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By the Center for
Media and Democracy
www.prwatch.org

D I D Y O U K N O W ? Corporations VOTED to adopt this. Through ALEC, global companies
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work as “equals” in “unison” with politicians to write laws to govern your life. Big
MODEL LEGISLATION
ALEC INITIATIVES
PUBLICATIONS
Business
has “a VOICE TASK
and aFORCES
VOTE,” according
to newly exposed
documents. DO YOU?

NEWS

Resolution in Favor of Non-Bank Consumer Anti-Profiling Protection

WHEREAS, approximately 25 million Americans obtain loans at more than 15,000 pawnshops across the United States to
meet their emergency financial needs; and

WHEREAS, state legislatures have enacted statutes requiring pawnbrokers to make and keep transaction records that include
personal information about each customer and a description of the property pledged to secure payment of the pawn loaned or
sold to the pawnbroker; and

WHEREAS, the percentage of property that law enforcement claims to be stolen has been reduced to less than one-tenth of
one percent of items pledged or sold to pawnbrokers nationwide; and

WHEREAS, the focus of law enforcement has now shifted from identification and recovery of stolen property to identification
and profiling of consumers; and

WHEREAS, law enforcement increasingly uses technology to profile pawn customers based on their gender, name, age,
residence zip code, and frequency of pawn transactions; and

WHEREAS, law enforcement data-mining and profiling practices afford pawn customers less protection against unreasonable
searches and warrant-less property seizures than they are guaranteed under the United States Constitution, federal privacy
laws, and state constitutions; and

WHEREAS, unless curtailed by appropriate legislation, data-mining and profiling is likely to increase dramatically, further
eroding constitutional and statutory privacy protections.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the ALEC Criminal Justice Task Force should draft, sponsor, and work toward passage

of model legislation designed to limit the receipt of personal information obtained during the course of financial or commercial
information to (1) circumstances covered by the federal Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, the federal Bank Secrecy Act, or
the USA PATRIOT Act; (2) circumstances when an enforcement agency establishes a nexus between a property crime and the
individual consumer by opening a formal investigation; or (3) cases in which law enforcement obtains a properly authorized
subpoena or the pawnbroker responds to a court order or grand jury subpoena.

Adopted by the Criminal Justice Task Force at the States and Nation Policy Summit December 9, 2006. Approved by the ALEC
Board of Directors January 8, 2007.

ALEC EXPOSED

ALEC’s’Corporate Board
--in recent past or present

• AT&T Services, Inc.
• centerpoint360
• UPS
• Bayer Corporation
• GlaxoSmithKline
• Energy Future Holdings
• Johnson & Johnson
• Coca-Cola Company
• PhRMA
• Kraft Foods, Inc.
• Coca-Cola Co.
• Pfizer Inc.
• Reed Elsevier, Inc.
• DIAGEO
• Peabody Energy
• Intuit, Inc.
• Koch Industries, Inc.
• ExxonMobil
• Verizon
• Reynolds American Inc.
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
• Salt River Project
• Altria Client Services, Inc.
• American Bail Coalition
• State Farm Insurance
For more on these corporations,
search at www.SourceWatch.org.

About Us and ALEC EXPOSED. The Center for Media and Democracy reports on corporate spin and government
propaganda.! We are located in Madison, Wisconsin, and publish www.PRWatch.org, www.SourceWatch.org,
and now www.ALECexposed.org. For more information contact: editor@prwatch.org or 608-260-9713.

“ALEC” has long been a
secretive collaboration
between Big Business and
“conservative” politicians.
Behind closed doors, they
ghostwrite “model” bills to
be introduced in state
capitols across the country.
This agenda--underwritten
by global corporations-includes major tax
loopholes for big industries
and the super rich,
proposals to offshore U.S.
jobs and gut minimum
wage, and efforts to
weaken public health,
safety, and environmental
protections. Although many
of these bills have become
law, until now, their origin
has been largely unknown.
With ALEC EXPOSED, the
Center for Media and
Democracy hopes more
Americans will study the
bills to understand the
depth and breadth of how
big corporations are
changing the legal rules
and undermining democracy
across the nation.