In Montana, A New Data Privacy Law Aims to Protect Everyone — Regardless of Status

Immigrants and January 6th insurrectionists may not appear to share much in common — except what they stand to gain from a new law introduced by one of Montana’s state senators, Republican Daniel Emrich.

At least nine Montanans were involved in the 2021 insurrection, including Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia. 

Among the 1,500 people arrested for the attack was Patrick William O’Brien, a father who drove for three days with his son to the Capitol. Sen. Emrich says he knows O’Brien, a Montanan from Great Falls, personally. Both Rhodes and O’Brien were later pardoned by President Donald Trump.

On January 7th, a facial recognition software called Clearview AI saw a spike in its usage among law enforcement as federal investigators used it to identify rioters. And in the following months, investigators combined location data from smartphones, photos, and other social media postings to find suspects and accurately hone in on their identities and whereabouts that day.

Investigators also acquired access to insurrectionists’ information from data brokers. Data brokers are private companies that aggregate personal information from millions of Americans and sell it to anyone willing to pay the subscription fee. In the years following January 6th, the FBI obtained location data from 10 data brokers in its investigation.

Shocked that the federal government was allowed to access Montanans’ private data to uncover their identities, Emrich decided to take action. 

“I knew that if they were trying to identify people from January 6th that they have to be doing it in so many other areas,” Emrich says. “That’s really the genesis of what made me realize that it was a very huge problem.” 

Closing the Data Broker Loophole

Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement is generally required to obtain a judicial warrant to search someone’s property — including their private information, such as their electronic messages, personal journals, and computer files. Getting one requires probable cause: facts or evidence that lead authorities to believe a crime has been committed and that a search is necessary. 

“Because data brokers exist, law enforcement is able to go to those data brokers and buy the information instead of getting a warrant — and use this back door to your personal information,” says Emerald Tse. Tse is an associate at the Georgetown Privacy Center, a think tank researching issues at the intersection of privacy, technology, and civil rights. “In doing so, they don’t have to justify why they need to get that information in the first place.”

Known as the data broker loophole, this workaround is precisely what worried Sen. Emrich.

In February 2025, Emrich introduced Montana Senate Bill 282, intending to prevent state and federal governments from purchasing individuals’ private data. With the passage of the bill in May 2025, Montana became the first state in the country to close out the data broker loophole. 

The law went into effect on October 1, 2025. That means that local and state government agencies in Montana can no longer pay to access sensitive data of Montanans (such as, for example, the identities of their relatives or their religious affiliations) without having a judicial warrant, an individual’s direct consent, or an investigative subpoena in hand. It also prohibits agencies from accessing electronic communications or information on electronic fund transfers — both of which have been used by federal law enforcement in the past year to find immigrants and detain them.

“This is a protection for any type of government abuse of the Fourth Amendment in order to unlawfully obtain people’s information through unlawful search and seizure,” Emrich says. 

The law creates a monumental precedent for data privacy protections for the rest of the country, where no comprehensive data privacy law exists at the federal level. And the law could be especially important in helping to protect the privacy of vulnerable Montanans, including immigrants.

A Crackdown on Immigrant Montanans

In 2026, immigrants across the U.S. — and anti-ICE protesters — are now being subjected to Clearview AI’s same facial recognition search capabilities. Through the federal government’s contracts with private data brokers, fingerprint and facial scans are being combined with personal pieces of information to reveal identities and routine movements.  

Vanessa Zamora is the Executive Director of Bienvenidos a Gallatin Valley, a grassroots organization that provides resources for immigrants adjusting to life in the United States. As a community organizer based in Bozeman, Montana’s fourth largest city, Zamora has seen firsthand how wary immigrants in her community are to violations of their data privacy. 

“The community anxiety and fear has gone way, way up,” says Zamora. Since 2019, her organization has been helping immigrants in and around Bozeman navigate healthcare, schools, housing, and public services. 

At age 17, Zamora emigrated from Colombia to the United States. She remembers that the transition to living in a new country made her feel isolated. Through her work, Zamora says she’s providing a resource she needed when she was younger. “Bienvenidos is a welcoming space for Spanish-speaking individuals and families who have moved to the area and may feel much like I did when I first arrived.”

She empathizes with immigrant community members who may be reluctant to share their personal information with anyone, even for census purposes. It’s due to a suspicion of government institutions, she says. 

​​“[There’s] a lack of trust of where your information goes, and it’s totally respectable, especially in the climate that we are in right now,” she says.

Recently, Zamora’s advocacy has shifted gears. She has been helping immigrant families track their missing relatives who have been detained by ICE. Among them are two local high school graduates. 

