Data brokers and their clients defend these transactions by saying that most of this data is anonymized—though it’s questionable whether that can truly be done in the case of geolocation data. Besides, anonymous data can be easily reidentified, especially when it’s combined with other personal information.
Digital-rights advocates have spent years sounding the alarm on this secretive industry, especially the ways in which it can harm already marginalized communities, though various types of data collection have sparked consternation across the political spectrum. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, was concerned about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought location data to evaluate the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns. Then a study from last year showed how easy (and cheap) it was to buy sensitive data about members of the US military; Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, called out the national security risks of data brokers in a statement to MIT Technology Review, and Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, later said he was “shocked” when he read about the practice in our story.
But it was the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending the constitutional guarantee of legal abortion that spurred much of the federal action last year. Shortly after the Dobbs ruling, President Biden issued an executive order to protect access to reproductive health care; it included instructions for the FTC to take steps preventing information about visits to doctor’s offices or abortion clinics from being sold to law enforcement agencies or state prosecutors.
The new enforcers
With Donald Trump taking office in January, and Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress, the fate of the CFPB’s proposed rule—and the CFPB itself—is uncertain. Republicans, the people behind Project 2025, and Elon Musk (who will lead the newly created advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency) have long been interested in seeing the bureau “deleted,” as Musk put it on X. That would take an act of Congress, making it unlikely, but there are other ways that the administration could severely curtail its powers. Trump is likely to fire the current director and install a Republican who could rescind existing CFPB rules and stop any proposed rules from moving forward.
Meanwhile, the FTC’s enforcement actions are only as good as the enforcers. FTC decisions do not set legal precedent in quite the same way that court cases do, says Ben Winters, a former Department of Justice official and the director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, a network of organizations and agencies focused on consumer protection. Instead, they “require consistent [and] additional enforcement to make the whole industry scared of not having an FTC enforcement action against them.” (It’s also worth noting that these FTC settlements are specifically focused on geolocation data, which is just one of the many types of sensitive data that we regularly give up in order to participate in the digital world.)
Looking ahead, Tiffany Li, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who focuses on AI and privacy law, is worried about “a defanged FTC” that she says would be “less aggressive in taking action against companies.”
Lina Khan, the current FTC chair, has been the leader of privacy protection action in the US, notes Li, and she’ll soon be leaving. Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s recently named pick to be the next FTC chair, has come out in strong opposition to data brokers: “This type of data—records of a person’s precise physical locations—is inherently intrusive and revealing of people’s most private affairs,” he wrote in a statement on the Mobilewalla decision, indicating that he is likely to continue action against them. (Ferguson has been serving as a commissioner on the FTC since April 20214.) On the other hand, he has spoken out against using FTC actions as an alternative to privacy legislation passed by Congress. And, of course, this brings us right back around to that other major roadblock: Congress has so far failed to pass such laws—and it’s unclear if the next Congress will either.
Movement in the states
Without federal legislative action, many US states are taking privacy matters into their own hands.
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