HR-9800-119
Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Sponsored by Tim Burchett (R-TN)
What it does
This bill would prohibit federal agencies from buying, deploying, operating, accessing, or contracting for automated surveillance systems that identify or track individuals, including license plate readers, facial recognition, and biometric identification technologies. It would also bar state, local, and tribal governments from using federal funds to acquire or operate such systems, require deletion of any improperly obtained data within 30 days, and make such data inadmissible in court or administrative proceedings.
Who benefits
Individuals concerned about government tracking of their movements and identity, including protesters, immigrants, journalists, and ordinary residents captured by license plate readers or facial recognition cameras; civil liberties organizations; and defendants who could challenge evidence obtained through prohibited surveillance.
Who is hurt
Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies (including DHS, FBI, and ICE) that currently rely on these tools for investigations; state and local police departments that use federal grants for license plate readers or facial recognition (such as Flock Safety systems); companies that sell these technologies to government agencies; and prosecutors who may lose access to surveillance evidence in ongoing cases.
Supporters argue
Supporters argue that mass biometric and license plate surveillance creates a comprehensive tracking capability that Congress never explicitly authorized, raising serious privacy concerns for law-abiding citizens who are monitored without individualized suspicion. They contend that facial recognition systems have documented error rates that disproportionately misidentify people of color, and that a bright-line prohibition, backed by data deletion and evidentiary exclusion, is necessary to prevent the government from building permanent tracking infrastructure by default.
Opponents argue
Opponents argue that automated license plate readers and facial recognition tools help solve violent crimes, locate missing children, and track fleeing suspects, and that a blanket federal ban would eliminate these capabilities even when used with judicial oversight. They contend that conditioning state and local funding on abandoning these tools intrudes on local law enforcement decisions and that the 30-day deletion and evidence exclusion rules could unravel ongoing investigations and prosecutions that relied on this technology in good faith.
Constitutional context
This bill implicates Fourth Amendment search and seizure principles, particularly the reasoning in Carpenter v. United States (2018), which recognized constitutional limits on warrantless government collection of comprehensive location and identity data; Congress here would go further than the Fourth Amendment requires by statutorily banning the technology outright rather than just requiring warrants.
Checks and balances
Congress would restrict executive branch agencies' investigative and surveillance tools by statute, and would use its spending power to condition federal funds for state and local governments, with courts enforcing the evidentiary exclusion rule.
Historical precedent
Some cities and states have independently banned or restricted municipal use of facial recognition technology, but no comparable nationwide statutory ban on federal agency use of these surveillance tools has been enacted.