At first glance, Zamora’s political goals don’t seem to align with those of State Senator Daniel Emrich. But of Emrich’s legislation, Montana Senate Bill 282, Zamora says, “I think it’s a big win towards gaining the trust of a community that doesn’t trust a lot of data collection.”

Liberty and Privacy for All

Montana’s constitution reflects its residents’ longstanding values of small government, individual freedoms, and a right to privacy. The state boasts a singular reputation of securing monumental privacy protections for its residents. As the surveillance industry grows, Montana legislators have passed laws limiting facial recognition surveillance. They’ve prevented energy utility companies from selling customer data without consent. And as of 2021, Montana became one of two states to require a warrant for searching consumer DNA databases. Now, with Senate Bill 282, Montana is preventing local police and other government agencies from being able to access people’s sensitive data, on the dollar, through private data brokers.

“In Montana, I think there is still a strong libertarian streak,” says Henry Seaton, a lobbyist with the ACLU of Montana. Seaton is based in Helena, the state’s capital. “There is still a strong contingent of folks who believe that the federal government, regardless of who’s in charge, does not have the right to spy on [them]. There is a sentiment here that isn’t replicated in a lot of states.”

Montana is one of the country’s least populated states, with only 1.14 million residents. As of 2023, only 2.2% of them are immigrants. Yet over the past ten years, the historically white and conservative cultural landscape there has been changing. An increasing number of immigrants have been arriving from countries like Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria. 

They have moved to cities like Bozeman, Missoula, and Kalispell, according to Valley Neighbors of the Flathead, an immigrants’ rights advocacy group in Kalispell, Montana — a town five hours north of Bozeman. The rapid population growth in a city like Bozeman, for instance, has created job opportunities in tourist services, cleaning, and the construction industry, attracting more immigrants to the area.

Sen. Emrich says he did not particularly have immigrants in mind when drafting the bill. 

“In regards to illegal immigrants, I haven’t dived into enough to figure out exactly how much they’re actually protected under our constitution when they’re not here legally,” says Emrich. “But I do know our state law can extend, to a certain extent, an umbrella of basic legal protection regardless of their status.”

Information about a person’s citizenship status is protected under the new law’s definition of sensitive data — along with a person’s relatives, religious affiliations, health status, biometric data, and precise location. The latter two were key to finding the identities of hundreds of insurrectionists.

Those privacy protections are now especially relevant to immigrants in the state, as data brokers are an essential tool helping ICE conduct traffic stops and subsequent arrests.

Despite making up a small percentage of the population, many Montanan immigrants have been swept up by ICE and CBP in the past year — on par with increased immigration enforcement actions across the country.

Rebecca Miller is Chair of the Board of Valley Neighbors of the Flathead. She says her organization has noticed a trend of Highway Patrol police pulling immigrants over while driving. Then, police alert Border Patrol agents, who arrive to take the drivers into federal custody. 

Over in Bozeman, about 300 miles from Kalispell, immigrants are being stopped by Border Patrol while driving, too. Zamora, whose organization is based in Gallatin County — where Bozeman is — echoes Miller.

“Residents of Gallatin County are being detained, [not just] within the county, but when they leave the county and are on county highways, [or] state highways,” says Zamora. 

Incidents like these aren’t limited to the state of Montana. Almost 800 miles away, in Washington County, Oregon, activists are telling eerily similar stories. 

Elizabeth Aguilera is the Director of Communications for Adelante Mujeres, an immigrants’ rights advocacy group in Oregon. She says immigrants are being stopped as they go from place to place during their daily lives. 

“[They’re stopped] in a vehicle or moving between one place and the next. That’s usually home, work, school, grocery store — all places that we need to go. Those are the times that people are most vulnerable,” says Aguilera. “People are afraid to leave their houses. Kids are afraid to go to school. People are not able to or are afraid to go to their places of work.”

But back in Montana, both immigrants and suspected insurrectionists can look to Senate Bill 282 for privacy protections.

“It is like odd bedfellows to the nth degree,” says Seaton of the ACLU of Montana. Of Sen. Emrich, Seaton says, “We disagree on almost everything. But he got this bill and it is an amazing piece of legislation. It really does a lot to protect all Montanans.” 

But how effectively does Montana’s new law protect immigrants’ privacy?

Limitations of the Law

Senate Bill 282 stops government entities from being able to buy and share Montanans’ private data. But like any new piece of legislation, there are shortcomings. 

This bill only applies to state and local government.   

