Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. HAGEMAN. 4639.
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Today, the House will vote on H.R. 4639, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
Last July, the House Judiciary Committee favorably reported the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act by a vote of 30-0, with one Member voting present.
This bill makes crucial changes and closes a glaring loophole that allows the government to sidestep the requirements of the Fourth Amendment to purchase data of Americans.
I thank my colleague, Congressman Davidson, for introducing this much-needed legislation. This bill is the result of years of bipartisan negotiation, and I look forward to this debate and vote.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees to all of us the right to be free of unreasonable government searches and seizures. However, the law and doctrine concerning the Fourth Amendment has failed to keep pace with the development of digital technologies.
Nearly 40 years ago, Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, in an attempt to navigate the digital age, but it is clear that legislation is now insufficient to protect the constitutional rights of Americans. It is time that Congress accounts for the technological advances that have occurred in the decades since ECPA was passed.
Today, seemingly every American carries a smartphone with them wherever they go. These devices contain vast amounts of information of Americans, such as where they travel, what they purchase, their health information, and so on. As the Supreme Court has noted, these devices ``hold for many Americans the privacies of life.''
Before the modern internet, the Fourth Amendment required law enforcement to execute a search warrant and subpoena the items they wished to review. The officer executing the search would have to provide a copy of the warrant and an inventory of the property seized. However, today, Federal agencies often sidestep the requirements of the Fourth Amendment and access and collect massive amounts of private information on Americans by exploiting a legal loophole in the ECPA and Fourth Amendment doctrine.
While ECPA prohibits communications companies from providing customer information to the government in the absence of a subpoena, warrant, or other court order, no such prohibition exists for providing this information to third parties, such as data brokers. Instead of going to a judge to demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant, government agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security can simply turn to data brokers and purchase mass amounts of Americans' data.
The government is collecting vast amounts of data by purchasing it from data brokers or other third parties. Media reports have detailed that some data brokers have even tracked people at places of worship and at protests.
While the Judiciary Committee has in recent years advanced major reforms to overhaul ECPA, those bills have not yet passed into law. It is long past time that Congress acts to protect the privacy of Americans.
There is strong bipartisan support in Congress to finally address and close the data broker loophole. This bill is exactly the type of legislation needed to rein in the Federal Government and protect the privacy rights of Americans.
The government is rifling through your personal information. You should have the right to know about it, but the government can just purchase your highly sensitive information from data brokers and use it against you without your ever knowing.
The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would close this legal loophole and ensure that the government may only use existing statutes compliant with the Fourth Amendment to lawfully surveil Americans.
When the government compels data brokers to disclose Americans' personal data, it should be required to get a court order. With this commonsense legislation, the government will no longer be able to make an end-run around the Fourth Amendment to purchase the data of Americans.
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Rutherford).
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. D'Esposito).
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Clyde).
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, there are a couple of points that I would make. One is that I reject the notion that in order to beat China or other foreign adversaries, we must become like they are.
If the real opposition to this bill is that it prevents the United States Government from becoming the same type of surveillance state that Communist China is, then I think that says everything that we need to know about those opposed to the bill, and I challenge them to explain that position to their constituents.
Mr. Chair, I believe absolutely in protecting our constitutional rights, and I believe it is important to understand the significance of how these various Federal agencies have been abusing this power to surveil and persecute American citizens.
As part of the Committee on the Judiciary's investigation into the IRS' troubling visit to the home of journalist Matt Taibbi on the very day that he testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, we learned that the IRS collected personal data from data brokers to use in its investigation of Mr. Taibbi. For example, the IRS collected data from the data broker Anywho, a people search website.
It is concerning enough that the IRS would take the extreme step of visiting someone's home on the day he testified before Congress, but the IRS also compiled its information from a data broker, potentially accessing vast amounts of Taibbi's private information.
That is the nature of the abuse that these Federal agencies are engaging in in violating Americans' civil rights.
Mr. Chair, the Fourth Amendment exists for a reason. There is no exception to the Fourth Amendment requirement of getting a warrant.
Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) to speak on this bill.
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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
Mr. Chair, I think it is important for the American people to understand the scope of what we are talking about and what our government is purchasing from these third-party brokers. Data brokers aggregate packages and sell the data acquired from a variety of sources, including those that have already been described today.
Often, data brokers have thousands of different data points reflecting information about a person that, when combined, reveal valuable and intimate insights about an individual that would otherwise be unavailable.
In other words, for data brokers, consumers and their information are the product. For example, data brokers can receive geolocation data, sometimes accurate to just a few yards, from a mobile device up to 14,000 times per day.
This data allows a purchaser to identify patterns that can reveal where a person lives, where they work, and where they spend their free time.
These actions allow government agencies and law enforcement to evade the Fourth Amendment if they are allowed to purchase this data and collect limitless information on Americans.
The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act closes this legal loophole and stops data brokers from selling Americans' personal information to the government by requiring the government to obtain a court order before acquiring customer or subscriber information from a third party.
The fact is that we all support our police. We want them to have the tools that they need to catch the bad guys, but I think if there is anything that has been disclosed over the last several years, it is that there are people within our intelligence community and who work for the Federal Government, including the FBI, the IRS, and similar agencies, who are abusing their power and authority and going after people for political reasons.
Mr. Chair, that is one of the most important reasons as to why we need to close this loophole.
As technology continues to advance and Americans incidentally share more data through the devices we use every day, it is imperative for Congress to protect privacy interests and ensure that government agencies and law enforcement abide by the Fourth Amendment.
This bill does nothing more and nothing less. It simply protects our Fourth Amendment rights.
Every person who has been elected to this body took an oath of office to uphold our Constitution. That is what we are attempting to do with the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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