The Congressional Problem With CCP
That Is, Its Confusion
Concerning Priorities
The current House of Representatives — that cannot even muster the energy to pass a budget, which it is constitutionally mandated to do — has somehow gathered up enough energy to pass a ban on the video sharing app, Tik-Tok. As stated on the website of Senator Marco Rubio promoting his own Senate measure to ban Tik-Tok, "This isn’t about creative videos — this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day." Of course, the same could be said about every social media application. Indeed, almost all commercial sites on the Internet today collect information from users and visitors. The problem is just not with websites and apps that collect troves of data on their users. The problem is how websites and apps monetize that data by selling to groups known collectively as data brokers.
As defined by Wikipedia, a data broker is:
A data broker is an individual or company that specializes in collecting personal data (such as income, ethnicity, political beliefs, or geolocation data) or data about companies, mostly from public records but sometimes sourced privately, and selling or licensing such information to third parties for a variety of uses.
TechTarget.com adds that:
Data brokers collect personal information from a wide range of public and nonpublic sources. They might collect data from courthouse records, voter registries, census data, property records, motor vehicle departments or vital records offices, including marriage licenses or birth certificates. They might also purchase data from commercial sources, such as retail or credit card companies.
Market Research website, maximizemarketresearch.com, estimates that in 2023, total market value for this industry of buying and selling people's personal information was 280.92 billion US dollars. By 2030, that estimate will grow to 380.16 billion US dollars.
The fact is, there is scant evidence that Tik-Tok engages in any data collection that truly threatens American citizens. On the other hand, as reported by Lawfare.com, July 25, 2022, in its 2021settlement with The United States Department of Justice, US based digital marketing firm, Epsilon, agreed to a fine of $150,000,000, of which $127,500,000 was for Victim Compensation. The court filing from DOJ can be found here, pdf will open in download.
In the Stipulated Agreement with DOJ, Epsilon admitted that its employees knowingly had:
... arranged for Epsilon to sell consumer data to dozens of “opportunistic” clients they knew were engaged in fraud. The consumer data sold to the fraudulent clients came both from other “opportunistic” clients and legitimate business, non-profit, and charitable organization clients, including clients with many elderly customers and members.
Among the types of schemers and fraudsters that Epsilon admitted had knowingly sold their "product" to were: astrology schemes; sweepstakes frauds; and various types of mail fraud, according to the DOJ Statement of Facts attachment to the court filing. One Epsilon salesperson actually warned a prospective data buyer that a previous buyer of the same information, which was then under discussion, had subsequently been arrested for its use of that same data.
Epsilon is not the only US based data broker to run afoul of the law. In a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission against InMarket Media, LLC, January 18, 2024, the FTC alleges that InMarket Media, LLC, sells two apps that are together known as, InMarket SDK. When subscribed to by its customers, InMarket SDK provides customers with:
Apps that incorporate the InMarket SDK request access to the location data generated by a mobile device’s operating system. If the user allows access, the InMarket SDK receives the device’s precise latitude and longitude, along with a timestamp and a unique mobile device identifier ... From 2016 to the present, about 100 million unique devices sent Respondent location data each year.
As stated in the FTC complaint, the InMarket SDK application is remarkably intrusive and frighteningly thorough. When using the app, InMarket:
... collects sensitive information from consumers, including where they live, where they work, where they worship, where their children go to school or obtain child care, where they receive medical treatment (potentially revealing the existence of medical conditions), where they go to rallies, demonstrations, or protests (potentially revealing their political affiliations), and any other information that can be gleaned from tracking a person’s day-to-day movements.
These are just two examples of American companies that are accused of the same frauds and data collection tactics against US citizens that lawmakers fear is going on at Tik-Tok. These same lawmakers also view Tik-Tok as a national security threat. Again, there is no evidence that Tik-Tok has engaged in any of the various crimes that US based data brokers have perpetrated against US Citizens. In fact, Tik-Tok is no more of a threat to national security than other brokers of Americans' information, maybe less so.
