EPIC-led Coalition Denounces DHS’s Use of Information System to Enable Voter Roll Purges, Demands Immediate Reversal of Changes 

A coalition of 16 organizations led by EPIC submitted comments this week to the Department of Homeland Security denouncing DHS’s unlawful capture and use of sensitive social security information to enable voter roll purges and demanding that DHS reverse course immediately.  

Over the past seven months, DHS has radically changed the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) System. Originally used to facilitate the provision of public benefits, the system has been overhauled to serve as a national citizenship database. In addition to piping in sensitive social security and driver’s license information, DHS has enabled state and local users of the SAVE system to conduct bulk queries of the system and encourages them to use that function to purge their voter rolls. DHS’s actions violate federal privacy law, threaten the right to vote, and paint a target on the back of our sensitive personal data. Alarmingly, the agency has done little to protect the information it has put at risk.  

Despite an obligation to do so, DHS did not officially inform or seek feedback from the public on its changes to SAVE. Only now—after a lawsuit brought on behalf of EPIC, League of Women Voters, and several individuals by CREW, Federal Elections Center, and Democracy Forward—has DHS come before the public to seek retroactive authority.  

In the comments, EPIC and its partners explain that federal law (particularly the Privacy Act of 1974) does not allow DHS to make these changes to SAVE and busts the myth that other laws or executive orders excuse DHS’s behavior. The comments demand that DHS withdraw its notice of changes to the SAVE system, restore SAVE to its previous purpose and functionality, and ensure that users of the system delete all personal records and derived data wrongfully disclosed to them.  

This is the latest in a recent series of illegal, privacy-invasive actions by the federal government. EPIC is meeting them every step of the way.