The Securities and Exchange Commission is building a massive central database in order to facilitate regulators’ market surveillance, and they’re forcing all brokerages to sign contracts to connect their systems to this Consolidated Audit Trail.

Proponents say the CAT will help regulators make sense of complex US financial markets, by putting data from disparate markets in one place and pinning down the time of each trade to the millisecond. … When complete, it is expected to ingest more than 58 billion records a day to become the world’s largest repository of stock-trading data.

Brokers and the ACLU both object vehemently to the requirement. The ACLU says,

We are concerned that the CAT will pose significant risks to the privacy of millions of investors….

because

the project for plans to store the personal data, such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, of individuals behind stock trades.

Of course, this just provides a convenient site for the government to peruse, at whim, the personal data of any one or group of us. Government, though has no need of these data and no right of access to these data absent search warrants issued solely on

probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But it’s more than that. Stipulate that explicitly personal data won’t be collected, after all, that only those stock trades and timing data would be collected.

It’s not enough.

It’s like these guys have never heard of OPSEC or COMSEC.

This is a move aimed solely at the personal convenience of bureaucrats, which makes it useless as well as dangerous.