USA: Yes, we’re buying your data, including your embarrassing secrets
Digital information can be bought from commercial data brokers and “de-anonymized” to identify the person to whom it is linked, including US citizens, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says.
for Miquel Can
PCMag.com
Excerpts:
The United States has purchased “large” amounts of commercially available data on Internet users for espionage purposes, according to a new government report.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified on Friday(Opens in a new window) a January 2022 report outlining the US government’s approach to using Commercially Available Information (CAI), which may come from data brokers working in the Internet advertising and analytics industries. The information acquired includes details of users’ smartphones and social media accounts. While the data is typically stripped of personal data, the report notes, “It is often possible (using other CAIs) to de-anonymize and identify individuals, including US individuals.”
The ODNI declassified the report to provide some transparency into the surveillance practice, after years of reporting(Opens in a new window) about how US agencies have bought information from commercial data brokers. In March, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) also asked Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide more transparency about government purchases.
Commercially purchased data can be an important asset for US law enforcement and intelligence gathering. The report notes that “the government would never have been allowed to force billions of people to wear location-tracking devices on their persons at all times…However, smartphones, connected cars , web tracking technologies, the Internet of Things, and other innovations have had this effect without government involvement.”
Agencies buying the information include the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, along with a government-drafted group, which could be the CIA.(Opens in a new window). But the report also admits that the government purchases themselves risk harming US citizens, as the acquired data could be exploited to find out someone’s personal details, including their sex life.
“It can be misused to invade private lives, ruin reputations and cause emotional distress and threaten people’s safety,” the report said. “In the wrong hands, sensitive knowledge obtained through CAI could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment and public shaming.”
Buying the data also risks violating the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects individuals from unreasonable government searches and seizures. The same report notes that the US government must establish probable cause before conducting a search of a user’s private data. “Yet the same type of information about millions of Americans is openly for sale to the general public,” he adds.
The declassification of the report prompted Senator Wyden to call on the US government to rein in the “uncontrolled” surveillance.
“According to this report, ODNI does not even know which federal intelligence agencies are buying Americans’ personal data,” he said in a statement.(Opens in a new window). “If the government can buy its way around Fourth Amendment due process, there will be few meaningful limits on government surveillance.”
Read the full article at PCMag.com.
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Posted on June 14, 2023
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