A proposed piece of legislation would tackle surveillance and the warrantless purchase of individual location data.
The “Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act” is a bill that has wide bipartisan support and would address some of the biggest challenges in the realm of surveillance. Clearview AI made headlines in early 2020 as it built a business model on scraping images from social media networks and using them to build an AI-powered facial recognition database.
Clearview AI sold access to its database to law enforcement agencies all over the country, transactions that were performed without a warrant. Other companies have been accused of doing the same thing, selling location data to law enforcement agencies without due process or authorized warrants.
The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would address that loophole, ensuring courts have a say in the process.
“Doing business online doesn’t amount to giving the government permission to track your every movement or rifle through the most personal details of your life,” Senator Ron Wyden said. “There’s no reason information scavenged by data brokers should be treated differently than the same data held by your phone company or email provider. This bill closes that legal loophole and ensures that the government can’t use its credit card to end-run the Fourth Amendment.”
“The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure ensures that the liberty of every American cannot be violated on the whims, or financial transactions, of every government officer,” Senator Rand Paul said. “This critical legislation will put an end to the government’s practice of buying its way around the Bill of Rights by purchasing the personal and location data of everyday Americans. Enacting the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act will not only stop this gross abuse of privacy, but also stands for the fundamental principle that government exists to protect, not trade away, individual rights.”