In November 2023, Duke University published a study titled, "Data Brokers and the Sale of Data on U.S. Military Personnel: Risks to Privacy, Safety, and National Security." The major takeaway from Duke's researchers was that:
It is not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active-duty members of the military, their families, and veterans, including non-public, individually identified, and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices.
The price for such data was a bargain, when priced "as low as $0.12 per record." As the authors of the Duke Study stated, location data of US military personnel was also for sale, "though the team did not purchase it." For a price of "$0.213 per military service member," one US based data broker offered up "individually identified information" on 4,951 active military personnel located in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Included in that purchase were military personnel's:
... name, home address, email address, political affiliation, gender, age, income, net worth, credit rating, occupation, presence of children in the home (yes/no), marital status, homeowner/renter status, home value, and religion.
So while the recently passed Tik-Tok ban gives Members of Congress a feel good moment and some video clips they can send back to their districts in an election year, meaningful legislation that might reign in the real data crooks in our midst have languished in Congress and are going nowhere. In 2022, the Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange Act (DELETE) was introduced in the Senate and simultaneously in the House. Both bills were sent to their various committees, never to be heard from again. As reported by Lawfare, August 11, 2023, a bill was introduced in the current Congress to place limitations on some actions of data brokers. This simple amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act was introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Its purpose was only the protection of the personal data of Members of Congress, their staff, and families. But it, too, failed. As for any other legislation to protect consumer's data, the current "Congress has stalled in reintroducing a bipartisan, comprehensive consumer privacy package," as the Lawfare article cited above said it.
A bi-partisan bill has been introduced in both the House and the Senate that would "protect Americans’ data from being exploited by unfriendly foreign nations, and apply tough criminal and civil penalties to prevent employees of foreign corporations like TikTok from accessing U.S. data from abroad." Introduced in the House, June 24, 2023, the bill is titled, "H.R.4108 - Protecting Americans' Data From Foreign Surveillance Act of 2023." Although the bill is a prodigious start to reigning in the arguably illegal excesses of data brokers, the measure only applies to foreign entities. It would do nothing to protect American citizens from their predatory fellow Americans. That bill, however, has also been assigned to Committees, where it currently lies dormant.
In support for the Senate version of the Protecting Americans' Data From Foreign Surveillance Act of 2023, Senator Ron Wyden summed up the bigger problem with all date brokers, buyers and sellers, no matter their nationality. On his website, Senator Wyden made the following statement that clearly points to a far greater problem.
Massive pools of Americans’ sensitive information — everything from where we go, to what we buy and what kind of health care services we receive — are for sale to buyers in China, Russia and nearly anyone with a credit card.
The ban on Tik-Tok will do nothing to enhance the security of the majority of US Consumers who do not now enjoy what Tik-Tok has to offer. Nevertheless, there are approximately 102 million Tik-Tok users in the United States, according to 2023 data from Statista. The proposed ban is, therefore, certainly discriminatory. The ban will seriously limit the rights of free speech; freedom of association; and freedom of commerce that is currently enjoyed by so many Americans. In fact, according to an article by MARKET REALIST, dated January 8, 2024, Tik-Tok saw a surge in new U.S. customers in November 2023, thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Thus, proving the viability of Tik-Tok as an online marketplace. Given that a sizeable number of Americans want to trade over Tik-Tok, the ban might well violate the "equal protection of the laws" provision of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Banning Tik-Tok alone will do nothing to fix the problem the situation that Senator Wyden laid out so well. Clearly, many members of Congress recognize both the scope and the depth of the threat all Americans face, as Americans' personal information remains the possession of unscrupulous buyers and sellers, both here and abroad. Yet the House of Representatives does nothing but pass one most likely meaningless bill that places a ban on only one app and its users.
Congress does indeed have a CCP problem. Its CCP problem is its Confusion Concerning Priorities.
Gerald Reiff