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The SEC’s Mass Surveillance Of Investors’ Transactions Violates First Amendment

For decades, regulators and the courts have ignored the Constitution’s requirements in the context of financial regulation and economic liberty.

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The First Amendment forbids the government from forcing you to disclose the groups or organizations that you support. That is because the First Amendment guarantees our right to associate with others, and associational privacy is fundamental to that freedom. Nevertheless, in complete disregard for these associational rights, the Securities and Exchange Commission currently requires investors to disclose the businesses they support financially. No government agency has the authority to compel Americans to disclose the companies in which they invest.  

Yet for several years, the SEC has done exactly that through a surveillance program called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). The CAT is “the world’s largest collection of retail investor financial information ever assembled.” Since its inception, the program has allowed the SEC to monitor trillions of securities transactions. And the SEC maintains details about those transactions in a government database it searches at will.

The CAT’s scale (and the SEC’s apparent disdain for the Constitution’s guarantees) are shocking. But for decades, regulators and the courts have ignored the Constitution’s requirements in........

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