
... The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) consolidated audit trail (CAT) system threatens to change all of that by both collecting data on every stock and options trade made in the United States and personally identifying information of the individual who made the trade. The CAT system gives government agencies a blueprint for pervasive and constant government surveillance:
1) it requires regulated parties to collect data daily and retain immense amounts of sensitive information about their customers;
2) it offers no chance to opt out; and
3) it demands unfettered access to customers’ data on the theory that the government might need the information for future law enforcement.
Cato and the Investor Choice Advocates Network have filed, in an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals case called American Securities Association v. SEC, an amicus brief urging the court to set aside the 2023 SEC order funding the CAT system, which implicates the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of American investors.
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