CREW sued the Trump administration for putting Americans’ personal data at risk

 

We sued the Trump administration for putting Americans’ personal data at risk

 

Noah Bookbinder, CREW HQ 

From:info@citizensforethics.org

To:Joseph 

Wed, Oct 1 2025 at 9:06 AM

Joseph, CREW just filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump-Vance administration for its unlawful creation of “National Data Banks” that consolidate sensitive personal information across federal agencies. DOGE (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, IRS and other agencies have secretly merged personal data from across the federal government into centralized “Interagency Databases” in direct violation of both the Constitution and the Privacy Act of 1974. This data consolidation not only violates the law, but poses serious privacy and data-security risks—and threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters. That’s why CREW is taking action today alongside our partners to hold the Trump administration accountable, protect Americans’ privacy and voting rights and put an end to this illegal overreach of power. We’re representing several plaintiffs including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and a proposed class of millions of Americans—alongside our co-counsel at Democracy Forward and the Fair Elections Center. This lawsuit will be a huge effort, which is why we’re partnering with this coalition to protect Americans’ rights and our democracy. If you would like to support our fight to uphold the separation of powers, protect our democracy and hold the Trump administration accountable, please donate today to power CREW’s work → DONATE → News reports have repeatedly outlined ways in which the Trump administration has mishandled sensitive information and put Americans’ private data at risk. Now, the administration is pooling sensitive personal records from across the government—that poses a real risk to Americans’ voting rights and civil liberties. It cannot continue. Our complaint alleges that the administration has unlawfully: Transformed DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system into a national citizenship database, pooling Social Security data known to be unreliable, now being used by some states to purge voter rolls and open criminal investigations, meaning that citizens who are eligible to vote may be improperly taken off the rolls and even investigated. Built a Citizenship and Immigration Services “Data Lake” that combines records from multiple agencies and state voter registration databases—containing Social Security numbers, tax information, medical records, biometric data and children’s case files. States are reportedly using these databases to open criminal investigations and to purge state voter rolls based on citizenship information that the government itself has admitted is unreliable. This unlawful data consolidation threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters and subject Americans to unwarranted investigations. It also creates unprecedented security risks by placing sensitive, personal information in a single target-rich system. This is an illegal overreach by the Trump administration—and it is unacceptable. That’s why we’re taking action on behalf of millions of Americans. We’re suing to ask the court to block the administration’s efforts to operate these systems and to order the deletion of unlawfully collected data.