Sponsors
Introduced March 4, 2025 by Josh S. Gottheimer · Last progress March 4, 2025
The bill boosts vehicle-related threat detection and provides business protections and congressional oversight, but does so by expanding watchlist checks and data collection that risk privacy harms, false positives, and added costs for small businesses.
Transportation operators and vehicle sellers/renters will receive terrorism threat assessments, training, and technical assistance to better recognize and report suspicious activity, improving prevention efforts.
Dealers and rental companies participating in the pilot get liability protection for actions taken under the program, reducing legal risk for businesses that comply.
Congress will receive regular reports assessing privacy/civil liberties impacts and counterterrorism effects, increasing oversight and transparency over the pilot.
Customers, including immigrants, may face increased collection of personal information and watchlist checks, reducing privacy and expanding surveillance.
Watchlist-checking procedures risk false positives that could delay or wrongly flag lawful customers, causing denial of service, stigma, or other harms.
The pilot could normalize increased surveillance of vehicle transactions if expanded or made permanent, widening government monitoring over time.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Department of Homeland Security to set up a short pilot program (to start within one year and run no more than one year) that tests standardized information collection and suspicious-activity reporting by vehicle dealers and rental companies. The department must work with the automotive sales and rental industries to create reporting standards, provide threat guidance and training, offer technical assistance, and study whether non-classified watchlist checks or mandatory FBI notifications are needed. The law also requires repeated progress reports to Congress that assess privacy and civil liberties impacts, and it orders a separate study (due within 18 months) on working with rental car and ridesharing companies to identify terrorism risks; dealers and rental companies acting under the pilot receive legal liability protection for covered actions.