EPIC Joins Protect Democracy’s Call to Resist Federal Heist of Sensitive SNAP Data

EPIC joined Protect Democracy and the Center for Democracy and Technology this week in calling on states and major SNAP benefit providers to refuse the federal government’s lawless requests for tens of millions of beneficiaries’ sensitive personal data. As the letter warns, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s demand for beneficiary data is a brazen violation of the Privacy Act, the E-Government Act, and other legal safeguards that protect our personal data.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP) provides critical food assistance throughout the United States. Although SNAP is federally funded, benefits are issued by states and private vendors, which in turn hold extensive personal information on beneficiaries—including Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and income data.

Recently, acting on President Trump’s dystopian “Information Silos” executive order, U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an unprecedented demand to states and vendors for SNAP cardholder and transaction data. As the groups’ letter explains, that demand is illegal, reckless, and a grave threat to our privacy.

“USDA’s requests disregard the basic protections enacted by Congress to protect Americans’ sensitive data, and do not comply with the many legal requirements Congress placed on agencies before they are permitted to collect and store sensitive information about individual Americans,” the letter warns. “Because the request itself is legally deficient, your companies may incur liability under state law for sharing individuals’ PII in the absence of a valid government request,” it explains.

EPIC has long warned about the threat to privacy and democratic government posed by the consolidation of sensitive personal data by federal agencies, and in particular the recent onslaught by the Elon Musk-led “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). In February, EPIC—together with an anonymous federal worker and Democracy Forward—brought suit over the DOGE’s incursions into vast databases of personal information at the Treasury Department and Office of Personnel Management.

Recent reporting indicates that federal agencies are constructing an illegal “master database” of personal information from across the government, which threatens to supercharge the administration’s attack on immigrants and dismantlement of the federal government under the false banner of “fraud” and “abuse.”