US Intelligence Confirms It Buys Americans' Personal Data (techcrunch.com) 90
A newly declassified government report confirms for the first time that U.S. intelligence and spy agencies purchase vast amounts of commercially available information on Americans, including data from connected vehicles, web browsing data, and smartphones. From a report: By the U.S. government's own admission, the data it purchases "clearly provides intelligence value," but also "raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified and released the January 2022-dated report on Friday, following a request by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to disclose how the intelligence community uses commercially available data. This kind of data is generated from internet-connected devices and made available by data brokers for purchase, such as phone apps and vehicles that collect granular location data and web browsing data that tracks users as they browse the internet.
The declassified report is the U.S. government's first public disclosure revealing the risks associated with commercially available data of Americans that can be readily purchased by anyone, including adversaries and hostile nations. The United States does not have a privacy or data protection law governing the sharing or selling of Americans' private information. "In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained" by other intelligence gathering capabilities, such as search warrants, wiretaps and surveillance, the report says.
The declassified report is the U.S. government's first public disclosure revealing the risks associated with commercially available data of Americans that can be readily purchased by anyone, including adversaries and hostile nations. The United States does not have a privacy or data protection law governing the sharing or selling of Americans' private information. "In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained" by other intelligence gathering capabilities, such as search warrants, wiretaps and surveillance, the report says.
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Re: Worse still... (Score:1)
re NSA & CIA spam (Score:2)
I gave their waterboarding kit five stars, got all the confessions I want from my vic ...partner.
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Re:Worse still... (Score:4, Funny)
I also have recently been seeing ads for some bizarre object that, when clicked out of curiosity, turned out to be a "male swimsuit bulge enhancement" thing.
Isn't it scary how they know exactly what your needs are?
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This isn't public information... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it is in the hands of a third party doesn't make it public information. These services should still require a warrant to purchase this information.
Re:This isn't public information... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because it is in the hands of a third party doesn't make it public information. These services should still require a warrant to purchase this information.
I’d imagine if they required a warrant to purchase that then suddenly there would be tax breaks for delivering the same info for free. I see it a bit as a broken fire hydrant spraying information everywhere, you can’t really complain when the government gets wet. Best to take a wrench and close off the pipe, then no one is going to be able to get at it. It fixes this at the root of the problem, if advertising is hurt that’s just a bonus.
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"I’d imagine if they required a warrant to purchase that then suddenly there would be tax breaks for delivering the same info for free."
That is missing the point. The Constitution forbids them access to and use of private information without a court order. There is no exception for getting it from a third party whether paid or unpaid but there IS a block on compelling a third party to do for them what they are denied.
"I see it a bit as a broken fire hydrant spraying information everywhere"
More like a
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"it’s less about who is doing it. No one should."
I partially agree. Both should be stopped but it does make a difference. The private company can't steal your children and deprive you of life and liberty, can't blackmail you, your congress critter, your President, your Supreme court justices without recourse.
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can't blackmail you, your congress critter, your President, your Supreme court justices without recourse.
I don’t believe this is accurate, they can and do and unless money is removed from the accountability equation democracy is lost to oligarchy.
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You know as a security guy I've learned one things. Trust is a vulnerability. In technology we've figured this out and are moving toward zero trust models but our government has a large and vulnerable trust model.
There is very little you can do for instance if the DOJ is corrupt at this point. They could not only be gathering data like this and blackmailing congress but they can also refuse to produce anything they like to congress claiming it is part of an active investigation. They can even appoint a spec
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The US Constitution does not protect you here (Score:2)
This is what the actual 4th Amendment says:
None of that translates into "private infor
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None of that translates into "private information." It protects persons, house, papers and effects. The reason the third party doctrine exists is because the data about you held by others is very often their property, not yours. It is therefore THEIR PAPERS, not your papers.
