Rep. Keith Self’s PRIVACY Act: Get a Warrant Before Tracking Americans

U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) pictured left.

Every day, automated license plate readers capture the movements of millions of Americans doing nothing more sinister than commuting to work, shopping for groceries, visiting the doctor’s office, attending a political rally or worship service, or watching their children play sports. Artificial intelligence can then search and aggregate those records, revealing where people live, work, worship, seek medical treatment, and associate with others.

Federal agencies should not be able to exploit this surveillance infrastructure without a warrant.

With this danger in mind, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) has introduced the Protecting Rights in Video and Equipment Acquired Discovery (PRIVACY) Act, legislation that would generally require federal law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing or querying surveillance data collected by state and local systems.

The bill would cover automated license plate readers (ALPRs), cameras capable of photographing vehicle occupants, continuous-location cameras, long-range microphones, electronic fingerprint-detection tools, field chemical scanners, and comparable technologies.
Rep. Self says:

“Americans’ Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their privacy does not disappear just because of new technology or artificial intelligence. This bill simply restores that protection. Get a warrant.”

That protection is urgently needed. More than 120,000 Flock Safety ALPR cameras are deployed across 49 states, collectively recording Americans’ vehicles more than one billion times a day. Companies such as Flock Safety make it possible for law enforcement agencies to search enormous pools of location information assembled without individualized suspicion.

The PRIVACY Act would erect a “jurisdictional wall” preventing federal agencies from using state and local surveillance systems to circumvent federal warrant requirements. It would generally limit federal retention of acquired data to 30 days, while allowing a court to grant an extension of up to 90 days for good cause, or permitting longer retention when the information constitutes evidence in an active investigation.

The measure would also prohibit federal funds from being used to purchase or install covered surveillance technologies, subject to narrow exceptions. Data obtained in violation of the act would generally be inadmissible in federal court. Emergency access would remain available when necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury.

In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that historical cellphone-location data can reveal an intimate portrait of a person’s life, requiring a Fourth Amendment probable cause warrant. Vast ALPR networks pose the same fundamental danger: allowing the government to reconstruct our movements simply because modern technology makes it easy.
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PPSA applauds Rep. Self for a bill that applies an enduring constitutional rule to rapidly evolving technology. Eighteenth-century wisdom should apply to 21st-century technology. If the government wants to track an American, it should first persuade a judge and get a warrant.

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