The disclosure comes amid congressional scrutiny and a Federal Trade Commission crackdown on commercial data brokers.
The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified letter by the agency.
The letter, addressed to a Democratic senator and obtained by The New York Times, offered few details about the nature of the data other than to stress that it did not include the content of internet communications.
Still, the revelation is the latest disclosure to bring to the fore a legal gray zone: Intelligence and law enforcement agencies sometimes purchase potentially sensitive and revealing domestic data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly.
It comes as the Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on companies that trade in personal location data that was gathered from smartphone apps and sold without people’s knowledge and consent about where it would end up and for what purpose it would be used.
The problem isn’t the NSA being able to buy the data without warrant. The problem is companies being allowed to collect and sell that data to begin with.
Exactly, the way the NSA is buying the data is no different from Facebook. Only way to stop it is for consumers to have ownership of their own data.
With laws the way they are right now, companies can leverage access to data for providing a “free” service and you sign your rights to ownership of the data by default when using their services (terms of service).
Yea.
We knew that.
Same way the FBI is prohibited from collecting DNA, but theres nothing illegal about them buying 23andMe’s databases.
Presumably it would be illegal for them to hack in…although let’s be honest they still might have done it.
But where’s the need if they can buy an individual’s genetic markers for pennies?
Budget cuts
it’s probably far less expensive to pay companies for data, rather than maintain a hacking thing that may or may not break into where you’re targeting data.
Yeah but only one of those can be paid for with seized crypto assets.
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Tracking everyone: American Companies 🤝 American Government
Americans 😐
I’m surprised they buy it instead of just collecting it by default.
Buying it is the exact reason they can afford not requesting a warrant.
The logic chain is as follows:
- You wilfully pay for services and content with your data (you don’t pay with cash, and you keep using services that you know use your data instead)
- Those services do use the data as advertised (for advertisements, too)
- Anyone can then buy the data. Your data. It is by design, and you agreed to it.
- The NSA is among “anyone”. They absolutely have the right to buy the data that you sold for services. The irony in their case, is that they are using your own money, that they got though taxes, for that.
They would not have the right to get that data otherwise. And for the most part, they probably wouldn’t get it (the amount of data generated by the surveillance capitalism is properly staggering and mind-blowing). But you sold it, and it’s fair game, so they might as well buy it with a tiny fraction of your taxes, right?
They probably collect it by default, and use that to figure out what data they need to buy in order to be able to claim it came from the data broker instead of their top secret collection source.
probably cheaper to pay for the data directly than to have to invest in engineers + infra + storage + people with the skills required to attempt to break/circumvent any layers of security.
the NSA should be abolished
why would you need a warrant to purchase something?
That’s not the point. If they wanted to acquire the data themselves they would need a warrant. What the article is saying is that data brokers collect data on people sensitive enough that if the police were doing it without a warrant it would be a crime. If your neighbour collected this data on you it would be stalking. But companies can stalk your online and sell their data to others including the police for profit.
Good news is they have to buy it
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