EXCLUSIVE: Nearly two dozen state financial officers sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., late Wednesday demanding he take up a bill prohibiting the Biden administration from implementing a program that tracks private investment transactions.
Twenty-three officials in 19 states crafted a letter that demands a bill from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., the Protecting Investors’ Personally Identifiable Information Act, be immediately acted upon.
Loudermilk’s bill, H.R. 4551, formally prohibits the SEC from requiring personally identifiable information to be collected under the SEC’s new program and “for other purposes.”
If the bill passes, the signatories argue it could stymie the Securities and Exchange Commission from continuing its implementation of changes to the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), a tracking mechanism for trading activity on the stock market.
SEC FACES LAWSUIT ALLEGING ‘MASS SURVEILLANCE’ OF STOCK MARKET DATA
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Trump appointee, warned the CAT serves as a “comprehensive surveillance database that will collect and store every equity and option trade and quote from every account at every broker by every investor.”
The signatories warned in the letter of civil liberties concerns in that regard as well as the CAT’s “questionable legality.”
“We share the concerns of the American Securities Association … and numerous members of the House and Senate who … [have] expressed concern,” the letter states.
SEC’S SCRUTINY OF BINANCE IS SIMPLY SEEKING INVESTOR PROTECTION: GARY GENSLER
They also said it may be against the law to…
