Sean Duffy: “I appreciate the support of the gentleman from Texas and his insight in this amendment. I was a prosecutor in a former…”

“I appreciate the support of the gentleman from Texas and his insight in this amendment. I was a prosecutor in a former life, and we care a lot about due process, making sure that the government can't take something from a private individual just because they want to take it. As an American, I know that protecting intellectual property is a cornerstone of our free enterprise system. That is why I am concerned about the CFTC's rule on automated trading, which takes the unprecedented step of requiring a wide array of market participants engaged in algorithmic trading to maintain a source code repository and make it available for inspection by the CFTC or the Department of Justice without a subpoena. Now, this is highly sensitive source code. This is intellectual property that helps the functionality of our marketplace, and to think that this kind of sensitive data can be taken by the Federal Government without a subpoena should shock our conscience. There are times when the government should get this information; but if they should have it, they should be able to use a subpoena and lay out the cause and the case for why they need to have it. That is not just my only concern. But the CFTC is potentially going to be taking this source code from all different market players and holding it in a warehouse or a repository, and so we have a concern for hacking. It has been a big conversation as of late.…”