The Trump administration is on its way to creating every authoritarian’s dream: a centralized database containing intimate details about every resident of this country, fully searchable by artificial intelligence. This powerful tool would empower the government to conduct previously unimagined levels of surveillance and harassment against its own people.
Freedom of the Press Foundation is suing the administration for documents behind the database. We know that this isn’t just something that the Trump administration would exploit; once built, it’s unlikely any administration could resist the urge to weaponize our personal information.
This nightmare privacy scenario began one year ago, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expanded data sharing across the federal government. The administration touted the order, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” as a way to target fraud within a supposedly bloated government.
The order was no such thing.
Instead, it took a machete to long-standing privacy protections that mandate agencies can only share our data when absolutely necessary, to install a massive data-mining operation in their place.
To do so, Trump’s executive order required agency heads to submit reports to the Office of Management and Budget on the following:
Which agency regulations governing unclassified data access should be eliminated or modified. Which policies governing the sharing of classified information need to be scrapped to meet the administration’s goals.
The public has never seen the reports agencies submitted by OMB, despite their impact on our privacy. However, thanks to intrepid reporting and litigation, we do have glimpses of how this is starting to play out:
•The Central Intelligence Agency has been granted increased access to domestic law enforcement databases, further blurring the line between foreign intelligence and domestic policing.
•The so-called Department of Government Efficiency got direct access to Treasury Department payment systems, including Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays, according to a whistleblower.
•Immigration and Customs Enforcement got access to Medicaid recipients’ data and banking information.
•The Transportation Security Administration is now sharing biometric passenger info with immigration enforcement, turning every airport check-in into a potential trap.
But these incursions are only the tip of the iceberg.
Reports indicate the administration’s goal for dismantling privacy protections is to build a centralized national database, which would allow the administration to create detailed reports on every American, potentially for political purposes, including retaliation, harassment, and imprisonment.