18 State AGs Oppose Expanding SAVE Program to US-Born Citizens
A coalition of 18 Democratic attorneys general, led by California and New York, penned a letter Monday opposing the Trump administration’s expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to include the data of U.S.-born citizens.
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The expansion “uses the information of U.S.-born citizens who have never interacted with our immigration system and who never consented to the use of their personal data in SAVE,” the letter said. This is one of many “well-documented efforts to acquire massive troves of personal data from a variety of sources” that is “is ill-advised and a massive privacy overreach.”
The SAVE expansion “exposes millions of individuals to possible data breaches, pools vast swaths of sensitive and otherwise-segregated data, and furthers the Administration’s efforts to create a national surveillance database for use in immigration enforcement, voter list maintenance, and other purposes,” the letter added.
The states also allege that “there is evidence that DHS implemented the SAVE program modifications months ago,” and the System of Record Notice (SORN) update from Oct. 31 is “a belated effort to legitimize the federal government’s unlawful modifications to those systems.”
The SORN change violates the Privacy Act of 1974, risks the security of Americans’ data, places undue burden on the states and should be withdrawn, the letter said.
“The Trump Administration has made no secret of its plan to build a mass surveillance machine,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) in a release Monday. “The expansion of SAVE to include data on U.S. citizens is the latest salvo in this dystopian power grab.”
“I urge the Department to rescind this ill-advised plan that exposes Americans’ private data to potential misuse by the federal government and external actors alike without providing sufficient safeguards,” he added.
The federal government has made several attempts to consolidate various types of state data, including Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) applicant and recipient data (see 2505290019) health data (see 2507010060) and voter registration data (see 2512010046).