While I’m not a lawyer, this certainly is technically true from my legal perspective. However, when the constitution was written, only white landowners were allowed to vote, have full rights, and representation. That’s something that enough people agreed on needed to change and the founders left open a mechanism for doing so and if you read contemporary views at the time it was a pretty universal belief among them that changes to the constitution were warranted from time to time. Unfortunate
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"persons, houses, papers, and effects"
In what way is this not clearly an attempt to encapsulate a person's private information and property? Your papers ARE your private information. If the air force can be covered under the clause granting permission to form a Navy as a newer technology analog then the more blatant modern analog of digital information to 'papers' certainly applies here.
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Im no expert, but Im betting when you agree to the terms of service for these companies, you give them the right to sell your data to anyone unencumbered by privacy concerns, business or government. Once YOU have agreed I cant see that the constitution is relevant.
If you dont want to make your data public, dont use the services, simple as that.
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Hobson's choice. Show me cellphone service that doesn't sell your information. Show me a credit card that doesn't sell your data?
Not everyone wants to live Amish.
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Another example of the bias against the interests against the people in our society.
If you have a certain amount of marijuana or other substance the law permits them to automatically assume you were dealing without any evidence. Yet the same is not done for industry with regard to anti-consumer, anti-competitive, and anti-trust laws.
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They'll counter with "you show me! If people value privacy, then that sounds like a great business idea. Oh, no one does that? There must not be any demand for privacy."
And when they say that last sentence, I'm not even sure they're wrong.
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I don't think that's how it works. If it worked like that the authorities would need a warrant just to ask potential witnesses questions.
If a third party is selling data, then "the government" has as much right to buy it as Palantir does.
And this is why there need to be strict limits on selling private information.
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"would need a warrant just to ask potential witnesses questions"
More like they would need a warrant to send someone where they aren't allowed to go without a warrant to gather data like wearing a wire or even more apt, would need a warrant to search my wallet even if they had a pickpocket acquire it. These companies are definitely dark grey and using a series of bad rulings to get away with stealing our data after all.
"If a third party is selling data, then "the government" has as much right to buy it as Pa
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"The government does have plenty of rights. The only restrictions placed upon it are those to prevent it from restricting your freedom except after specific processes are followed."
This is false. The people have rights, we sit at the top of hierarchy, at least in the US. The government is limited to the powers we've explicitly granted it via the Constitution. That is a limited and revocable grant of authority derived from the rights of The People, the government has no rights of its own. Like a large scale
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"For example the 4th amendment falls in the later category.
They can perform unreasonable searches in reality, and they can perform unreasonable searches so long as no one exists to enforce the rule saying they can't."
"You and I might disagree that this *should* be allowed, but that is different from the fact that it *is* allowed."
Those things still fall in the later category when they conflict with the Constitution or the legal basis of the Constitution [authority derives from The People's rights]. You migh
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For most of this information, being corporate data or industrial resources, you call it a 'warrant'. I call it a 'purchase order'.
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Stolen user data
Re: This isn't public information... (Score:2)
Ali third-party data collection could be described thus. Did we agree to EULAs and TOS that permitted this? If so, nope, taken but not stolen. And this doesn't matter, were trapped within vital or desirable products so that any agreement isn't really freely consented to. That's an argument to try...
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"Did we agree to EULAs and TOS that permitted this?"
Ish. There is no legitimate claim of a meeting of minds for a EULAs or TOS and everyone knows it. Unfortunately the court precedents are in their favor. We will have to push for explicit changes to law.
Re: This isn't public information... (Score:2)
It is an agreement. But it's coerced by the practical necessity of the product and the (deliberately?) Obtuse language. That is a win in court. The trouble comes when we try to demonstrate damages. But the court, at every level, is hostile to these arguments, believing the arguments of industry and government should have priority. We need to change government.
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In order for a contract to be valid there has to be a meeting of minds. Both parties have to understand, in detail, every term they are agreeing to or you can't legitimately claim they actually agreed to that term.
