It’s not often that I disagree with Sheriff Grady Judd, God knows I love his colorful and straightforward discussions on crime. However, I feel he’s on the wrong end of this. As a cop for nearly 20 years myself, I understand that this act could make investigative work more difficult, but I really do believe that we need to start taking any steps possible to stop the continual erosion of privacy. I know this data is out there anyway, but that doesn’t make it right. I find myself now in favor of any step that makes such privacy eroding data harder to utilize, and this is a step in that direction.

Here’s an article from Forbes about the bipartisan legislation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/n...ant/?sh=b2b68815171b

Citing a need to close “major loopholes in federal privacy law,” Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) reintroduced the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act last week. If enacted, the bill would ban law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing a wide range of personal—and potentially sensitive—data, including location tracking, social media activity, and search history records. A companion bill unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Multiple investigative reports have revealed that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the IRS, to name just a few government agencies, have all relied on private data brokers to purchase records that would otherwise require a subpoena, search warrant, or court order.

“The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure ensures that the liberty of every American cannot be violated on the whims, or financial transactions, of every government officer,” Sen. Paul said in a statement. “This critical legislation will put an end to the government’s practice of buying its way around the Bill of Rights by purchasing the personal and location data of everyday Americans.”

For instance, in its 2018 decision, Carpenter v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cell-site location information (CSLI), which can track a person’s movements through their cell phones, was protected by the Fourth Amendment. “Before compelling a wireless carrier to turn over a subscriber’s CSLI,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, “the government’s obligation is a familiar one—get a warrant.”

But according to a recently declassified report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “the same type of information on millions of Americans is openly for sale to the general public.” With a credit card instead of a warrant, agencies can acquire, access, and aggregate those cellular location records, alongside other forms of commercially available information.

By purchasing smartphone location or ad-tracking data, agencies could “identify every person who attended a protest or rally” as well as other “political, religious, travel, and speech activities,” the ODNI report continued. Moreover, while many records are initially “anonymous,” by combining those records with other purchasable data sets, the ODNI report found that agencies can easily “reverse engineer identities or deanonymize various forms of information.”

And since commercially available information “can reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals,” that data can also be “misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals.” As a comparable example, the ODNI cited “LOVEINT abuses,” or cases where government officials have spied on current, potential, or former romantic partners. “In the wrong hands, sensitive insights gained through [commercially available information] could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.”

But under the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, law enforcement and intelligence agencies could no longer buy data or force data brokers to hand over records without a court order. The bill would also ban agencies from “illegitimately” obtaining data through deception, hacking, or in ways that would violate a company’s terms of service, contract, or privacy policy. Nor could agencies use purchased or illegitimate data as evidence in court.

The proposed reforms have a broad, bipartisan appeal. A 2020 Harris poll found that 77% of Americans believe the government should get a warrant to access the types of location data harvested and sold by data brokers.

“Americans of all political stripes know their Constitutional rights shouldn’t disappear in the digital age,” noted Sen. Wyden. “The bipartisan Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act puts protections against government agencies purchasing their data into black-letter law.”

That won’t even come close to solving the problem. Make it illegal for anyone to collect and sell the data as well. With penalties serious enough to discourage this racket.

that must include insurance companies as well

you want me to buy your product, you better damned well pay out when needed

The truly sad part is that we have a government so willing to encroach on peoples privacy that we need a bill to be passed into law to codify the meaning of the 4th....

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
that must include insurance companies as well

you want me to buy your product, you better damned well pay out when needed

Incrementalism is likely a better approach. We lost our privacy and our rights incrementally, and we're more likely to get them back incrementally. Perfect is the enemy of good, and tacking on insurance and other issues makes it less likely to get a win and/or slower to get a win.

Get the win on law enforcement and intelligence buying their way around the 4th amendment; then tackle insurance companies selling data; then tackle the next encroachment on freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Lets get many, many wins in succession at a good pace rather than some giant all encompassing legislation.

A baseball analogy would be getting more runs with lots of singles and doubles, taking walks, smart base running, bunting, and sac flies rather than just swinging for home runs.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Incrementalism is likely a better approach. We lost our privacy and our rights incrementally, and we're more likely to get them back incrementally. Perfect is the enemy of good, and tacking on insurance and other issues makes it less likely to get a win and/or slower to get a win.

Get the win on law enforcement and intelligence buying their way around the 4th amendment; then tackle insurance companies selling data; then tackle the next encroachment on freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let’s get many, many wins in succession at a good pace rather than some giant all encompassing legislation.

Yes! This is exactly right. Of course this bill by itself doesn’t go far enough to right all the wrongs in this area, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a small win, instead of continued losses. I’ve said many times before that we didn’t get into the predicament that we are in overnight, we aren’t going to get out of it quickly either. Let’s start setting some precedent with legislation like this now and build upon it. Who knows, maybe a law like this might even make one less company go into this business when they realize that one big customer of this “product” - the government is likely to be a far smaller customer. That would be a win, and I’m all for racking up wins, even when they’re small.