UPDATE : The House Judiciary Committee advanced the bill unanimously, 30-0!. It still has to pass the full House, and then the Senate, so please still contact your legislators!
The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act closes the legal loophole that allows data brokers to sell Americans’ personal information to law enforcement and intelligence agencies without any court oversight.
The House Judiciary Committee has a markup session on the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act tomorrow (July 19), and if all goes well, the committee will advance a (potentially-amended) version of the bill … a huge step forward! The bill has bipartisan support, but intelligence agencies and law enforcement don’t like it, and they have a lot of leverage in Congress.
So if you’re in the US, please contact your Congresspeople and ask them to support the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. Here’s three easy ways – pick whichever one works for you:
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On the web : Free Press has a page with a web form that makes it easy.
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Using SMS, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram : use https://resist.bot/ to send a message like Please co-sponsor and pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act to close the privacy loophole that lets government agencies purchase location-tracking data without a warrant .
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By phone Call the House switchboard at 202-225-3121. Tell them your name and address, and that you want to send a message to your Representatives to support HR 4639, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, and close the privacy loophole that lets government agencies purchase location-tracking data without a warrant.
https://resist.bot/ is a great tool for contacting your reps.
Thank you very much, that’s a great point – I’ll update the post to include it!
This is fantastic, I had not heard about this nifty tool before
Thanks! Those are links to the version of the bill from last session; this year, the bill number in the House is HR 4639 and the text is at https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/hr-4639-bill-text.pdf
That EFF action alert is also from last session, and has the old bill number; they don’t have a new one up yet as far as I know. So I linked to Free Press’ action page, which is more up-to-date.
It’s good for privacy so it’s not getting passed
We’ll see. Cynicism is certainly justified – it’s very hard to pass a good privacy bill, and last year even though everybody supported it, it died in committee. On the other hand, it really does have bipartisan support, and there Congress is deadlocked in so many areas that they have an incentive to pass something.
Also, people I’ve talked to at EFF, ACLU, and Free Press all think that grassroots activism can help make a difference, and that right now is a key time … so it’s worth a try.
Bipartisan public support.
We have no idea what their plans are behind closed doors, or how they intent to kill the bill while looking righteously angry about it
Never forget who these guys work for (not you)
No, bipartisan legislative support. It’s got bipartisan co-sponsorship both in the House (Warren Davidson is an R, Sara Jacobs is a D) and Senate (Rand Paul is an R, Ron Wyden is a D). And House Judiciary Committee just voted 30-0 to advance it.
Of course as you say we don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors, and there are also legislators in both parties who aren’ supportive, but there really is bipartisan support for this.
Spoiler alert: All republicans will vote “No” and all but two democrats will vote “Yes.”
Guess who the Democrats voting “No” will be.
Edit: Still contact your representatives. It can help.
That’s not how that works
It’s a plausible theory but at the House Judiciary Committee everybody in both parties voted “yes”! We’ll see what happens as things move forward. In the Senate, Rand Paul is a co-sponsor and Mike Lee’s a likely yes vote, so it’s not likely to be straight party-line.
I was on board until I noticed the abortion promotion. Abortion is fundamentally wrong and I don’t support it.
However we desperately need privacy and anti anticompetitive laws in today’s world.
