This bill updates the Commodity Exchange Act to revise information disclosure rules for the CFTC while establishing new protections to prevent the waiver of privileged information when shared with various government entities domestically and internationally.
Mark Messmer
Representative
IN-8
The CFTC Protection of Information and Data Act of 2026 updates the Commodity Exchange Act regarding information disclosure by the CFTC. It establishes new rules for sharing data with Congress, federal, state, local, and foreign government entities. Crucially, the bill introduces specific provisions to ensure that sharing this information does not waive existing legal privileges, such as attorney-client privilege.
CFTC Data Act Overhauls How Government Agencies Swap Your Trading Info and Protect Legal Secrets
The CFTC Protection of Information and Data Act of 2026 rewrites the rules for how the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) handles the sensitive data it collects on traders. Under Section 2, the bill mandates that the CFTC hand over names, addresses, and specific trading volumes to any congressional committee that asks for them. It also sets up a framework for the CFTC to share this data with other federal agencies, state departments, and even foreign governments, provided those entities are acting within their official jurisdiction. While this sounds like a lot of data moving around, the bill introduces a 'nonwaiver' rule for privileged information. This means if a company shares a document protected by attorney-client privilege with the CFTC, that protection doesn't automatically vanish just because the government saw it.
The Digital Paper Trail
For anyone active in the commodities markets—whether you’re a professional trader or a business owner hedging fuel costs—this bill creates a more formal highway for your data. Section 2(e) allows the CFTC to pass your information to federal agencies like the Department of Justice or the Federal Reserve. The catch? Those agencies generally can’t make that info public unless they’re using it in a specific legal proceeding. It’s like giving a key to your filing cabinet to a neighbor; they can look at the files to help you with your taxes, but they aren't supposed to show the neighborhood unless there's a lawsuit involved. This streamlined sharing aims to help regulators spot fraud or market manipulation faster by connecting the dots across different government offices.
Keeping Secrets Secret
One of the biggest headaches in legal battles is 'waiving privilege.' Usually, if you show a confidential lawyer’s note to a third party, you lose the right to keep that note secret in court. This bill changes that for the CFTC. The new subsection on 'Protecting Privileged Information' ensures that sharing data with regulators doesn't strip away legal protections. This is a win for transparency; companies might be more willing to come clean with regulators if they know their private legal advice won't be leaked to the public or used against them in unrelated civil lawsuits. However, the bill is clear: this 'privilege shield' doesn't work against Congress or a direct U.S. court order. If a judge or a House committee demands the files, the CFTC still has to cough them up.
Global Handshakes and Local Limits
The bill also goes international, allowing the CFTC to share data with foreign central banks and ministries. Before sending your trading data overseas, the CFTC must be 'satisfied' that the foreign agency will keep it under wraps unless there’s a legal case. This is where things get a bit murky. While the bill uses specific language about 'jurisdiction,' it leaves some room for interpretation on how strictly a foreign government might define an 'adjudicatory action.' For a local business or a trader, this means your data could technically end up in the hands of a regulator in another country, though the bill attempts to build a fence around that data to prevent it from becoming public knowledge without a very good reason.