Public Sector Triage of the Federal Government’s Data Hemorrhage

This piece is part of “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis,” in collaboration with Data & Society. Read more about the series here.

In just the past month, three alarming developments in data privacy made headlines: A federal judge cleared the way for sensitive IRS data to be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in support of its deportation agenda; the State Department announced plans to use AI to scan social media accounts to determine visa revocations, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) began pressuring states’ to turn over personal data on millions of food assistance recipients.

If you handle public data in any way (especially within state or local government), this is your call to action.

This current privacy crisis in the United States has been years in the making, predating even the Trump administration. It is the byproduct of bipartisan support for ballooning law enforcement budgets, generous Department of Homeland Security grants for surveillance technologies, and inter-agency intelligence-sharing partnerships with little regard for civil liberties.

Amidst this ongoing federal data hemorrhage, we write to you as emergency responders who have dedicated our careers to advocating for more thoughtful and future-proof use cases for public sector technology. We believe that while locking down federal data remains a steep climb, there is a meaningful action that can be taken at the state and local level. State governments and municipalities can and must reduce the risk to their residents by acting now. Before DOGE, ICE, or others come knocking, governments should run, not walk!-- through this triage checklist to protect the data privacy of their most vulnerable constituents.

Public sector privacy triage for government agencies

Level 1: Immediate

Many local governments lack dedicated privacy officers with the expertise to run comprehensive risk assessments. While the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers some public resources and guidance, a practical first step is to enlist department heads in conducting a data inventory. Ask them to identify sensitive information collected via online forms, surveys, and portals, particularly sensitive data related to race, immigration status, home address, or gender identity.

This can be an overwhelmingly large task, so we recommend prioritizing departments that hold high-risk data and information more likely to be weaponized against certain communities, such as Public Health, Housing, or Disability and Accessibility services. Once the inventory is complete, identify which records are at the highest risk for seizure or misuse (e.g., gender identity or immigration status) and conduct a risk assessment that weighs the risk against the importance or necessity of delivering a particular service or benefit. If it’s not needed, don’t collect it. Also, minimize retention, including defining strict schedules for purging records that are no longer necessary, ideally enforced by your records management or data privacy teams.

Level 2: Emergency

Evaluate any law enforcement intelligence-sharing agreements or Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) with federal agencies. If your jurisdiction has a civilian oversight body or police commission, enlist their help to review these agreements and gain clarity on the terms. These partnerships and data-sharing programs have consistently proven to be harmful to vulnerable communities. For example, federal agents are legally allowed to racially profile and are known to use deceptive tactics. Yet cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities have chosen to abandon partnerships with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, setting an important precedent for others..

Level 3: Urgent

Audit your vendors. Ensure that your city or state’s data is not being sold or shared through weak contractual terms. Negotiate or renegotiate your agreements with strong terms to keep information private. Utilize tools like Surveillance Watch to research and analyze vendors' affiliations with other agencies or governments. Also, leverage public resources like Freedom House’s reporting tool, which allows the public to report the misuse of surveillance technologies.

Preventative care for the long-haul

Open up public procurement. From firsthand experience, we’ve seen better, mutually beneficial outcomes when cities do open calls that allow vendors to compete for contracts. Cities that facilitate open calls for contracts offer staff more room to negotiate and make demands for privacy-respecting measures (like blurring features, turning off facial recognition, or end-to-end encryption). Public sector contracts, worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, can be a lifeline to better, privacy-preserving vendors that can challenge dominant firms with troubling ties and questionable data practices.

Commit to privacy. Some cities are already leading by example. Portland’s Smart City PDX Privacy Program publicly catalogs the city’s privacy impact assessments of various technologies. Oakland also has a citizen oversight body called the Privacy Advisory Commission, which helps advise the City Council and guide the creation of use policies for acquired surveillance technology.

Support privacy legislation. This includes broader support for strong consumer privacy rights, such as those enshrined in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as specific interventions like banning facial recognition or predictive algorithms in the public sector’s use of technology.

Stopping mass surveillance is a slow and steady project, built brick by brick, that needs to be taken seriously. Regardless of how late in the game your government or agency may be, it’s not too late to act. Your residents’ personal data may already be at risk, but refusing to comply to prevent further misuse will increase community trust and catalyze systemic change. A more privacy-forward future is still within reach.