A new lawsuit against the government of President Donald Trump accuses the opening of unfair investigations against possible voters, in order to eliminate them from electoral standards, with a particular approach to immigrant information.
“The defendants in this case are ignoring […] Laws to create exhaustive databases with personal information from US citizens, centralized in the Department of National Security (DHS), ”accuses the demand.“ The plaintiffs in this case include a group of millions of US citizens and permanent residents whose personal data has been illegally collected in new centralized registration systems of the DHS, as well as organizations whose members and objectives are harmed by attempts of the defendants to violate the laws that protect the privacy of Americans. ”
Collective demand League of Women Voters v. US Department of Homeland Security Before the District Court of Washington, DC accuses that the Trump administration wants to transform the systematic verification system of foreigners for benefits (SAVE).
That information of the DHS would be transformed into a citizenship database that combines data from the Social Security Administration “to eliminate voters from the standards and open criminal investigations.”
“The journalistic reports have repeatedly identified the ways in which this administration is improperly handling sensitive information and putting the privacy of the data of the Americans at risk,” criticized Skye Perryman, president and executive director of Democracy Forward. “And now, once again, this administration plays with our personal information – constructeding exactly the type of databases of ‘Big Brother’ that Congress has repeatedly prohibited for more than 50 years.”
Perryman refers to the Privacy Protection Law of 1974, which prevents the Government from creating “centralized” databases, which integrate from different agencies the personal information of the Americans.
“Grouping sensitive personal records of the entire government not only violates the law, but also threatens the privacy, voting rights and civil liberties of Americans. We are in court to stop it,” said Perryman.
The lawsuit indicates that the Trump administration seeks to create a “Data Lake” of the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services of the United States (USCIS), to integrate data from the Internal Tax Office (IRS), the SSA, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, thus State Databases of Registration of voters.
That would include social security numbers, fiscal information, medical records, biometric data and children’s files, says Democracy Forward, an organization that leads demand.
“The illegal consolidation of data by the administration threatens to deprive the right to vote to eligible persons, submit to Americans to non -foundation research and create unprecedented security risks by concentrating sensitive personal information on a single vulnerable system,” the group accuses. “The lawsuit requests that the court block the administration’s efforts to operate these systems and order the elimination of the data collected illegally.”