- A group of eight Republican AGs wrote a letter to Congressional leaders asking them to support the Protecting Investors’ Personally Identifiable Information Act, which was introduced by Republican Congress members in response to the SEC’s efforts to collect information about investors and essentially create a massive surveillance database containing detailed information on every trade by every person with any money in the stock market.
- The letter explains that the legislation would serve as a hedge against the SEC’s adoption of Rule 613, which created a Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) to track activity in the U.S. securities markets. The AGs argue that the CAT would necessarily contain personally identifiable information (PII) of investors and is thus a threat to Americans’ liberty and privacy. They also argue that the CAT would be an irresistible target for cyber thieves looking to steal investors’ PII.
- The AGs ask Congress to support the Protecting Investors’ Personally Identifiable Information Act, which would roll back Rule 613 by prohibiting the SEC from requiring market participants to submit investors’ PII to the CAT except on a case-by-case basis when the Commission requests it as part of an investigation of a potential securities-law violation.