US Intelligence Confirms It Buys Americans' Personal Data - Slashdot
source link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/06/13/1212205/us-intelligence-confirms-it-buys-americans-personal-data
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US Intelligence Confirms It Buys Americans' Personal Data
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.
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Worse still, it buys it so it can target ads to you for products and services the NSA and CIA thinks you might be interested in.
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.
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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. 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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Some of us don’t like anyone with money groping our private details either. The stealing and unwanted contact are the issues and it’s less about who is doing it. No one should.
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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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I also partially agree.
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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I am pretty much in complete agreement there. I’m a single issue voter, if you take the corporate or large donor money, dark money from super pacs or the like, you have lost my willing vote. It’s why I’m for pooling the public money to vote in candidates at all levels that are only on the take from the public and thus have some accountability to the constituents. It’s not one dollar one vote, it’s more like the largest pile takes it all and collectively the public is a mone
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The Constitution forbids them access to and use of private information without a court order.
This is what the actual 4th Amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
None of that translates into "private infor
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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.-
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.
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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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I think you're leaping here, multiple times. For example "the government has no rights". Well, unfortunately, that's wrong. 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. And I can't fathom why you think asking witnesses what happened after an apparent crime is unlike buying data from businesses, but more like going somewhere they're not allowed to go. This isn't about trespa
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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
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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.
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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
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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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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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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 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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Times have changed. 20th century legal thought has been jettisoned, wholesale, by the US Supreme Court. Precedent? Worth exactly zero. Same goes for anything “implied” or “interpreted” from the constitution.
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.
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