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A bipartisan defense of the Fourth Amendment

Senator Ron Wyden, Representative Zoe Lofgren, and Senator Mike Lee introduced legislation requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants before searching Americans' commercially available digital data.
Federal agencies currently purchase vast amounts of personal information from data brokers, allowing them to obtain private records without the judicial oversight traditionally required for government searches.
The U.S. Constitution protects "persons, houses, papers and effects," yet intelligence agencies exploit a legal loophole by purchasing information that would otherwise require a warrant.
This practice allows agencies to skirt constitutional constraints, creating what Wyden described as "particularly dangerous" for civil liberties and privacy protections in the digital age.
Legislative efforts aim to codify protections under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ensuring data privacy standards apply equally to information sold by third-party brokers.

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