absent meaningful guardrails, ALPRs — which can effortlessly reconstruct where a person lives, works, shops, socializes, seeks medical care, and more — can be weaponized for pervasive surveillance and misconduct
