Rarely does a federal agency concede that the program it is defending in court needs to be drastically overhauled. As Advancing American Freedom has stated in its amicus brief, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created a serious constitutional contravention with its Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), a massive, invasive database of Americans’ personal information. The agency has spent the past year quietly rewriting CAT’s rules while trying to avoid defending its legality in court. While the SEC seeks delays in Davidson v. Atkins, the case challenging CAT, the database continues to swell.
CAT is the SEC’s database that tracks every single stock and options order, execution, and cancellation in the U.S. financial markets in real time. The SEC wields an illegal tool that peeks into the personal lives of every single American who owns stock. But the SEC is yet again asking a federal court in Texas to forestall its consideration of a case challenging CAT for another six months. The courts should not allow the SEC to delay again.
