The Brennan Center for Justice joined a letter urging the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees to advance the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act following reports that DHS and ICE entered into a multi-year agreement to access CLEAR, a commercial investigative platform that allows users to search and aggregate extensive personal information from public and proprietary sources. The coalition raised concerns that federal agencies can obtain sensitive personal information through commercial data brokers without the oversight that would otherwise be required by the Fourth Amendment. The letter also urges the Committees to conduct more congressional oversight into agencies’ acquisition and use of this brokered information and to require more transparency into agencies’ practices.
The Brennan Center has long supported similar solutions to close the data broker loophole and has repeatedly called on Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. We also continue to shed light on DHS’s expanding surveillance capabilities and the dangers they pose to privacy and First Amendment protected activities.
