EPIC, Coalition Urge OMB to Rein in Agency Exploitation of the Data Broker Loophole in New Comments 

EPIC, the Brennan Center for Justice, Demand Progress, and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project were joined by several other organizations in comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget yesterday urging it to push back against federal agency’s use of commercially available information (CAI) to get around key constitutional and statutory privacy protections.  

Current government practices circumvent both constitutional and statutory protections for Americans’ personal data. The lack of a comprehensive federal privacy law regulating the commercial collection and sale of personal data has left room for data brokers to aggregate and sell every kind of information about a person, including financial, location, and medical data. Government agencies have increasingly turned to data brokers to purchase Americans’ data without any legal process whatsoever. Agency exploitation of this data broker loophole is a real threat to privacy, civil liberties, and national security. 

The comment urges OMB to close the data broker loophole for law enforcement and intelligence agencies and establish more oversight and transparency into how agency’s currently handle CAI. EPIC has previously supported the introduction of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would close the data broker loophole.