That is why when you sign a mortgage a notary is required and the notary not only makes sure you are of sound mind but also that you actually understand the various clauses of every document. Without that there is no meeting of minds. A EULA is no less complicated but there is no notary, no attorn
Re:This isn't public information... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US doesn't have a clear-cut right to information privacy like the EU does. The Constituional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, houses, papers and effects" doesn't unambiguously apply to sensitive data, which is none of those things. You don't even possess that data; it has already been collected by a third party and it is in their possession. It's arguably *their property* under US law and it certainly doesn't fall under common law privacy protections.
There was a strain of legal thought, developed through a number of 20th century SCOTUS rulings, that the Bill of Rights doesn't just protect *specific things* mentioned like papers, but rather a *privacy interest* that happens to be embodied in those things. It was on that basis that the court struck down state laws against contraception and abortion. This idea that you have a Constitutionally protected privacy interest that the government is bound to respect isn't something you should not rely on now.
So the only real protection you as an American have against government snooping is statutory. There are a number of laws on the books which forbid the government from collecting certain kinds of information. But they do not prevent private industry from doing that, nor do they forbid the government from *buying* that information from the private sector. If you follow the history of privacy law in the US, *this is clearly not an accidental oversight*.
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"The Constituional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, houses, papers and effects" doesn't unambiguously apply to sensitive data, which is none of those things."
Your data is a blatant modern analog for 'papers and effects' and precluding any access of your personal information and property by the state without a warrant is the clear intention of the amendment. Format shifting from papers to newer technology doesn't change that. Only a bias toward the interests of the state ov
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"The Constituional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, houses, papers and effects" doesn't unambiguously apply to sensitive data, which is none of those things."
Your data is a blatant modern analog for 'papers and effects' and precluding any access of your personal information and property by the state without a warrant is the clear intention of the amendment. Format shifting from papers to newer technology doesn't change that. Only a bias toward the interests of the state over the interests of the people could lead to rationalizing any other interpretation.
I didn't realise that supreme court justices were on slashdot!
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Yes, people love to shit on any perspective inconsistent with the current status quo. Slapping down anyone who discusses what is right is a great way to nip any momentum to fix things.
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Yes, people love to shit on any perspective inconsistent with the current status quo. Slapping down anyone who discusses what is right is a great way to nip any momentum to fix things.
I think thats called 'being a conservative'?
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Anytime something legalish comes up and you propose what ought to be it triggers lawyers, armchair and actual, who think they are somehow 'correcting' you by pointing out the current state of law.
It doesn't actually seem to matter whether what ought to be leans more left or right. What could be more conservative than wanting to defend the spirit of the original law and cutting back the attempt to expand government by heading off a disingenuous attempt to not apply that spirit to simple incremental technolog
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Anytime something legalish comes up and you propose what ought to be it triggers lawyers, armchair and actual, who think they are somehow 'correcting' you by pointing out the current state of law.
It doesn't actually seem to matter whether what ought to be leans more left or right. What could be more conservative than wanting to defend the spirit of the original law and cutting back the attempt to expand government by heading off a disingenuous attempt to not apply that spirit to simple incremental technological updates? Supporting a later ruling that expanded government by failing to continue to restrict it equally is relatively progressive.
I am really confused, sorry. So something can be conservative and progressive at the same time?
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Of course, the opposite of progression is not conservation but rather regression. If you are conservative you first must determine what you are conserving before you can determine whether a change is progressive or regressive.
These murky waters of ambiguity are mostly used to manipulate and confuse the people of this country. We the people, won liberty in the revolutionary war, we won the absolute authoritarian power of the crown. Unfortunately, total individual liberty means individuals able to deprive the
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Of course, the opposite of progression is not conservation but rather regression. If you are conservative you first must determine what you are conserving before you can determine whether a change is progressive or regressive.
These murky waters of ambiguity are mostly used to manipulate and confuse the people of this country. We the people, won liberty in the revolutionary war, we won the absolute authoritarian power of the crown. Unfortunately, total individual liberty means individuals able to deprive their neighbors of liberty... that is anarchy. In order to maximize individual liberty we must actually suffer a state to check us and our neighbors.
