1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

I'm writing as a constituent who believes our federal data privacy laws desperately need updating. The Privacy Act of 1974 has served us well for five decades, but it was written before the internet existed—and it's showing its age. Recent developments make this urgent. Federal agencies are increasingly consolidating data in ways the original law never anticipated. The IRS and Social Security Administration have begun sharing immigrant taxpayers' home addresses with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Health and Human Services is providing Medicaid records to Homeland Security. These weren't isolated incidents—they represent a systematic erosion of the data silos that once limited interagency access. What's worse, existing loopholes allow these transfers to happen without meaningful accountability. The Privacy Act distinguishes between case-by-case record sharing and wholesale systemic sharing of entire databases—but that distinction is poorly defined and easily exploited. Agencies routinely bypass state-level protections too, like when DHS pressured California into feeding driver's license data into NLETS, effectively nullifying the state's safeguards for undocumented residents. I urge you to support legislation that: - Closes the loophole allowing bulk data transfers between agencies without court orders or specific statutory authorization - Expands enforceability by creating clearer legal remedies for Privacy Act violations - Limits the government's ability to purchase personal data from commercial brokers, circumventing Fourth Amendment warrant requirements - Works toward comprehensive consumer privacy legislation to reduce the flood of personal data entering the marketplace These aren't abstract concerns. When the government combines tax records, benefit applications, voter registration, and health data, mistakes multiply, trust erodes, and ordinary people—particularly immigrants, activists, and marginalized communities—face real chilling effects on their participation in civic life. Congress acted after the McCarthy and Watergate scandals. We face similar dangers today. Please help strengthen our privacy protections before more damage is done. Thank you for your time and service.