I’m in the financial services industry, and twice a year, my office is subjected to a “compliance raid” where representitives from the NASD (national association of securities dealers - the NASD in NASDAQ) come in and review files to check that we’re not scamming people. This is all well and good. If I were to say, do some of our work at home on a desktop computer (or merely keep files there), the NASD has every right to search to my entire apartment looking for said files and anything that I might be trying to hide. In addition, they periodically can call clients and ask them questions…
The worst part is you are guilty until proven innocent, even without a complaint filed against you.
Now I have nothing to hide, and thankfully I do most of my work on a laptop, but this seems awfully invasive. If you want to be in the financial services business, you need licenses from the NASD.
Isn’t some part of this unconstitutional?? It sure smells like an unreasonable search and seizure to me…
IANAL, but the NASD is not the USA and you agreed to the terms when you became an (insert acronym for financial advisor here.) My WAG is that this is contract law, so you are SOL.
As unreasonable as this may sound (and I agree, it stinks), you don’t have to put up with it. If you don’t like it, then get another career.
I believe that California has an explicit right to personal privacy in the state constitution, but the NASD probably has federal authorization to do what they do. In any case, IANAL.
You probably agree to come under the scrutiny of the NASD as part of your terms of employment at a security firm. It’s not unconstitutional for them to do this sort of raid, since the employees of the firm have agreed to their regs (in some way – you may not have realized it). If you don’t like the regs, you can find employment elsewhere.
First and foremost, as you noted in the subject title, the NASD is not a governmental orgn, but a professional orgn. The Bill of Rights prevents the fedl gvt for impinging on your rights as enumerated, and the 14th amendment adopted most of them (but not all), preventing the states from doing the same thing.
Then there are the other factors that have to be considered as posted previously.
Sorry, all my work in the biz was abroad, but I still had to get series 7 and series 10 working for Lehman Brothers in Hong Kong, AND we had internal audits to make sure we were in compliance with US law even though we were a subsidiary abroad.
Think about the shade of 1929, the dot.com boom and NASDAQ as a giant casino – of course the federal government is going to take a look. That said, I’m probably off subject.
the constitution and the bill of rights only apply to governments (either fed or state or both), NOT individuals or companies - except for the 13th amendment which does.