End the Sale of Commercial Surveillance Products Circumventing Fourth Amendment Protections
Steve Hasker
President and Chief Executive Officer
Thomson Reuters
End the Sale of Commercial Surveillance Products Circumventing Fourth Amendment Protections
Dear Mr. Hasker,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to express our deep concern regarding reports that Thomson Reuters Special Services continues to provide federal law enforcement agencies access to CLEAR, an investigative platform capable of aggregating vast amounts of personal information about millions of people in the United States.[1] At its core, this issue is about whether private companies should profit by selling the government access to information that would otherwise require a warrant to obtain.[2] We urge you to stop the practice of selling such information, including by withdrawing from existing contracts and refraining from entering into any future such agreements.
The Fourth Amendment exists to protect people from unreasonable government searches.[3] It requires judicial oversight before the government may intrude upon some of our most sensitive private information.[4] Yet an expanding commercial surveillance marketplace has created a dangerous loophole.[5] Rather than obtaining a warrant or demonstrating probable cause, government agencies increasingly circumvent constitutional protections by purchasing access to commercially assembled dossiers containing extraordinarily revealing information about our lives.[6]
According to public reporting, CLEAR enables investigators to rapidly compile extensive profiles using information drawn from numerous public and proprietary sources, including addresses, telephone records, utility records, vehicle registrations, license plate information, social media activity, geolocation information, and other personal data.[7] Their aggregation creates an extraordinarily detailed portrait of a person’s life, movements, relationships, and activities.[8]
The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that digital technologies capable of revealing the “privacies of life” require heightened constitutional scrutiny.[9] Constitutional protections cannot depend upon whether the government collects this information directly or simply purchases access to a commercially assembled version. And they should not be so simple to circumvent through private contracts between the federal government and companies like yours.
Thomson Reuters is actively participating in the creation and expansion of a commercial surveillance ecosystem that enables unprecedented access to Americans’ personal information. As one of the world’s most prominent legal and information companies, Thomson Reuters has long offered legal resources and education to court systems, law students, and nonprofit organizations.[10] That commitment should extend beyond the courtroom. Respect for constitutional rights requires refusing to facilitate practices that undermine the fundamental protections upon which our constitutional system depends.
Accordingly, we call upon Thomson Reuters to:
- Immediately cease providing government agencies access to products that enable the warrantless acquisition of commercially aggregated personal information.
- Commit not to develop, market, or sell investigative products whose primary value derives from enabling government agencies to circumvent constitutional privacy protections.
- Publicly disclose all government contracts involving CLEAR or substantially similar investigative platforms, including the agencies involved, categories of data made available, and oversight mechanisms governing their use.
- Publish a comprehensive human rights and civil liberties impact assessment evaluating how CLEAR and related products affect privacy, constitutional rights, and democratic participation.
- Adopt a publicly available corporate policy committing that Thomson Reuters will not profit from products that undermine Americans’ constitutional protections through commercial data aggregation.
The rapid growth of the commercial surveillance industry presents one of the defining civil liberties challenges of the digital age. Technology has dramatically expanded the government’s practical ability to know where people go, whom they associate with, what they read, what they buy, and how they live. Constitutional protections must evolve to preserve meaningful privacy in that environment. The fact that loopholes in current law may permit a particular business practice does not mean that it is compatible with the values of privacy, liberty, and the rule of law.
We urge Thomson Reuters to cease eroding our privacy protections by ending the sale of products that enable government surveillance through commercial circumvention of constitutional protections.
Sincerely,
Public Citizen
American Civil Liberties Union
Access Now
Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
Black Voters Matter Fund
Center for Democracy & Technology
Common Cause
Consumer Federation of America
Defending Rights & Dissent
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Fiat Fiendum
Fight for the Future
Free Press Action
Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)
Independent
NC Environmental Justice Network
Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)
Project On Government Oversight
Restore The Fourth
Sikh American Legal Defense and education fund
TechEquity
UnidosUS
[1] Caroline Haskins & Vittoria Elliott, ICE Is Using Data Broker Tools to “Identify Unaccompanied Minors” and “Fraud”, WIRED, (July 17, 2026) https://www.wired.com/story/ice-unaccompanied-minors-fraud-suspects-trss-contract/; Olivia Bowden, Canadian Government Urged to Block Thomson Reuters Data Deal with U.S. ICE, Guardian (July 24, 2026) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/24/canada-government-mark-carney-block-data-sharing-deal-thomson-reuters-us-ice-avi-lewis
[2] Emile Ayoub & Elizabeth Goitein, Closing the Data Broker Loophole, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (Feb. 13, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/closing-data-broker-loophole; Jude Joffe-Block, Your Data Is Everywhere. The Government Is Buying It Without a Warrant, NPR (Mar. 25, 2026), https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillance-data-brokers-congress-anthropic ; Anika Venkatesh & Lauren Yu, DHS is Circumventing Constitution by Buying Data It Would Normally Need a Warrant to Access, ACLU (Jan. 12, 2026), https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/dhs-is-circumventing-constitution-by-buying-data-it-would-normally-need-a-warrant-to-access.
[3] U.S. Const. amend. IV.
[4] Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
[5] See supra note 2.
[6] Id.
[7] Supra note 1.
[8] Id.
[9] See supra note 4.
[10] Company History, Thomson Reuters, https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/about-us/company-history