Surveillance contracts at Homeland Security would pause

In the House, a bill from Rep. Daniel S. Goldman of New York would put a hold on some Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, contracts for surveillance and data-analytics technology. The pause is aimed at tools that can watch, sort and assess people at scale, and it would stay in place until public audit and reporting requirements are ready.

For ordinary people, the stakes are not buried in procurement language. The question is whether a federal agency can keep buying systems that gather and analyze personal data before there is a clear public accounting of how those tools are used.

What gets held back

The bill does not freeze every DHS purchase. It targets contracts tied to the use and implementation of surveillance and data-analytics technologies, which narrows the focus to a specific class of tools rather than the department’s broader budget. Goldman introduced the measure with six Democratic cosponsors.