Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has blocked an effort to pass legislation that would have extended data privacy protections for federal lawmakers and public officials to everyone in the United States.
On Monday night, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked the U.S. Senate for unanimous consent from fellow senators to pass his legislation, S.2850. Wyden’s bill, if passed, would have taken bipartisan-passed provisions designed to protect government officials, lawmakers, and their families from having their personal information sold or traded by data brokers, and extend them to every American and person living in the United States.
“Members of Congress should not receive special treatment,” Wyden said on the Senate floor. “Our constituents deserve protection from violence, stalking, and other criminal threats.”
“Protecting everyone is the most effective way to protect U.S. military and intelligence personnel, including undercover officers,” Wyden added, per the congressional record.
Cruz was the sole objecting senator, who claimed without evidence that Wyden’s bill could disrupt law enforcement, “such as knowing where sexual predators are living.”
Data brokers are part of a worldwide multibillion-dollar industry of companies that profit from hoarding and selling access to huge amounts of Americans’ personal, financial, and granular location information, often collected from phones and other devices connected to the internet. This data gets sold, including to governments, who don’t need a warrant for commercially obtainable data.
The collection of huge banks of data also comes with its own risks, including security lapses and data breaches. Information bought by data brokers has been used to dox people, and in recent cases linked to the recent murders of two Minnesota state lawmakers, whose killer allegedly obtained their home addresses from data brokers.
Cruz also objected to a second piece of legislation that Wyden introduced soon after, which would have extended the protections for federal officials and lawmakers to state officials and their staff, as well as survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
In response, Cruz said that he was “interested in expanding the protection to as wide a universe as is feasible, as is practicable, but that answer is not yet worked out.”