“State governments can’t regulate federal governments. That’s just not how the separation of powers go,” says Rin Alajaji, Associate Director of State Affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for digital privacy. “This bill can’t impact what USCIS uses to find information about immigrants, but it does stop something like the Montana police agency from helping ICE by sharing that data.” 

The law still allows local government access to sensitive data if they have a judicial warrant or an investigative subpoena — the latter of which has a much lower bar to reach in order to obtain, making it easier to potentially violate someone’s privacy. 

Brian Hofer is Executive Director of Secure Justice, a nonprofit law group that advocates against state abuse of power. Hofer points out that the law does not include any language about prohibiting interagency data sharing. That means if one local or state agency obtains sensitive data, it is still free to share it with other agencies. 

Importantly, the law also doesn’t contain a clause that would typically allow individuals to sue for a violation of law where government enforcement might fall short. Without that clause, only the state, not individuals, can sue to enforce the statute. 

But the law is still a starting point. In other states, legislators now have a blueprint to secure similar — or perhaps even stronger — data privacy protections for their constituents.

“It’s possible to push these laws and to do them,” says Hofer. “What [other states] could also learn from Montana is where the weaknesses are and improve their own version.” 

Oregon Drafts Its Own Protections

Similar protections are in the works in places like Portland, Oregon. Unlike Montana, both Portland and Oregon are sanctuary jurisdictions, which legally prohibit the use of their resources and personnel from assisting in federal immigration enforcement efforts. Portland, in particular, has more diversity in its population and progressive-leaning viewpoints among its residents. 

In February 2026, Portland’s City Council voted unanimously to build a fully-staffed City Data and Privacy Office. City Councilor Angelita Morillo led the initiative, along with Councilor Steve Novick. 

Throughout her 17 years in Portland, Morillo has experienced life in the city as a Paraguayan immigrant, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and a homeless Portlander. When she was elected to city council in 2024 as the only immigrant member, she recognized there was more to be done to secure more safety for marginalized communities. Morillo ran on a platform acknowledging the systemic inequality that factors into issues like homelessness and climate justice. 

In 2025, Portland City Council acknowledged that people’s private information and other information sharing systems are being exploited by federal immigration enforcement. The Council stated that these risks of said exploitation fall disproportionately on marginalized Portlanders — including immigrants, people of color, and protesters. 

In the first part of our series Surveilled and Sold, Feet in 2 Worlds uncovered the existence of active contracts between Portland police and private data brokers, which undermines the city’s sanctuary policies.

By establishing the Data and Privacy Office, Portland aims to prevent future exploitation. In this way, the office’s mission parallels that of Montana’s new law. With its impending implementation in city government, Portland’s new office has the potential to pass a directive similar to Montana’s law — and prohibit local and state government entities from purchasing residents’ sensitive data. 

The new Data Privacy Office will be led by an appointed Citywide Data Officer. The office will be tasked with strengthening privacy protections by “minimizing risks from data brokers [and] uncontrolled sharing of sensitive information.” Though it will not have legislative authority, the office will advise the City Council on policies on future surveillance and privacy oversight.

The office will have to grapple with the current lack of transparency behind different city bureaus’ data structures and who they may be sharing information with. A new Citywide Data Officer will collaborate with the current Chief of Information Officer to develop data safeguards. Other key collaborators include the Office of Equity and Human Rights to address the privacy needs of over-surveilled communities, along with the Bureau of Technology Services. 

“This is a relocation of existing city work and positions (i.e., a realignment), not building an office from scratch,” according to a presentation given at a city council meeting. “The aim is for the same experts doing this work today to move to the new office along with their positions, continuing their work but with the citywide authority needed to guard Portlanders’ data from misuse.”

Budget proposals for the office are still underway, so it’s unclear exactly how many staffers it will have.

Councilor Morillo believes this initiative will be beneficial to all Portlanders, regardless of citizenship status. Meanwhile, immigration crackdowns in Oregon continue apace — fueling a culture of fear, especially for undocumented residents, whose data could lead to their detention or deportation.

With the proposed implementation of the office later in 2026, its effectiveness in preventing data sharing loopholes remains to be seen. And, as Morillo admits, it’s generally difficult to grasp how private data flows, and who has access to it.

“If we are creating a contract with a vendor and they have very loose regulations on what they collect and who they share that with, we are becoming an unwitting facilitator of that system,” Morillo says. “It’s really hard to put the genie back in the bottle once the data’s already collected.” 

This story was supported by the Solutions Journalism Network as part of the How Government Responds Innovation Fund.

Feet in 2 Worlds is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation, the Elizabeth Bond Davis Foundation, an anonymous donor, and contributors to our annual NewsMatch campaign.