Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is illegally collecting data of every citizen invests in stock marketAccording to a new lawsuit.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed a lawsuit against the SEC on Tuesday, claiming that the agency, through its “Consolidated Audit Trail” or “CAT” program, is complicit in forcing brokers, exchanges, clearinghouses, and Is collecting identifiable data from. Agencies and alternative trading systems to collect detailed information on each investor’s trade in the US markets and send it to a centralized database.
NCLA says the agency is doing so without congressional authorization and in violation of the fourth amendment, Which prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures of personal information.
NCLA says that conceived during the Obama administration with bipartisan support within the Commission, the CAT program is a billion-dollar self-appropriated fund, operated by various fees collected by the SEC through investment transactions. The group calls it “completely illegal” and says it puts Americans’ financial data at “serious risk.”
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The seal of the Securities and Exchange Commission is displayed on a wall of the SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, on June 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Peggy Little said, “By confiscating all financial data from all Americans trading on U.S. exchanges, the SEC arrogates surveillance powers and appropriates billions of dollars without Congressional authority – and all this from Americans’ savings and investments. “puts the world at serious and permanent risk.” , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel.
“The Founding Fathers provided concrete protections in our Constitution to prevent these autocratic and dangerous actions. This CAT must be rooted out,” he said.
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Pedestrians walk past the New York Stock Exchange in the Manhattan area of New York on May 5, 2022. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
The lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the Western District of Texas, calls CAT “the largest government-ordered mass collection of personal financial data in the history of the United States.”
“Historically, a government that wanted to keep tabs on its citizens had to spend massive resources pursuing them. This is no longer the case: modern surveillance tools track individuals’ every movement, every transaction, every purchase. , enabling large-scale tracking of sales or transfers of securities, while powerful computer algorithms can process that information to reveal individual and private details of each individual’s financial life or investment strategy. ” the lawsuit states.
“This class action complaint challenges the SEC’s shocking arrogance of power to enforce dystopian surveillance, suspicionless seizures, and actual or potential searches on millions of American investors.”
Little told Fox News Digital that the SEC collects and stores “every bit of information about every investor’s trade from inception to closing” in its database, naming funds like 401(k) or 529 education funds as examples. Does.
“And there is no law that allows them to do that, and the Fourth Amendment prohibits them from doing that,” she said.
“And here’s the dirty little truth: All investing Americans will pay for it because it’s paid for by the fees SROs (self-regulatory organizations) charge brokerage houses to their clients.. .I mean, it’s several billion dollars in taxes on American investors and American investments, and no one ever voted for it.”
An SEC spokesperson told Fox News Digital that “the Commission carries out its regulatory responsibilities consistent with its authority.”
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The headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission is seen in Washington, DC on January 27, 2023. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In an op-ed published on Monday Wall Street Journal, Former Attorney General William Barr argued that “Even when the government seeks information about a citizen from banks, phone companies, and others with whom he or she has done business, government is not independent To vacuum this carte blanche.”
Barr said that the gist of the SEC’s rationale for the CAT program is that “it could investigate things more easily if it were not limited to gathering investor information on a case-by-case basis after suspected wrongdoing has occurred.” yes.”
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“But the entire purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to make the government less efficient by inciting it to become entangled in private matters,” Barr wrote.
“For an agency to argue that it should be able to avoid these hurdles to make investigations easier is to claim that it should be exempt from the Fourth Amendment.”
