“Big Leap”
But Schwartz told Al Jazeera that the trend of government data consolidation has been going on for decades under Democratic and Republican leadership.
“Unfortunately, oversight is bipartisan,” he said.
But in President Trump’s second term, that process has reached warp speed. Schwartz argues that the Trump administration’s actions violate privacy laws and other laws and represent a “dangerous” shift from Nixon-era protections.
“The biggest problem the federal government has had in the last year when it comes to surveillance has been the subversion of Watergate-era safeguards designed to keep databases segregated,” he said.
Schwartz noted that President Trump’s integration efforts have been accompanied by a lack of transparency about how the new unified data system is being used.
“Just as this administration has made great strides on surveillance and privacy violations, it is also less transparent in helping the public understand what the government is doing,” Schwartz said.
Already on March 20, President Trump signed an executive order requiring government agencies to “take all necessary steps” to eliminate what he called “data silos.”
Shortly after, in April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) entered into an agreement with the IRS to exchange personal information, including taxpayer names and addresses.
The memo is seen as an effort to turn individual taxpayer data into a tool to carry out President Trump’s goal of deporting immigrants.
A federal court suspended the agency’s data-sharing agreement in November. But other efforts continue.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled giving DOGE access to confidential Social Security data. And just this month, the Trump administration pressured states to share information about food aid recipients or face losing funding.
While immigrants appear to be one of the primary targets of data integration projects, Wenzke said Americans of all walks of life should not be surprised if their personal information is weaponized in the future.
“There’s no reason to limit it to illegal aliens. They’re taking a system that has traditionally been limited to non-citizens and expanding it significantly to include all kinds of information about U.S. citizens,” Bentzke said.
“This was unthinkable just five years ago, but it’s happening now, and the resulting potential exploitation is widespread.”