States are inclined to increase their power relative to the people and any success they find is a regression toward the authoritarian state we had prior to the revolutionary war. Any movement which reduces the authority of the state without increasing the power of our neighbors relative to ourselves is progress toward conserving the power we won from the crown to ourselves.
You are absolutely correct.
I thought this video has an interesting breakdown of where notions of freedom and liberty come from, don't be deterred by its 'leftist' slant, its the deep historical context that it illustrates ie original Greek idea of 'freedom' was 'as opposed to being a slave'.
youtube.com/watch?v=GfjiBIkIOqI
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Only a bias toward the interests of the state over the interests of the people could lead to rationalizing any other interpretation.
Well, that's not how lawyers think. There's always another interpretation.
There are multiple problems with your interpretation that data *about you* is equivalent to a paper *in your possession*. First of all, you may never have even been in possession of that data -- e.g. a list of cell towers your phone pings. Second that data may be in the possession of third parties for entirely legitimate reasons. The classic case is phone records. You disclose a number you are calling to the phone company in orde
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Your data is a blatant modern analog for 'papers and effects' and precluding any access of your personal information and property by the state without a warrant is the clear intention of the amendment.
"Your data" is data you know, have, or control -it is literally your papers and effects (digital format vs paper format does not change that). It is NOT data about you. What I know about you is my data, not yours.
I can do with my data as I wish, notwithstanding contractual limitations (NDA, HIPAA, etc.) I can write a biography about you. I can sell the data I have collected to the government. I can report it in the newspaper/on the internet. These are my rights, because it is my data.
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Unless it’s the second amendment. For that one, apparently a “well regulated militia” somehow gets translated into “every pissed off, mentally ill, hallucinating 19 year old guy with daddy issues gets an AR15, plenty of ammo, and encouragement to exerci
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IANAL, but wouldn't a warrant only be necessary if the government was trying to force these data brokers to provide this information against their will? These companies are freely selling the info. It seems similar to paying an informant (which is legal).
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Your congress critter. We need to expand and clarify 4th and 1st amendment protections in favor of 'the individual' which last I checked is a club every citizen is a member of.
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No warrant is needed, because they have the seller's consent. That's what the money is for.
(Yes, I realize lots of people are thinking "but that's not the right party's consent!")
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The operative word in my statement is "should." This falls under the things we shouldn't stand for and take quietly category.
So the US is doing exactly as I predicted.. (Score:3)
Expect to see a lot more of this, especially as people most companies have almost all the data they want (comcast, Google, Facebook, etc...) bringing EVERYONE under surveillance. The capitalistic police state.
FYI, this should make some conservatives very happy because ultimately its "saving the government money". (it costs money for a warrant, installing a tap, collecting the data, and then processing/reviewing the data.. vs. simply purchasing in bulk is like 10-20% of that total cost.. (they still have to process/review the data for their needs, but even that can be scripted/automated which will long term reduce costs).
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So ... if my phone company decides to sell copies of my phone calls for $/minute, does this mean that phone tap warrants are no longer needed?
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Search for things like "3rd party consent". they reason that if you already gave consent of your calls to the phone company, you have no expectation of privacy for that data, so the gov can just request them WITHOUT any sort of warrant.
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And then there's the elephant in the room of who else buys it and what for
Commercially avaialable (Score:3)
Not sure why anyone is surprised at this. Governments are no different than any other commercial customer.
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Based on available data, and the obvious facts in evidence, aren't we past believing our federal government, wholly and in part, respects our individual rights?
It is out of control. How to reel it in and establish even marginal control is a topic for another discussion, I think.
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Not sure why anyone is surprised at this. Governments are no different than any other commercial customer.
Governments are different than any other commercial customer, since our Constitution puts limitations on the government which it doesn't on private companies. The right to privacy is likely the relevant set of precedents here, and my guess is this would require new case law to determine if this violates our right to privacy. So hopefully there will be lawsuits and the Supreme Court can eventually settle the matter.
