The Fourth Amendment exists for a reason. It’s supposed to protect our private possessions and data from government snooping, unless they have a warrant. It doesn’t entirely prevent the government from getting access to data, they just need to show probable cause of a crime.
But, of course, the government doesn’t like to make the effort.
And these days, many government agencies (especially law enforcement) have decided to take the shortcut that money can buy: they’re just buying private data on the open market from data brokers and avoiding the whole issue of a warrant altogether.
This could be solved with a serious, thoughtful, comprehensive privacy bill. I’m hoping to have a post soon on the big APRA data privacy bill that’s getting attention lately (it’s a big bill, and I just haven’t had the time to go through the entire bill yet). In the meantime, though, there was some good news, with the House passing the “Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act,” which was originally introduced in the Senate by Ron Wyden and appears to have broad bipartisan support.
We wrote about it when it was first introduced, and again when the House voted it out of committee last year. The bill is not a comprehensive privacy bill, but it would close the loophole discussed above.
The Wyden bill just says that if a government agency wants to buy such data, if it would have otherwise needed a warrant to get that data in the first place, it should need to get a warrant to buy it in the market as well.
Anyway, the bill passed 219 to 199 in the House, and it was (thankfully) not a partisan vote at all.
It is a bit disappointing that the vote was so close and that so many Representatives want to allow government agencies, including law enforcement, to be able to purchase private data to get around having to get a warrant. But, at least the majority voted in favor of the bill.
And now, it’s up to the Senate. Senator Wyden posted on Bluesky about how important this bill is, and hopefully the leadership of the Senate understand that as well.
Can confirm. This is a huge and necessary win for Americans' privacy, particularly after the Supreme Court gutted privacy protections under Roe. Now it's time for the Senate to do its job and follow suit.
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) Apr 17, 2024 at 3:30 PM
