EPIC and Coalition Urge Senate and Thompson Reuters to Stop Commercial Surveillance 

In two letters, EPIC joined a coalition of more than two dozen civil rights and privacy organizations urging the Senate and Thompson Reuters to act and protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. The letters were sent after reports revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) entered a multi-year agreement with Thompson Reuters Special Services to access CLEAR, a commercial investigative platform that aggregates the personal information of millions of Americans.

In the first letter, EPIC and the coalition called on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs to advance the Fourth Amendment is not for Sale Act and close the data broker loophole. The letter noted that DHS was “contorting itself to distinguish the cell phone location data that the Supreme Court held requires a warrant in Carpenter v. United States, from the equivalently sensitive and revealing location information to which the government is now purchasing access in bulk.” In addition to passing the Fourth Amendment for Sale Act, the coalition called for oversight hearings to examine the federal government’s acquisition and use of commercial information, increased transparency regarding federal contracts for commercially aggregated personal data, and an examination into whether procurement laws adequately protect constitutional rights when they allow agencies to purchase such information.

In the second letter, EPIC and the coalition called on Thompson Reuters to cease selling its CLEAR product to federal law enforcement agencies. As the letter noted, “[a]t its core, this issue is about whether private companies should profit by selling the government access to information that would otherwise require a warrant to obtain.” The coalition urged Thompson Reuters to further commit to not developing products whose primary value comes from government agencies sidestepping constitutional protections and to publicly disclose all government contracts that involve CLEAR or similar investigate platforms.

EPIC has published numerous resources highlighting how data brokers harm different communities, including one pagers focused on data-broker-fueled harm to immigrant communities, domestic violence survivors, national security, and public officials.