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Not sure why anyone is surprised at this. Governments are no different than any other commercial customer.
Governments are different than any other commercial customer, since our Constitution puts limitations on the government which it doesn't on private companies. The right to privacy is likely the relevant set of precedents here, and my guess is this would require new case law to determine if this violates our right to privacy. So hopefully there will be lawsuits and the Supreme Court can eventually settle the matter.
This is exactly why the Russian government uses Wagner, a private company, to do its dirty work.
And why the US government uses meta, alphabet etc to do their dirty work.
Pot? Kettle? Which is which?
cellphone tracking (Score:2)
The apps on your cellphone are constantly sending tracking data to a bunch of brokers who collect it and sell it on. That's part of what the US is buying, and anyone else that will pay for it too.
If you have an Android phone you can block it with App Tracking Protection in the DuckDuckGo app. On my phone it has blocked 67k tracking attempts over the past week.
https://spreadprivacy.com/app-... [spreadprivacy.com]
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I'm not so sure that the approximate phone location as determined by cell towers is publicly available and for sale to the government.
But the tracking data emitted by the apps will often include your GPS coordinates, your email address, advertising ID, your name, and whatever technical details about the phone they can grab. I'm looking at the reports, one app periodically tries to send out about 20 items.
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Obviously the phone carrier will have some info about you, but in principle it would require a warrant to get it. This article is talking about info that is;
"made available by data brokers for purchase".
"that historically could have been obtained” by other intelligence gathering capabilities, such as search warrants, wiretaps and surveillance.
So it nice if you can prevent them from collecting that data in the first place.
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You may be correct, but I did some searching about this and there are some laws that, in principle at least, appear to provide protection from that kind of tracking without a warrant. The Stored Communications Act (SCA) and the Telecommunications Act.
Have a look at this article and tell me what you think.
https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
The plot thickens (Score:1)
That would explain the ads I'm getting.
"Are you feeling lonely? Meet Russian spies in your area tonight!"
"Hey handsome, I'm not looking for love, I'm looking to sell yellow cake uranium right now!"
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Uh, that was me. I present as a Russian spy because I'm lonely. You look hot in your Tron skivvies, by the way, when you forgot to tab your cam.
Snoop onto them as they snoop onto us (Score:3)
What would they think of a publicly accessible website that collected the very same data about all employees of various IC related TLAs?
Making the Market (Score:2)
While customer data is handy for targeting ads, I wondered how it got to be such that it was worth every company's time to collect personal data to sell it. It didn't seem that there should be that much money sloshing around.
If the US and other governments are hoovering up all this data and paying for it with real money, that explains why there is such a robust market for personal data. It's the intelligence agencies that have created the dystopian personal data market. Thanks a lot.
Not Constitutional. (Score:2)
Government cannot buy data that you could not get without a warrant.
Corporations vs govt? (Score:2)
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It's even funnier when you realize that political entities are essentially, often literally, corporations. The first US states were corporations, and the United States was constructed from that model.
Do people have the 4th amendment backwards? (Score:2)
The 4th amendment and all of the Bill of Rights is about restraining government. The spirit of the 4th amendment is that the government can not possess the data without a warrant. The source of the data should not be relevant.
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The 4th amendment and all of the Bill of Rights is about restraining government. The spirit of the 4th amendment is that the government can not possess the data without a warrant. The source of the data should not be relevant.
Its so sweet how Americans love to quote their constitution and amendments as if they are authoritative in constitutional law, as if any American can just decide what it all means and how to interpret it.
How about those sovereign citizens eh?
Your pathetic government knows where I am. (Score:1)
I openly advertise my locations to the governments of the world in hopes their kings send wave after wave of foolish adventurers in vain attempts to defeat me. My belly will be full and my cave will be decorated with their bleached skulls and useless armor!
When a government no longer serves the people... (Score:2)
A government must spy on its people, to better stifle dissent toward the corrupt regime in power. Keeping in mind that corruption comes in many flavours, with the most popular being Red and Blue.