SEC Finalizing a ‘Big Brother’ Database to Track Americans’ Stock Trades in Real Time
- Obtenir le lien
- Autres applications
The Securities and Exchange Commission is close to completing a project creating a database of all Americans’ stock and equity transactions and portfolios in order to track investments in real time. Known as the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), the database poses significant constitutional and practical problems, those familiar with its workings tell National Review.
For former United States Attorney General Bill Barr, the database presents a “huge concern.”
Barr told NR that the CAT would eviscerate the standards for investigations outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing the federal government to probe individuals’ finances without any real reason.
“Even if you’re getting records from third parties, it should be connected to an investigation,” Barr said. In the case of the CAT, he told NR, “you could have someone at the SEC say, ‘Let me check out this person and see if I can find something on them.'”
He argued that the existence of a database containing all American’s stock and equity transaction information would allow SEC employees to go on “fishing expeditions” — and would be a boon to malign actors around the globe.
“It’s guaranteed that all this data will end up with our adversaries, likely with the Chinese,” Barr told NR. “Far more secure agencies have been successfully hacked.”
If a foreign adversary were to successfully breach the database, Barr said, they would have access to personal and financial information, making it easy to, for instance, send benign-seeming emails containing malware.
The development of the database has largely flown under the radar, but former vice president Mike Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), is attempting to raise awareness among Republican lawmakers.
In a letter signed earlier this month, AAF chairman Marc Short and a coalition of conservative policy experts noted that, “upon completion, [the CAT] would be the world’s largest database outside of the National Security Agency.”
Moreover, as stated in the letter, no legislative authority mandated the creation of the database or appropriated any money toward the project. Not only would the SEC have access to Americans’ personal data, but employees of the 23 financial self-regulating organizations would be able to access all the information therein as well.
AAF general counsel Marc Wheat told NR there are multiple reasons why Americans should be worried about the completion of the CAT, one being the methods by which it has developed.
“Around 2012, the SEC decided to build this giant database to capture all trades, and it just grew and grew and grew in scope,” Wheat said. “The way they avoided congressional oversight on it was by putting a lot of pressure on self-regulating organizations — these are exchanges or professional organizations — like . . . FINRA, and a lot of these institutions predated the Securities and Exchange Commission, like the New York Stock Exchange.”
The SEC, Wheat said, directed the self-regulating organizations to help build and pay for the database, skirting congressional authority and the appropriations process. The actual workings of CAT present concerns for Wheat in addition to the lack of oversight.
“Here we have an agency taking on legislative and executive power to look at your trades,” he told NR. “Think about it this way: You are going to give appreciated securities to a favored charity, and it’s kind of a controversial one, but you’re going to give to it. Maybe you’re going to give to a donor-advised fund to try to mask your donations because you don’t want your employer to find out who you’re giving to. Maybe this donor-advised fund is on the radar of the Left. Well, three thousand bureaucrats — some of whom don’t actually work for the federal agency — will have access to that.”
Like Barr, Wheat sees constitutional concerns in the database.
“That’s a First-Amendment issue because it inhibits your ability to associate with and support causes you cherish,” Wheat said. “There’s definitely a Fourth-Amendment issue where your papers and effects are electronically being invaded. You don’t have a law-enforcement official presenting you at your front door with an official paper that allows them to search through your personal effects. Here, they’re just doing it anonymously.”
The prospect of government bureaucrats — and an unknown number of employees at self-regulating organizations — combing through Americans’ data conjures memories of the Lois Lerner IRS scandal and progressive outlets’ recent publishing of leaked data from federal agencies.
“If you have 3,000 people snooping around, looking at the trades of the wealthy and famous people who give to unpopular causes — given that most of the people who work in these areas are very liberal — the people in charge aren’t going to be taking that very seriously,” Wheat told NR. “Just look at ProPublica and how it takes stolen data from the IRS and publishes it regularly.”
Short and the others who signed the AAF letter close with a plea to Congress, asking lawmakers to proceed with legislation from Representative Barry Loudermilk (R., Ga.) and Senator John Kennedy (R., La.) that would prevent the SEC from requiring that financial institutions provide Americans’ personal and financial information.
Without passing such legislation, the United States may be headed for what Barr termed a nightmare scenario.
“If the SEC is actually able to go through with this, they’ll cross the Rubicon,” Barr told NR. “If the government can collect this information just inc case, that’s the big-brother surveillance state.”
|
- Obtenir le lien
- Autres applications
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site