U.S. government intelligence agencies are buying data about us. The danger to our civil liberties is so extreme that even the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said things have gone too far in a detailed report released in June.The report explains that federal intelligence agencies, like the NSA and FBI, do more than just conduct their own surveillance: they also buy data from private surveillance companies. This is a powerful partnership: the government’s desire to surveil us aligns well with corporations’ incentives in the surveillance economy. When intelligence agencies buy our data, they do not even follow basic constitutional safeguards—like obtaining warrants—since they say the purchased data is “publicly available.” In other words, since many data brokers will sell our personal data to anyone, intelligence agencies see no reason to treat that data as protected by the Fourth Amendment.But the report warns that when the government buys data about us, it threatens our privacy and civil liberties, something EFF has been saying for years. The government should not escape warrant requirements simply by paying private surveillance companies. As the report says, commercially available data, just like data the government collects itself, can be “misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals.” This commercially available data “can disclose, for example, the detailed movements and associations of individuals and groups, revealing political, religious, travel, and speech activities.”
